[00:00:10] Ray Latif: Hello, and thanks for tuning in to Taste Radio, the number one podcast for the food and beverage industry. I'm editor and producer Ray Latif, and you're listening to episode 200, which features an interview with Sam Dennigan, the founder and CEO of fast-growing plant-centric frozen food brand Strong Roots. Just a reminder, if you like what you hear on Taste Radio, please share the podcast with friends and colleagues. And of course, we'd love it if you could review us on the Apple Podcasts app or your listening platform of choice. Sam Dennigan's roots in the food industry run deep. Born into a family-owned Dublin-based wholesaler of fresh produce, Sam grew up in the business, and his experience provided a foundation for his own company, the aptly named Strong Roots maker of uniquely designed, plant-based frozen foods, including broccoli and purple carrot bites, cauliflower hash browns, and pumpkin spinach burgers, Strong Roots launched in 2015 and has become one of the UK's fastest growing food brands. It entered the U.S. last year and has since built an impressive presence, with the product sold in over 3,000 locations, including Target, Wegmans and Whole Foods. In September, the company raised $18.5 million to support growth initiatives here and abroad, an important step, Sam says, in its mission to become a new type of global brand that, in his words, quote, can do better for the planet and personal health. In the following interview, I spoke with Sam about the reasons that he struck out on his own, how the initial vision Strong Roots has evolved, and how the company is attempting to make food that appeals to the next generation of consumers. He also explains why thoughtfully planned demos are the best path to trial, how he assessed potential investment partners, why he focuses on quote, getting the small things incredibly right, and shared his perspective on the variety of ways that plant-based foods are being marketed and sold. Hey, folks, it's Ray with Taste Radio. I'm here at BevNET headquarters in Watertown, Mass. And sitting with me now is Sam Dennigan, the founder and CEO of Strong Roots. Sam, how are you? Hey, Ray. How are you? I'm good. Thanks for having me in. Thank you so much for coming out. You've been on the road quite a bit of late, yes?
[00:02:19] Sam Dennigan: Yeah, yeah. I've just done a road trip to Canada, to Montreal, and then down through Vermont to Boston last night. So, yeah, it's been a road trip. It's been good fun. How many hours is that? Maybe...
[00:02:32] Ray Latif: Good podcast time, that's correct. Absolutely, absolutely.
[00:02:52] Sam Dennigan: Did you happen to listen to any Taste Radio when you were on your trip? Yeah, as I was saying to you earlier, I think I'm about 12, 15 deep at this point. So huge fan, was before anyway, but yeah, I think I've got a huge amount of the almanac under my belt now.
[00:03:08] Ray Latif: Well, you'll be part of the almanac going forward. So I'm excited about this. Your family has been in the food business for quite some time. Tell me a little bit about the history of the Sam Dennigan business in Ireland.
[00:03:20] Sam Dennigan: Sure. So, um, I grew up in a, in a food business family and, um, very much a family business, you know, uncles, dad, aunts, cousins, uh, everyone rallied together into a now workforce of, I think is close to about 650 people. Wow. Yeah, it's a very big player in retail and wholesale in the Irish market. And that's always been, you know, a part of my life. So growing up, the family business started out as a potato merchant, believe it or not, from Ireland. And then over its 40-year history, did some acquisitions, ended up doing vegetables, then into fruit, and then became a consolidator for one of the main retailers in Ireland, called Dunn Stores, who'd be the market leader, they'd have about 25% plus of the market share and I grew up servicing all parts of that business, you know, summer jobs as a kid, then I went to college, I came back for a summer job to make some money to go traveling and then I stayed for 10 years and I worked in every part of it, you know, from the sales desk in the fruit market trading from early in the morning and then moved into operations, then to sales and marketing, IT, worked with account management for some of the retailer accounts that we had, all the way full circle back around to sales and marketing, which is kind of, was always my strong suit. And ultimately trying to develop brands both from scratch in-house, which were not really successful, and then trying to license international brands to try and make and tell a story about fresh produce. The company is primarily a fresh produce company, but it's also a logistics 3PL company. which was amazing because I got to see firsthand what was working, what wasn't working, you know. I just had to walk out into the warehouse and the big pallets were the things that were working and the small pallets with two or three cases on them were the things that probably weren't. So it was an amazing foundation to see and do research on things that work in a market, as well as having the background and history of agriculture and the link and networks to farming groups, both in Ireland, but also around the world. There was a time at which I was doing a lot of procurement for specific projects and that's kind of what led me into this.
[00:05:56] Ray Latif: You said you launched two brands internally that didn't end up working. I believe those were Samuel's Potatoes and Green Giant Fresh. Yep, that's right. What were they?
[00:06:05] Sam Dennigan: What was Samuel's Potatoes? So Samuel's Potatoes was a really simple microwave or steam in the bag kind of single or two portion product, which were baby sweet potatoes, baby potatoes, and a single kind of baked potato. You basically put those in the microwave for like five to ten minutes, depending on on which product it was. And it was like a, you know, an easy cheat for students or people without cooking apparatus in the home to be able to just eat nutritiously and healthily. The problem with that one was that it was a Me Too product. It was a kind of a copycat on another Irish producer in order to remain competitive with one of the retail customers we had. That was like a valuable lesson in don't copy it just for the sake of it, you know, make sure that there's consumer need for it, make sure that you understand what the market wants before just jumping into product development.
[00:07:06] Ray Latif: And then Green Giant Fresh.
