Emma & Kenny I Hip Pop: How to disrupt the soft drinks sector

In today’s episode, I’m joined by Emma and Kenny, the co-founders of HipPop — a gut-friendly drinks brand that’s shaking up the soft drinks aisle. While many might have pigeonholed their product as just kombucha, Emma and Kenny have taken a bold and intentional route: positioning HipPop as a go-to soft drinks brand, not a wellness niche.

We talk about what it takes to enter a new market, how branding beyond a product category can be a superpower, and why really listening to your customer is key. From humble beginnings in a farmhouse to securing shelf space in major retailers, their story is packed with practical insight for anyone launching into a crowded space.

Emma & Kenny's advice:

• Test your products locally, in small independent businesses
• Publicise your ingredients and the provenance of the product
• Try to work within a representative area of the UK
• Look for a gap in the market
• If you have a personal reason for setting up the brand, people will love to hear it
• After rigorous testing, and building a local reputation, move on to website and Facebook marketing
• Gradually approach bigger retailers (you will have to be dogged - and original - in pursuing buyers)
• When you scale, bring in people to cover the skills you don’t have
• As you expand distribution, it’s important to build relationships with the new people you are dealing with; go slowly and patiently
  
  

FF&M enables you to own your own PR & produces podcasts.
Recorded, edited & published by Juliet Fallowfield, 2024 MD & Founder of PR & Communications consultancy for startups Fallow, Field & Mason.  Email us at hello@fallowfieldmason.com or DM us on instagram @fallowfieldmason. 

FF&M recommends: 

• LastPass the password-keeping site that syncs between devices.
• Google Workspace is brilliant for small businesses
• Buzzsprout podcast 'how to' & hosting directory
• Canva has proved invaluable for creating all the social media assets and audio bites.

MUSIC CREDIT Funk Game Loop by Kevin MacLeod.  Link &  Licence

Transcript

Interview

Juliet: [00:00:00] Welcome back to How to Start Up the podcast for early stage entrepreneurs. I'm your host, Juliet Fallowfield, founder of the B Corp certified PR and podcasting consultancy, Fallowfield and Mason, where we teach you how to own your communications in-house. In today's episode, I'm joined by Emma and Kenny, co-founders of Hip Pop, a gut-friendly drinks brand that's shaking up the soft drinks aisle.

While many might have pigeonholed their product as just kombucha, Emma and Kenny have taken a bold and international route positioning Hip Pop as the go-to soft drinks brand, not just a wellness niche. In this episode, we talk about entering new markets, how testing your clients slowly and steady can help really build a brand, and why really listening to that customer feedback is key. From humble beginnings in a farmhouse to securing shelf space in major retailers, their story is packed with practical insight for anyone launching into a new market.

 what was the first job you ever got paid to do?

Emma & Kenny: I can go [00:01:00] first on that one if you want. my first job was, I think I was 11 and I did a paper round and, I was late joining this paper round journey that a lot of my friends had gone on and they planned theirs, so they went to our local paper shop, which was really close to us, and they did a five day week paper round, whereas I didn't think ahead and said, I want a paper round.

So the only paper round job that was available was one that was like a mile away to get to on my bike, and then it was seven days a week as well. And so it was very busy and, I got paid less as well

Juliet: Oh God. So you learn the hard way.

Emma & Kenny: Learned the hard way. and then I did, stacking shelves at supermarket when I was 14 as well.

Back in those days, you could, these days you wouldn't be able to at 14.

Juliet: Yeah, exactly. And Emma, how about you?

Emma & Kenny: I also had a paper round. It was a free paper, so they just used to turn up to my house with, do you remember in, [00:02:00] olden days with the free papers? Yes, I do. So I had to deliver that to everywhere on the estate that we lived in.

I remember it being very low paid and quite painful. And then when I was, either the 15 or 16, I can't remember, I worked in a pub as a waitress,

I have a long and stellar history of waitressing.

Juliet: Which I feel everyone should have to do at some point in their career, is either wait tables, work in a pub, or be in hospitality. Because I think you learn a lot about humans.

Emma & Kenny: A hundred percent. And the customer service skills I learned there at a young age, I still apply now in the business. So, yeah,

 I do actually agree with that. Yeah. I never waited tables, but I skipped it because when I was at university, I set up a nightclub promotions business, so that was dealing with the public, but I just wasn't waiting tables.

I was helping people have a good time, hiring DJs, hiring doorman, all of that kind of stuff in the ultimate VIP. Yeah.

