About Time: You Started a Food BrandBy Angelica Malin
Looking to gain some new skills over brunch? Join About Time Magazine on Saturday 30th July at Mayfair favourite Quaglino’s for a special food brand focused brunch event with the founders of Pip and Nut, Ugly Drinks, Moju Drinks, Crosstown Doughnuts and Maple and Fitz. Brunch include a delicious fine dining experience, along with all the tips and tricks from industry insiders. You’ll learn plenty of skills from the food branding experts to start up your own venture, including:
– How to come up with a concept for a food brand
– How to turn an idea into a physical product
– How to plan your food brand’s strategy
– How to position your food brand within a competitive market
– How to disrupt the industry
– How to build a brand voice
– How and when to spend money on your venture
– How to take your brand from a start-up to a supermarket success
– How to manage success and failures
Why come? Well, here at About Time, if there’s one thing that we’re more passionate about than the perfect runny yolk, it’s empowerment. We’re dedicated to helping young people in London learn new skills, and helping each other to make this world a little lighter, brighter and more promising. In the last two years, we’ve hosted everything from PR talks and Badass Blog School to SET Sessions, showing young people the ropes of digital journalism.
So, in the spirit of learning and lunching, this summer we’ve teamed up with D&D London for a summer of serious fun, learning and, of course, all the brunch. Introducing: D&D Summer School, a brunch and business series which explores all the hard-hitting questions, like how to crack social media, how to start your own blog and how to build a food brand – all over eggs, coffee and the occasional glass of fizz. Over the summer, we’re hosting the likes of Deliciously Stella, Olivia Purvis, Julie Montagu and many more – on a mission to learn from those who have grafted, carved and succeeded in their pursuits. And this event is all about the food brands.
30th July: How to Start a Food Brand, at Quaglino’s
Pip & Nut | Ugly Drinks | Crosstown Doughnuts | Maple & Fitz | Moju Drinks
What: Ever wanted to start your own food brand but got no idea where to start? This is your chance to learn from some of London’s leading food entrepreneurs, and give your idea the boost it needs. Business is all about the highs and lows, and this will be a fantastic opportunity to hear about five individuals’ experience of launching their own food brand. We’ll be hearing from Pip Murray, founder of Pip & Nut, whose nut butters took £3.3m in their first year; the founder of Ugly Drinks, the first totally unsweetened lemonade; superstar Adam Wills, founder of Crosstown Doughnuts (and Kopapa and GBK, if we’re going to name drop). We’ll also be hearing from healthy heroes Adria, founder of Maple & Fitz, everyone’s favourite Fitzrovia healthy eatery, and the boys behind Moju Drinks, who are making the cold-pressed juice movement mainstream. Of course, it would be wrong to not follow this all with food. Ticket price will include a delicious brunch at Quaglino’s, and a goodie bag to take away!
When: Saturday 30th July, 10am-12.30pm
Where: 16 Bury Street, London, SW1Y 6AJ
Price: £25
About the Speakers
Adria left the corporate world of engineering, management consulting and finance before training as a chef at Le Cordon Bleu in London and studying nutrition at the UK College of Nutrition & Health. Now she spends all her days being around food and she has never been happier! Adria is the Founder of Maple & Fitz, a healthy eatery and juice bar in Fitzrovia. She is a columnist for Men’s Health Magazine and is a regular guest chef on Channel 4’s Sunday Brunch.
Adam Wills has 25 years experience in food retail,new concepts ,restaurants and food production in NZ & London. Having started his first business at the age of 20 years old in Wellington NZ with 2 upmarket delicatessens and a catering company. He arrived in London in 1997. In 2001 he co-founded Gourmet Burger Kitchen (GBK) which started the gourmet burger revolution that continues today. GBK was sold in 2006 to Clapham House Group plc. In 2010 he opened Kopapa in Seven Dials with NZ Chef Peter Gordon. In early 2014 he co-founded Crosstown Doughnuts which retails it’s product through it’s own stores, online and to corporate accounts. Kopapa was sold to Balan’s Restaurant Group in May 2016 to allow full focus on the growth of Crosstown.
Pip Murray, 27, is the Founder of the award winning nut butter brand, Pip & Nut. Pip used nut butters as a healthy pre-run snack when training for marathons and devised of the concept after she noticed that most supermarket brands were laden with either palm oil and sugar, while the healthy ones were just a little too healthy looking. After initial market testing, Pip entered the concept for Pip & Nut into a competition; ‘Escape to the Shed’ run by Escape the City. After beating 3,000 other entrants, she left her day job as a Producer at the Science museum, to spend the next three months living, working and launching her business from a shed in central London. At the end of that three months Pip & Nut raised £120,000 in nine days on crowdfunding website Crowdcube to launch the brand. Now her firm is going from strength to strength – it turned over more than £600,000 in 2015 and is on track to hit revenues of £3.3m in their first full year of trading. The products are now in more than 2300 stores around the UK including Sainsbury’s, Holland & Barrett, Ocado, Wholefoods and Selfridges.
Hugh Thomas is the Co-Founder of Ugly Drinks. Ugly thinks the UK is sweet enough already and produce 100% natural, fruit infused sparkling waters with NO sugar, NO sweetener and NO artificial ingredients that provide a healthy alternative to traditional fizzy drinks. Previous to launching Ugly, Hugh led the UK marketing team for Vita Coco Coconut Water from 2012 – 2015 and started his career in marketing at Heinz working on Heinz Beanz and Heinz Ketchup.
When: Saturday, 30 July 2016 from 10:00am to 12:30pm
Where: Quaglino’s – 16 Bury Street, London, SW1Y 6AJ