[00:07:09] Sam Dennigan: I think everyone has grown up with some product as part of that portfolio, whether it's the sweet corn and whether it's in a can or whether it's from the frozen section. So this is part of the Green Giant brand. Yeah. At the time, the brand was kind of, well, the brand was at the time under the General Mills umbrella. a company in California called Growers Express had sub-licensed the brand about 15, 20 years ago. And the brand that you see in the fresh section of some supermarkets in the US now, it's a very successful fresh produce brand for lettuces and tomatoes and different things. And what I saw from that was we could license this for the Irish market and it could be a stepping stone for us to be able to export into the UK market, which is a much bigger population. So the idea was that we used a brand that everyone already knew had like, you know, 95 plus percent brand recognition to be able to fast track ourselves into telling a story about commodity produce. But the problem with the category of fresh in Ireland is, or the challenge is that it's very, very price driven. And there is little or no margin to be able to tell the story and be able to market your product to the consumer because they're buying first on price, then on quality. and then for some small segment of the market on brand. So as a result of that, retailers own that market with their private label and the retailer's mark is what signifies the quality for the most part. And the retailers, while they were interested in the products, and many of those products are now private label products, but they didn't have to nor did they want to take the brand on. So well into the development and after a lot of accepting conversations, there was kind of a full U-turn done on the interest in the product. And I never really got to market. You know, we tried for about two years of placing it directly into smaller independent retailers and getting some success that way, but it was a challenge to private label. It was something that the retailers could eventually do themselves with the varietals and the type of packaging that we were using, which were pretty unique. But ultimately it was something that they didn't want. So, you know, know your customer was a valuable lesson there and understand the strategy and the politics of the market and not just the fact that you can have a great product. That doesn't mean that the consumer may want it, but there might be a political problem in the middle with your actual customer.
[00:09:50] Ray Latif: Did you ever see yourself staying with the family company, eventually say rising to the ranks of CEO, or did you always want to strike out on your own and create your own brand?
[00:10:01] Sam Dennigan: I think there's always opportunity for, I mean, in a family business, you know, there's incredible loyalty and legacy. And I was the third generation into that business. So I think the expectation from a father or uncle to son is always at some point to pass businesses on, you know, that's how family businesses work. My father and my uncle are both young men, still are and still run the business on a day to day and I probably got to the point at which I wanted to do something under my own autonomy at an earlier stage than maybe would have worked. as well as the fact that the business is very different. Commodity, fresh produce and private label is fathoms apart from branded frozen food or branded food in general. And my interest and my passion is around the creativity and the storytelling and the added value and the raison d'etre of why we're doing something, which has become a purpose-driven company as opposed to a food wholesaler. And I don't think one really fits in with the other. Maybe it will in the future, but the distance was too far apart for that to be realized in the time that my impatience was willing to wait.
[00:11:24] Strong Roots: Guessing your margins? That's risky. Belay Financial gives CPG brands the clarity to scale smarter, faster, stronger. Get your free inventory ebook by texting TASTE to 55123 and start making data work for you.
[00:11:44] Whole Foods: Tune in at the end of this episode for an exclusive interview with Matt Lynn of Belay Solutions. He sits down with Melissa Traverse to break down the biggest inventory and accounting mistakes CPG founders often make. You'll learn how to bring clarity to your numbers so you can scale with confidence.
[00:12:02] Ray Latif: I can imagine for a self-described marketer and a food guy that staying within a commodity focused food company might've felt like cuffs, so to speak.
[00:12:15] Sam Dennigan: Yeah. I mean, when you're selling a commodity, as I said earlier on, it's usually down to price and then quality. Price is kind of the thing that is almost a must because it's a market driven thing. What one retailer is doing usually is what the other retailers have to follow. The differentiating factor in the fresh commodities business is the quality. So how much better, how much more shelf life, what's the presentation and so on and so forth with a plant that has been cut less than 10 days before you're going to consume it. And that's a huge part of the marketing of that business. And for a chef or for someone who is really, really educated about food, there's huge differences between three and four days in the quality of produce. But to the general mass consumer, there's not. So people are picking up fresh produce as part of their general shop. they're rarely using a specific place as a destination for fresh produce consumption in Ireland and the UK. It's very different here. So the successful companies in fresh produce are the best producers, have the best supply chain, and the best marketing that could be done in that is by explaining how much better you are there. It's not about the story or the brand or the added value because there is so much of the same thing. It's really the operation of the company that wins out over the story that you can tell.
[00:13:53] Ray Latif: So were you trying to create a story with Strong Roots at the outset? When you were thinking about launching a brand, another brand, what was the raison d'etre? What was the idea of launching a frozen food brand?
[00:14:06] Sam Dennigan: The original purpose was to make the link between agriculture and the consumer much shorter and help people to understand that if you want a really, really high quality food, then it comes with a price. And this is the reason why, you know, we in the European market specifically, much less here because the acceptance of a much higher food price as possible here because you have the whole natural foods movement, which doesn't exist in Europe. It exists in subcategories within the store, but there are no Whole Foods groups, there are no Wegmans groups, there are none of these retailers who specialize in specifics in natural food. And as a result, there's a loss of the authentic, genuine story about how and where products come from. A lot of it is just mass, it's private label or white label, and people aren't told about what the difference in quality is. And the reason for starting a frozen food brand was twofold. One was because the lack of perishability from fresh, as in, you know, five to 10 day shelf life versus a 24 to 36 month shelf life. And then secondly, the ability to be able to tell the story over a longer period of time. So helping people understand that through a brand, that we wanted to build honesty and trust in what we did because of the unbelievably high value of the products that we did. And the perfect example of that is, is that we kind of made the market in or made the benchmark from a pricing point of view higher by about 25% in the Irish market when we launched purely because of the fact that the consumer got that the quality of the product was there. They got that we were doing something differently than a standard French fry producer. And then the follow-up was the quality and the Taste Radio the mouthfeel and everything that the consumer experienced from the product.