Juliet: Well, the other job I think people should [00:03:00] have to do before maybe starting businesses, I, it surprised me as I was made redundant next day, went on companies houses, like Right, just get going. And suddenly I was a company director and I was like, "oh God, I have no idea what to do next". But I think being a wedding planner or working at a wedding where you see people at their most emotional and stressed and pressured. If you can get through that as a day's work, you'll be fine. You can do anything.

Emma & Kenny: Oh God.

Juliet: But speaking of your business, for those listeners that might not know Hip Pop yet, could you give us a little bit of background as to what it is and what inspired you to start?

Emma & Kenny: Okay, so Hip Pop is a soft drinks business, so we make delicious soft drinks that are better for you, that are healthier. we started, many years ago now, didn't we? The initial ideas was 2017 into 2018, maybe a step before that. I lived in America 12 years ago, really into fermented food and drink kombucha, kefir, sauerkraut.

I love sour and zingy [00:04:00] things. And then also as I got into that, I learned about the health benefits, moved back to the uk. I make Kenny some kombucha to help Kenny's digestive issues, Kenny has IBS, Kenny drinks the kombucha and goes, "wow, this tastes amazing". And also it helped his tummy. And then we looked at what was going on in America, in Canada and Australia and could see it was, you know, when I'd been there and when it was just starting to rise.

Juliet: And we looked at what was going on with the market and we couldn't really find anything in the UK that we thought tasted great. So we, set up Hip Pop I love this because so many founders say that they started their businesses to solve a problem that they had in their life, and they needed to have that solution. And then finding the gap in the market just proves that it is needing to be there. And was the gap in the market that you spotted and how did you validate that people would actually buy your product? 'cause obviously you saw it in the US and it was working in North America, but what made you think in the UK that it would work?

Emma & Kenny: first of all, one, once [00:05:00] we looked into it, we realized that a lot of people have digestive issues, whether it be IBS or whatever, just because of the Western diet and various other, ailments that are caused around that. We tested it on local markets, so I say we, the real we, Emma did the making of the drinks in her garage.

first of all, in your kitchen, wasn't it, then promoted to the garage 'cause it had got bigger and then eventually on a farm. But, during this period we were going on local markets and that's a great way to test your products. And the good thing about being in Manchester is, generally if it works in Manchester, it will probably work throughout the rest of the UK.

Just because something works in, say, Shoreditch in London doesn't necessarily mean it'll work in the rest of the UK. Whereas we have that advantage of being in Manchester it's quite representative of the rest of the country. And then whilst we were on the [00:06:00] markets, a few local stockists came by and decided to stock us. And our first stockist was Pollen. Pollen Bakery, in Manchester, which is a really cool bakery. And that was like our first stockist. Everyone goes to Pollen in the center of Manchester for their bread, et cetera. And they stocked us and then it just grew from there really organically.

Juliet: When you started, were you quite happy you were gonna sell at the market and that was enough? Did you have grand aspirations that you were gonna be nationwide, potentially global? What was success to you at the beginning?

Emma & Kenny: I guess we always had grand aspirations. What we really wanted to do was test, as Kenny has already outlined, neither of us have a background in the drinks industry at all. We just started this because we really wanted to make delicious drinks that we loved, that our families could enjoy and that didn't have a lot of the [00:07:00] junk that you find in, health drinks, in inverted commas.

 Going back to your other question, the gap in the market for us is you've got health drinks that either taste rank or if they are, a fermented health drink, they might not be as accessible to everyone out there. So for instance, Emma, as she said, loves really sour, really, zingy really punch you in the face, kombucha.

Whereas me, I don't like something so acidic and so in your face. I like something more subtle. I'm probably more of a representative of the general UK market. And so we found that was the gap, the sweet spot so a brand that really focused on that accessible taste. And obviously since then.

We've really focused on that and we've employed brewers,rather than just going to a factory for example and saying, can you make me this drink that clicks these, claims [00:08:00] boxes, et cetera. we've organically made it with real brewers in a brewery for the last six years. We've now started outsourcing part of this.

and we can talk about the partner. We've chosen afterwards. but that's the gap that we filled, that really great tasting soft drink that also has the notes and the characters that you might find in an alcoholic drink as well. And that's why we chose to employ really good professional brewers.

Juliet: I like it. it was taste first and the ethics and sustainability and the goodness almost second that sort of should be a given. And we became a B Corp business two years ago and everyone was like, wow, that's such an achievement. It's yeah, but every business should just be, better. It shouldn't be an accolade. It should just be a given. And for your first sale, so you were selling at market and you were using that as your test base and then you were stocked in Pollen. When you say you grew organically, was it just people discovering you, loving it and wanting to know more about you, [00:09:00] that you business grew?

Emma & Kenny: So 2017-18 on the markets was really a testing phase. We didn't get going, and that was deliberately so we could learn more about what the public wanted about people's palettes, et cetera. We really got going. In 2019 when we built our first facility on the farm. 