[00:16:12] Ray Latif: Did you feel like you had to change consumer perception about what frozen food represented? Because I think inherently people think about frozen as a sort of lesser than a fresh product.
[00:16:23] Sam Dennigan: Yeah. And to be honest, coming into the category, so did I, you know, there's, unless you have read the research about the nutritional value retention in frozen food as a result of IQF, frozen technology, individually quick frozen technology. You just presume that because it came from the ground and it was transported to the supermarket and you picked it up that it was better for you. And everyone, the perception of everyone is that fresh produce is better for you. In a lot of cases where you've got growing regions and producers that are close to the retailers, it can be. But we are still trying to convince people that frozen is and can be better in a whole load of different ways. You know, one is the nutritional value retention that I talked about, which is just proven science at this point. The second one is food waste. If you shop frozen in replacement of fresh, you're taking nearly one for one value of food waste out of the out of the system. because it can have portion control. You can put it back into the freezer. You don't throw away scraps. You don't have the melting avocado in the, in the bottom of the, of the vegetable tray.
[00:17:42] Ray Latif: And I'm guilty of that melting avocado sometimes. So you can freeze avocados, but it, I mean, I think it freezing works with some vegetables better than it does others.
[00:17:51] Sam Dennigan: One of our first products, I think it was our third product, was frozen avocado halves. They were peeled and pitted and I noticed that's not on your website anymore. No, and the reason is, is because it doesn't fit with our North Star. Essentially, in order to stop it oxidizing, we had to add some, you know, citric acid or lemon juice. And if you try and replace fresh for frozen avocado with that zest, it doesn't taste great with a breakfast item. And it was an amazing ingredient product. And we still sell a small amount of it as an ingredient product into the UK. If you're making smoothies, if you're making guacamole, it's phenomenal. But it doesn't just tick all of those boxes of what a Strong Roots product needs to be.
[00:18:33] Ray Latif: I called an avocado a vegetable. Is it a vegetable or is it a fruit? It's technically a berry.
[00:18:38] Sam Dennigan: Really? Fruit, yeah. Huh.
[00:18:40] Ray Latif: I never knew that.
[00:18:40] Sam Dennigan: Why is it technically a berry? With the seed in the center, which means that a guacamole is technically a fruit salad.
[00:18:49] Ray Latif: Oh, you see this? If you learn nothing else from this episode, and I'm sure you're going to learn a lot. You'll know that guacamole is a fruit salad. I like this. Well done. Speaking of your product line, we cooked up some cauliflower hash browns prior to getting on the mics here. I'm going to eat one. While I'm eating it, can you please talk about your product line and how you thought about product development? Because you have some pretty interesting products. These are not your average frozen food products. You've got broccoli and purple carrot bites, beetroot wedges, a pumpkin spinach burger. All sound amazing to me, but do they reflect what the consumer in the UK and the US are looking for today?
[00:19:32] Sam Dennigan: Yeah, so we have two main product streams we call potato alternative and meat alternative. This cauliflower hash brown that you're eating, which I hope you're enjoying. It is insanely good. It is one of the potato alternative products, obviously. And that fits under our volume and value driver channel, you know, to use some retail speak. The other part of our selection, our portfolio is based on high innovation. So our spinach bites or our kale and quinoa burger, we've managed to replace the breading, the traditional breading that you would find in a lot of frozen food products. with dehydrated vegetable flakes. So instead of using glutinous breading, we've actually used pieces of carrot, pieces of beets, pieces of potato in the breading for them. So instead of using any kind of corn or wheat starches in the product that you've just had, we use potato flakes to make that kind of crisp crunch on the outside.
[00:20:32] Ray Latif: It feels like this product is sort of training wheels for folks to graduate to your other product line, to graduate to a pumpkin spinach burger. Are you seeing people make that transition, make that sort of?
[00:20:43] Sam Dennigan: Yeah, the entryway to the brand is definitely in the products that are closer to potato because it's got such a huge part of the market. You know, who doesn't? love french fries and then if someone's looking to tailor their diet to a little bit healthier, can I have sweet potato, can I have cauliflower based potato alternatives. After that, after the customer enters into the brand, they're definitely moving on to the burgers and the bites. We also have a ton of moms that are buying our spinach bites and our broccoli and carrot bites for kids for healthy kind of snack times to replace the tater tots or to replace the more confectionery items that may contain sugar or sugar alternatives.
[00:21:28] Ray Latif: You describe yourself as a plant-based brand. You describe yourself as a vegetable-centric brand. What's the sort of the calling card for Strong Roots?
[00:21:38] Sam Dennigan: Uh, I mean, taste is first. So our mantra is tasty plant-based food designed for busy lives. So it has to be convenient. It has to be something that in the home, we can make it easier for you. Most of the products that we do are probably a little bit too complicated to replicate very quickly in the home. It's kind of like one of those, you know, weekend cooking sessions where you can go out and buy all the ingredients and then set yourself a project of making this great veggie burger or you can buy Strong Roots at great value and huge convenience and still have the same satisfying, healthy, tasty experience.
[00:22:18] Ray Latif: The way you describe it, it sounds like you're catering to or marketing to a consumer that would make that effort, that would at least attempt to make their own pumpkin spinach burger. Is that your consumer, sort of the more affluent, the more, I guess, adventurous consumer?
[00:22:34] Sam Dennigan: No, I mean, we're going after a mass consumer. We see ourselves as a gateway to plant-based consumption for all of the very satisfied meat eaters out there. You know, we have a mass appeal. The brand was designed to make sure that it could communicate to a wider audience than just a very, very narrow vegan or flexitarian customer. So we've got people who might be putting this product beside a meat protein like a fish or a chicken on a weekly basis, but it means that they're reducing their consumption of other meat products at the same time.
[00:23:13] Ray Latif: Last year, Strong Roots entered the U.S. market. Prior to entering the U.S. market, as we talked about, you guys did a ton of research on the American consumer and how this movement for plant-based foods, for vegetable-centric foods has evolved. What were some of the key learnings in that research?
[00:23:34] Sam Dennigan: I mean from a macro level that's very available out in the retail environment, you know, you have to pay attention to the fact that a millennial and even further Gen Z consumer to the value of 33 to 45% are identifying as vegan or plant-based eaters. which is an incredible amount of future consumers. That is an incredible number. It's astonishing. Considering that a lot of those customers are only entering into the retail consumer market, it really tells a huge story about where consumption of products in general is going over the next five to ten years. So with that at a macro level, diving in deeper to understand what the capacity and what the market size is in the natural food space, you know, you see it's even more concentrated and there's even more people switching over, you know, three, four days a week into exclusive vegan diet. when you get into the understanding about where we fit versus all of the brands who've been doing a great job in the natural food space for the last 30 years, we exist as the kind of new entrant to refresh all of the legacy brands that at one stage were challenger and market makers and you know at the dawn of the Whole Foods movement and are now owned by big CPG companies where they've not stopped innovating, but where it's become more about business operation and less about pushing the boundaries of what food can be. So we exist to the US consumer as a brand that people understand what we're trying to do, which is, you know, create great food, which is convenient and tastes great all of the time at an affordable price. with a mindset and ingredients that follow trends of what consumers want versus a bigger company who has to maybe follow what's possible from a production point of view. And that really sets us apart in terms of what's out there versus what we can see ourselves doing.
[00:25:50] Ray Latif: I mean, as you mentioned, there has been a shift in the quality of products and brands that you had seen in the frozen food aisle. A lot of them are now owned by conglomerates. Did that make it easier for you to get into the frozen aisle because there has been this sort of shift change or is it still sort of a category and transition?
[00:26:13] Sam Dennigan: Retailers are ready for a shake up. You know, we've been having some really great conversations with both the big players in the market and the really, really small players in the market, and both see an opportunity for us to enter in with a fresh new proposition that just hasn't been offered for the longest time. That's not to say we're the only ones. There's a number of brands that are following the same stream, different categories, which is great so that we're not directly competing with each other, but everyone trying to elevate the quality and elevate the convenience of the products that are out there. And as well as that, you know, in this market, you're so brand focused. And the brands now have to stand for something. It's not good enough anymore that their legacy and, you know, some of the brands that we had growing up are not the brands that the next generation have growing up at all. In fact, they don't even have an opinion of some of the bird's eyes and the Green Giant like we would. The OK Boomer brands. So who's catering for everybody else, you know? Our food and our parents' food is very different to the food of the next generation. And we're very conscious of that and that's who we're designing for. At the same time as getting all of those older consumers as well.
[00:27:30] Ray Latif: If the consumer does care about brand, and I think there's some question about that as well in this day and age where private label and white label have become reliable sources of quality food, how do you stand out on shelf? Because especially when you have to open a door to get to your brand, you know, what did you see as the most important way to reach that consumer to get them not only to open the door, but to pick it up and put it in their cart?
[00:27:57] Sam Dennigan: It's a really great question. Initially, at the dawn of the brand, we used our packaging. Our packaging has always been our hardest working asset. What we did was we looked at the whole category and we said, you know, this is a kind of a wash of dark and beige colors. How do we stand out here? So our packaging is, you know, off white and really stands out in a category which is got kind of primary colors blasted all over the aisle. Now it's about differentiation of ingredients. So making sure that that simple, clean deck is something that's very, very visible from the outset on our packaging. And going forward, it's about how we communicate and in what channels we communicate. we've been really successful thus far in the Irish and UK market of being great experiential marketers, doing things in front of the consumer to give them an experience about the brand that they remember and come back for. Something as simple as a very, very basic tasting demo, but with something that tastes so good that it's unforgettable. And that's why taste leads all of the product development process for us. We know that if we can invest in getting the consumer to try the product by putting it in their hand or giving them a small sample in a store, because our product tastes so good, we will get that repeat custom. And like we were speaking about briefly off air, the taste thing is so important and it has become something that in a lot of product development has been forgotten. But we start there and build everything else under that.
[00:29:37] Whole Foods: Do you want more repeat buyers on Amazon? Well, this free resource in collaboration with Straight Up Growth will help your brand turn first-time buyers into long-term subscribers. Download Winning the Repeat Purchase Game on Amazon now at Taste Radio slash SUG. That's Taste Radio slash S-U-G to start building retention-driven growth for your brand on Amazon. Scaling a beverage brand into major retail comes down to operational readiness. From packaging lead times to co-manufacturing strategy, the details can make or break a launch. In a new ebook in collaboration with Octopi and Asahi Beer USA, industry leaders share what they've learned in helping brands scale. Download it now at Taste Radio slash octopi. Do you need to scale your team faster without compromising on talent? Join Oceans for a live webinar on April 20th and learn how leading companies are hiring top global professionals who are ready to grow with your business. Register for the webinar now at Taste Radio slash oceans. That's Taste Radio slash oceans.
[00:30:48] Ray Latif: Demos are a great way to get people to try your brand and hopefully illicit purchase. It's very expensive to create these experiential moments for consumers. But luckily you have a little bit of money to spend. You guys raised $18.3 million about six months ago? Yep. That's a lot of money. How'd you come up with that number? I mean, and, and, you know, what are you using the funds for?
[00:31:13] Sam Dennigan: Yeah, I mean, demos are incredibly expensive. Luckily, we've kind of become very experienced at them because when we started doing demos, it's quite difficult to do hot sampling within retail, especially in a market like the UK, which has so much insurance around it that, you know, in a lot of stores, you can't actually do it.
[00:31:33] Ray Latif: They won't allow you to bring in your own cooking apparatus?
[00:31:35] Sam Dennigan: No.
[00:31:36] Ray Latif: Apparati? Is it apparati?
[00:31:37] Sam Dennigan: But yeah, pretty much you can't do anything in the UK with the exception of independent stores where you can have a dialogue with with the owner. And what that means is that you have to get pretty inventive. So, you know, we've had our own, you know, we've had our own, you know, we've had our own, you know, we've had our own, you know, we've had our own, you know, we've had our own, you know, food truck, which is a converted old Land Rover since pretty much the beginning. And now because we're trying to reach much further parts, we've kind of got good at what the operation is, how to do it quite economically. So a lot of our early stage investment was actually in doing those experiential events. And what we realized is that more than ever, you have to do them yourselves, because it's both a research opportunity as well as a sales opportunity. And if you're real food people, then you're the best ones to sell your products. You don't want to always have to hire a company that does it for you. Now, in a continent as big as the US, it's not possible to do it all yourself, or else you're pretty much just going to be on the road for the next 20 years. So we're trying to figure out right now how to train people to do it just as we've done it in the past and had those successes. And part of the funding for sure is going to go that direction. We realized in late 2018 that we had a real opportunity to get to market sooner than anyone else. We felt that the timing opportunity was kind of pertinent in what our future success was going to be. And get to market in the U.S. specifically? Get to market in the U.S., but also grow the market in the U.K. This is we're just kind of going into our third year in the U.K. market, which is obviously a huge consumer market, not as big as the U.S., but you know. hugely beneficial place to trade. And the fundraising was about growing that and entering here. And the split of funds is pretty much going in those two directions. We want to hire people, which we've already started with. specifically in you know C-suite positions because we've had this kind of bootstrapped self-funded model since the start so we're now at that point where we can hire in vastly experienced people to help us grow to that next stage as well as do some consumer facing marketing as well as experiential and make sure that the cash flow is going to be good for while we do all of that at the same time.
[00:34:10] Ray Latif: Mm-hmm. From bootstrapped and self-funded to giving up a significant amount of equity, I'm assuming.
[00:34:17] Sam Dennigan: Mm-hmm.
[00:34:19] Ray Latif: Any reservations, any hesitation on that? Because it's, I'm assuming that your investment partner now has board seats and a lot of influence on the direction of the brand. How did you get comfortable with that?
[00:34:35] Sam Dennigan: Yeah, it's a huge change, you know, going from a founder, CEO to with complete autonomy for the business without having to consider anyone else. Moving to what you've just described exactly with board seats, regardless of the fact that they're a minority, means that you have other stakeholders in the business, which you have to consider on a decision by decision basis. You know, ultimately, it doesn't really change the operation of the day-to-day business. It only catalyzes what we're trying to do. We went through a very, very strenuous, long process of trying to find the right people. And when we got to the end, it was kind of an obvious choice with Good Partners because ultimately, that's G-O-O-D-E, Good Partners. Yeah, they're based out of New York. And they've had some big consumer food successes in the past.
[00:35:28] Ray Latif: Including some apparel too, Supreme, Lock Loam.
[00:35:32] Sam Dennigan: Dave's Killer Bread, it's been a really successful one for them. And I went out in a process to try and pick the people as opposed to the money. You know, we had a lot of options where to raise funds in smaller amounts, in bigger amounts, in longer than the usual cycle. And secondly, people who I wanted to work with on a day to day basis, people who I wanted to converse with, people who weren't going to, you know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don Rush or slowdown development and you know having listened to a number of the other podcasts seems to be the same goals for everybody in that regard and Yeah, I'm confident that we found those people and so far working really well and ultimately assisting and aiding as opposed to the opposite or some of the bad stories that you hear about when things don't go well. You want to know that the people are the ones that you want to be with.
[00:36:44] Ray Latif: So you had an opportunity to exit from what you just said.
[00:36:47] Sam Dennigan: Why didn't you sell the company? We're only at the start of this journey. You know, I'm a young guy, even though I might look like that.
[00:36:54] Ray Latif: No, you're 34. You look like you're not a day over 19. Thank you so much.
[00:36:59] Sam Dennigan: You're a good liar. Um, no, I'm, you know, I'm at the start of my career in food as I look at it, even though I've been in it for 10 years, this was a big personal decision to step out on my own. And if the end of the journey was, you know, five years in having really only scratched the surface on the food industry, um, I think that, you know, I'd be disappointed in myself if I just walked away from at this point. we want to build a global household brand and we're nowhere near that. It's going to take a longer term to achieve that with a lot of effort and a lot of peaks and troughs and to be honest, I love that part about it. I love the day-to-day, I love the relationships with people and I love the small wins and the big wins. So yeah, far too early for me.
[00:37:50] Ray Latif: It feels like brands become global brands sort of after the fact, not necessarily as part of the strategy. You are starting with this notion of we have this opportunity to be everywhere. Do you work backwards from that mission or do you sort of build toward that mission?
[00:38:07] Sam Dennigan: A little bit of both. I think I learned a huge amount in my family's business about what it meant to be a market leader and what it took in all of the different functions symbiotically to make sure that it was working the right way. And I entered into the family business, you know, 30 years into its journey and understood what it took to just maintain that kind of level of success, which people take for granted a lot of the time. But for businesses to be third generation and 40 years old, you know, that is proper strife. You know, there have been so many ups and downs in that journey. that you can't discount what that is as a success in itself. But when I was there, I realized that there's an opportunity for better business. And we have this thing that we're trying to develop internally at the moment, which is this idea of Consumer Packaged good. instead of Consumer Packaged goods. And I think consumers now want more from the businesses that they buy into. There has never been a stronger sentiment for businesses that do good than ever at the moment. And people are expecting businesses and people in the commercial realm to actually help assist and make change. there's more of a trust in consumerism with the right companies at the moment than there is in government. And I think there's a really exciting prospect in being a part of that world that's trying to build better business and do right by people and support people and find responsibility through business and being on that journey with all the other people that are trying to do it. And just being a part of that is pretty exciting. And I think a great reason to get up in the morning and come to work. And I know that's why our team do it. It's because they see the bigger picture. No one just comes to work for the job because they work too hard to just do that. It's a hard business to be in. knowing that we can strive to be a new type of CPG company that can have multiple verticals, that can be profitable, that can sustain employment, and that can do better for the planet and personal health. is the ultimate goal. So that's the working kind of top to bottom. Bottom up is this idea that, you know, you have to take small steps to get there. So, you know, when we launched this business, we launched a single skew of sweet potato fries in the Irish market, which has 4.5 million people. After five years, we have invented and grown a category which didn't exist before. We got into the UK market three years ago with a veggie burger that we were super hopeful about and they were the fastest growing food and beverage brand in the UK with our growth by Kager over the last three years. You know those things we focus on getting the small things like incredibly right, which means that the bigger things kind of grow out of that. And yeah, it's just a, you know, super exciting prospect to be trying to build something like that, as opposed to just buy something, sell something and make a profit or not.
[00:41:30] Ray Latif: I can think of a few other brands and companies that have that same sort of perspective in Impossible Foods, Beyond Meat, and, you know, your plant-based burgers are, plant-based burgers are not trying to replicate meat. And I was doing some reading on you and it was interesting, you mentioned that you're not sure whether or not people are looking at so-called plant-based meat or meat alternatives that are derived from vegetables as anything but a novelty at this point. Do you see a long runway for products like these or are you sort of still pretty bearish on that concept?
[00:42:07] Sam Dennigan: It would be silly to discount the success of the alternative plant-based protein products that are out there, especially with the success of what, you know, Impossible Foods Beyond have done. I think that ultimately what we're trying to do is steer away from imitation or alternative. What we're trying to do is sell vegetables. You know, you can get protein and fiber and all the nutrition that you need from vegetables and all of our products that you'll hopefully try over the next short while, you can see everything that's in them. And I think with the trust part of food, we take really, really seriously. We're asking someone to purchase something that they're going to put in their bodies. And what we want to make sure is that there's a completely authentic, very clear-cut, open view of what that is. So I think we're serving two different purposes. I think we're trying to help a mass consumer convert over a longer space of time. And I think the companies that you mentioned are probably trying to solve a global climate crisis over a very short space of time. So I think we're both trying to do the same thing at different paces and with different urgency. One thing I would say about plant-based consumption is that it's nothing new. We've been doing this for hundreds of years. It's a part of our diet, it always has been a part of our diet. The key part in this is that everyone is focused on the reality that there is a need of reduction. and all of the brands, including ourselves, can play a part in the help and assistance to do that. One's not good or bad, everyone is striving for the same goal, and ultimately what we want to make sure is that regardless of what alternatives can be made, that people still understand that, you know, the closer you keep it to agriculture, which can be regenerative, and we need to make sure that we stay away from over farming of specific things to try and get to a result of planet health and within the Strong Roots range we're so connected to agriculture in that respect that we want to make sure that everything grows sustainably and with an over reliance on any single crop to go into some of these plant-based protein products we have to be careful that it doesn't become too much too soon. And I think with how we're making products and how we're so attached and associated with agriculture and how the production of these things gets done, we're kind of consciously at a respectable pace for that business growing at a realistic rate.
[00:45:03] Ray Latif: Are you sort of setting the bar in terms of, you know, what consumers should expect from plant-based food or does plant-based, can plant-based mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people?
[00:45:14] Sam Dennigan: Yeah, I think it's a really good question. Really good discussion topic, which has a lot more air time to be solved. The, the idea of plant-based and the, I suppose, lack of, regulation for want of a better word around it and that the term and what it exactly means is obviously something that from a marketing or merchandising point of view categorizes something which ultimately right now people view as being healthy and that's the magic of the term. Should big companies and companies only focused on the profitability around what can be made from that in the shortest term we could be in a situation where that term becomes less favorable. The overconsumption of anything leads to problems somewhere else, which has been proven time and time again within the food industry, whether it's crops or use of chemicals or GMO or, you know, all of those conversations which could lead us down multiple different veins of positive or negative. I think we as the plant-based, pure plant-based community have to be very, very careful about how the phrase is used, what is associated with the term, and just as much as all of the other industries are, you know, concerned about the use of their perceived terms, we have to make sure that it gets to a point where it's being used for good and it's rooted in good as opposed to being used simply as a marketing tool. It's a very, very delicate topic and I think it's just as delicate as I'm sure the meat industries and the meat lobbies are approaching the use of words like burgers or sausages or hot dogs or whatever it might be. Bacon. Bacon. Good segue. Yeah.
[00:47:11] Ray Latif: What's up with this bacon patch that you guys released? Can you speak to our audience about what it is?
[00:47:17] Sam Dennigan: So over the last few weeks we did some communication in the UK about our meat patch. Our meat patch was a a follow-on from something that's been used in curtailing smoking habits in the past, like from our nicotine patch. So what we did was we found and read some scientific studies from a professor called Charles Spence in Oxford University, which, you know, in a very, very brief and not doing this justice at all, but essentially said that if someone who was struggling with giving up certain foods was able to smell that food, that it would satiate their appetite for same. So we developed a scratch and sniff patch that can be stuck onto the body and in moments of difficulty with keeping your veganuary pledge basically is where it started, you would scratch and sniff this patch and it was a bacon meat patch so you could smell the bacon and it would put you off wanting to actually eat the same thing.
[00:48:29] Ray Latif: But every time I smell bacon, I desperately want bacon. So I don't, I'm not sure how I, I need to get one of these things is really what I'm trying to say.
[00:48:36] Sam Dennigan: Yeah, I'll send you one. Okay. I mean, the reality is, is that we are very, very specifically trying to make the conversation louder and we are not ever going to go into the business of making meat patches to curtail eating habits. We are creatively trying to elevate a conversation about plant-based consumption and reduce deuterianism as opposed to going into the pharmaceutical industry.
[00:49:06] Ray Latif: Well, it'd be interesting to see if the meat industry came out with a vegetable patch. So every time you wanted cauliflower, I wouldn't be surprised. Sam, this has been great. I do want to ask about your transition from the UK to the US. I'm assuming it's been a pretty big one for you and your family. What's it been like and how have you been sort of acclimating to the American culture?
[00:49:31] Sam Dennigan: So, you know, our first producer was in North Carolina. So I've been coming here for a long time. And I think I made some assumptions about what that would be like to just fully, you know, two feet move over. And it's been a real experience. We moved over at the first of October. And we've... To be clear, you've moved from London?
[00:49:51] Ray Latif: Yes. To New Jersey?
[00:49:53] Sam Dennigan: Yes. Okay. Yeah, so previously, I mean, I'm a big advocate for being in the market that you're trying to grow. So three years ago, when we started the UK market, I moved to the UK and set up the office and, you know, started finding the right team and developing the customers. And that's exactly why we've moved here. I think you need to have full market immersion to be able to have success and I don't think it's possible to do that from afar. And I think that's another edge that as a small company that we can justify versus some of the bigger headquartered companies that are trying to do global but not from the locale. Moving to New Jersey has been great. We've been living between Jersey City and Brooklyn for the last kind of three or four months trying to get acclimatized. We've opened up an office in Flatiron in central Manhattan and we love it. it's an incredible culture change even though you know we speak the same language there's huge cultural differences between everything pretty much but there's an incredible hopeful assistive entrepreneurial community within food especially where everyone wants you to succeed and everyone wants to give you as much mentorship and assistance to do that as as they can and at a level that I'm not accustomed to so that's been great. We've had an amazing experience and there's obviously a lot of friends and family and expats that live specifically in New York from an Irish point of view. So, you know, it's pretty much just like having your neighbours from home once we moved over.
[00:51:36] Ray Latif: As you mentioned, you know, the food community and the beverage community seem to be very welcoming in terms of people offering advice and mentorship. And it's been great to see everyone does seem to want everyone else to succeed. I certainly hope you guys succeed. You make fantastic products or the one product that I tried is fantastic. I can't wait to try the rest of the line. And you know, you've been fantastic today, Sam. Thank you so much for taking the time out of your very busy schedule to come out here and visit with us. It means a lot to me and I know it's going to mean a lot to our audience as well.
[00:52:07] Sam Dennigan: I've had a really nice time. Thanks very much. Appreciate you having me in. Thank you again.
[00:52:14] Ray Latif: That brings us to the end of episode 200. Thank you so much for listening and thanks to our guest, Sam Dennigan. You can catch both Taste Radio and Taste Radio Insider on Taste Radio, the Apple podcast app, Stitcher, Google Play and Spotify. As always, for questions, comments, ideas for future podcasts, please send us an email to ask at Taste Radio. On behalf of the entire Taste Radio team, thank you for listening and we'll talk to you next time.
[00:52:51] In September: Hello, I am Melissa Traverse here for the Taste Radio podcast, talking about some of the biggest tension points that CPG brands and founders face when they're scaling a brand, and those are financial accounting and inventory management. I am joined by Matt Lynn, inventory accounting guru from Belay Solutions, and he is going to shed some light on all of this that is going to help everybody out quite a bit. Matt, thank you so much for joining us today.
[00:53:21] Taste Radio: Thank you for having us, Melissa. It's great to be out here at Expo West and it's great to sit down and be able to chat this because it's kind of a passion project of ours, working mainly with CPG brands and hoping to help them scale.
[00:53:32] In September: It's been such a pleasure chatting with you and the team and learning all about what you do over there at Belay Solutions. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and what your role is and the kinds of solutions that Belay gives to CPG brands and founders?
[00:53:48] Taste Radio: Yeah, absolutely. My role with Belay, I'm actually our inventory accounting manager. I run our inventory department. So we work with CPG brands, taking them from spreadsheets, putting them on inventory management systems, and really helping connect their tech stack between their sales, online marketplaces to that inventory management system, even down to their financial systems like QuickBooks. Belay overall is kind of an outsourced accounting firm. And with that, we're helping teams. We have different levels with bookkeeping, controller level work, even high level into CFO type items. So we really help those brands in any way that they need financially. And then I just have a subset of a department where we're really just laser focused on inventory.
[00:54:31] In September: It's certainly a complex topic and there are plenty of places to go wrong. Let's start by going right and start super simple. Can you tell us what some of the biggest red flags are that would help a founder understand or, you know, the person running a brand understand that it really is time to get some help with some of these areas?
[00:54:52] Taste Radio: is chaos. So when they're looking in their financial software, maybe they don't really have an accounting background, and they're kind of just piecing it together and doing their best. And what they'll see is that reconciliations take forever, if they even happen. they have a lot of transactions that don't get coded or they just put them into placeholders to just get rid of it so it's not an eyesore. They'll notice they have revenue but no cash or they notice that they have a good amount of cash but their blind spot is really seeing the vendor invoices that are sitting there just needing to be paid and so they just lack that clarity that's going to really be around the corner.
[00:55:29] In September: You know, you were talking about one of the red flags that comes up that I think makes so much sense. When somebody asks you what your numbers are and you can't come up with the right number, that's a big problem because that's something that you really should be able to share with decision makers who, you know, you're ideally looking to do business with. What should you be able to call up at a moment's notice?
[00:55:53] Taste Radio: really at any time, you should be able to know an accurate margin. It's amazing how many founders we end up talking to that they can tell you their revenue numbers, they can tell you their selling price, and then the minute you start talking about cost or their cost of goods sold, they just get a deer in headlights look. So really it's very hard to tell, am I even making money? or if you don't know your entire landed cost. Maybe you know what the freight cost is, the duties separately, but you're not really getting that as part of your unit cost. So it's really hard to tell. Am I even making money or am I losing money from the very beginning?
[00:56:26] In September: And do you recommend that founders are able to call up a margin by channel?
[00:56:31] Taste Radio: Absolutely. And depending on the number of products and channels, you kind of want to know what are your best sellers, which ones are making the most and which ones maybe you're not making as much. But especially if you're branching out and you're doing D to C with B to B, absolutely want to know that.
[00:56:48] In September: Gotcha. You mentioned that when things feel really chaotic, that's probably a red flag. I would say that it probably almost always feels chaotic if you're running a CVG brand. And I know this may be hard to quantify, but is there a revenue number? Is there a number of doors number that would help a brand understand whether or not it makes sense to bring on a partner like Belay? Understanding that so many brands are bootstrapped or they might be tight for cash. What is that friction point?
[00:57:18] Taste Radio: 3 3 3 3 3 But as you're growing, as you're getting into those six-figure revenue numbers, and especially as you're approaching seven, you want to make sure you've got good financials. Because as you scale to that point, most likely you're going to be looking to raise capital. And investors, the first thing they're going to look at is your books. And are they clean? And do they show a clear picture of your business?
[00:57:51] In September: You know, another area that folks might look to to organize some of the chaos are their systems. So many folks stick with Excel spreadsheets for a good amount of time. How do you know that you need to outsource some of your accounting to an organization like Belay Solutions versus maybe signing on to a Synth7 or NetSuite or something like that?
[00:58:13] Taste Radio: Well, that's actually something we really help with. You know, when it comes to that cost question, that's something that trips people up. And sometimes if you just have a turnkey business, you buy and sell a finished good, you can maintain with spreadsheets. And we've had clients with million dollar revenue that can do that. But we see so many brands nowadays are using contract manufacturers. and they're just sourcing certain parts of their product. So when you start talking cost, they have no idea exactly what their unit cost is. So that's where we come in and we kind of understand, we'll speak with the customers and the clients and get their needs. And then if we think they're ready for a system, then we'll help put them on that system so they can get some of that clarity. And it's not something we force on anybody. There are plenty of times where founders come to us and we'll tell them bluntly, you're not ready for it right now, but we'll let you know when we think you are.
[00:58:59] In September: That sounds like excellent advice. What should a founder or somebody running a brand look for in an outsourced accounting partner? Are there certain checklist items that they should make sure that their partner be able to execute or be able to help them understand?
[00:59:16] Taste Radio: Absolutely. I think one of the keys, there's, there's a lot of outsourced accounting firms out there. Some focus on service-based SaaS companies, but if you're a CPG founder, you really want to make sure that your accounting firm has CPG experience. I would ask them, you know, what kind of brands have they worked with and even Beyond Meat industry specific, because there's so many subsets of CPG. And that's something that I think is great about what we do with Belay is that we kind of run the gamut. It's kind of like the insurance commercial. We know a thing or two because we've seen a thing or two across a broad spectrum.
[00:59:46] In September: Probably getting references is always helpful, right? Absolutely. All right. So this all sounds great. I think we have a really good understanding of would it make sense to hire an outsourced partner? You know, what some of the things you should be looking for are. What does offloading this kind of work mean for the brand? What can this do for lightening the load of a founder or lightening the load of a brand operator? Like, how does that help them in their everyday business?
[01:00:15] Taste Radio: It just tries to really help quiet the chaos. So what we're looking to do is just take some of the weight off that founder's shoulder, let them focus on building the brand, building the business, getting that exposure. If you don't have sales, you really don't have anything. So we want them to be able to focus on that while we take care of your back end office work. And we can just present that to you on a monthly basis, you can help make decisions, you can take that to investors. And really, you can just focus on growing your business.
[01:00:41] In September: I feel like I felt founders and the folks who are running brands collectively sigh. A breath of relief just hearing that. How can people learn more about Belay Solutions?
[01:00:52] Taste Radio: So people can text TASTE to 55123 for their free inventory guide to get started.
[01:00:57] In September: Matt Lin, inventory accounting guru at Belay Solutions. Thank you so much for joining me here at Expo West. It's been such a pleasure to chat with you and learn about what you all do over there to help founders and brands with their financial accounting and inventory management. For everybody else out there, thank you for listening to the Taste Radio podcast. I am Melissa Traverse and we'll see you next time.