Juliet: there were a few different ways that we developed a sales strategy. We continued to, sell to local independents. So that was a really big starting point for the brand independent retailers, coffee shops, bars, restaurants around Manchester and the Northwest. Those sort of early adopters, And loyal.

Emma & Kenny: Yeah, and people who are looking for something a little bit different. People who care about ingredients and provenance, they're the sort of early adopters, so we really went after those people. Then obviously like I said, we really started in 2019 when we built our facility. Six months after that, [00:10:00] we had the pandemic and suddenly all these independent retailers where we'd started, shut down. So that's when so many other brands that completely put a rocket up our D2C business and our e-commerce side of things. So we had been selling a few things online up until that point, but we had to completely switch that on. Kenny's got a background in sales and marketing, not in drinks, not in food, not in FMCG really, but through his previous experiences and expertise, was able to apply that to e-comm. So we built out the website. We, learned very quickly about Facebook marketing and Google marketing, and went after people that way or went after potential new customers that way to introduce 'em to the brand. So that was a steep learning curve.

And then every year. since then we've had new verticals come on board. So, you know, we then went from,post pandemic or towards the end of the pandemic. We were going to bigger retailers. So, our [00:11:00] products were taken on by Booths. Booths is the Northern Waitrose, if you like.

It's got about 30 stores in the north, the northwest, fantastic supermarket. They have been so supportive of Hip Pop and that enabled us to stick our little toe into how does it work with working with a much bigger retailer. And from there, in 2023, we went into Sainsbury's as part of their Future Brands program, which is an incubator program to help small challenger brands again grow, learn about how to work with an enormous retailer.

So it's been quite incremental In terms of the steps, what I would say is it was incremental for a number of years. Obviously the pandemic is a big part of that. Then from 2023, that's when the sort of rocket ship started to take off. Yeah. and it can be easy to think that, yeah, we just landed these,new customers, but literally Booths, the amount of correspondence we had to have until they'd actually [00:12:00] respond to us.

And they have been amazing, but it's the same with every supermarket. The buyers get 200 to 500 emails a day.

So,

Juliet: Well you need to earn your place as well. You have to prove that your product is worth being on the shelf over someone else's

Emma & Kenny: And you have to be relentless and you have to think outside the box on how you're gonna grab their attention. So we very early doors adopted a video strategy where we would create a video. And we would send them a link with their name on it so that they would click on it and then have a personalized video.

And that kind of grabbed their attention. But it's about being relentless. You know, we talk to smaller brands now and they don't understand that you have to be nonstop and creative as well. You can't just send an email and keep sending the same email to a buyer. You have to think outside the box.

How are you gonna grab their attention?

Juliet: And something I just got from both of you just there is the fact that you're wearing so many hats and it was a steep learning curve. But I'm five years in and it's still [00:13:00] steep. keeps you busy and keeps you interested.

Emma & Kenny: And you've gotta be strategic as well. So sometimes you're not gonna land a Sainsbury's or Booth's straight away, but where else? we call them equity accounts. So there are accounts that might not make you a millionaire overnight, but, they will put your name on the map.

So we focused on, trying to get into stores like Harrods and Fortnam and Mason and Selfridges. We managed to land Harrods which was brilliant and that really helped, believe it or not, on export as well. when we talk to export,

Juliet: Of course, well associating your brand name with an established brand name, other people will then take note. And it's very similar to the PR work that we do when we teach business owners how to do their own PR in-house. And, it's a case of pitching to a journalist. Why would the journalist look at you over somebody else?

And how can you grab their attention? How can you get that cut through? I always joke that PR is sales without the commission. but it's a case of really trying [00:14:00] to get someone to take note. And if you've got a brand deck, same with investors, if you're going to them saying, we've been featured in Vogue, how to spend it. ES magazine, they're more likely to take notice and that third party endorsement is so important. But I love the fact that you grew organically. It's like it was markets and then it was local stockists and they were loyal, but then Covid happened and then you got DTC. How did you tackle that Facebook meta advertising?

'cause every consumer brand I speak to mentions that was the game changer for them in reaching new customers.

Emma & Kenny: We tested as Emma said, so the first thing I thought is send something out free to people. Like, thats gotta win, right? It's easy. We'll just send out a free box 'cause we have a subscription, and we wanted to drive people into the subscription to make it easier for them and easier for us.

And. It didn't work. Like offering someone a free box, people were suspicious over it. So then we tried another method. I [00:15:00] think we, tried a 50% discount on a six box, taster, which I think worked out 10 pounds at the time, 

Juliet: And this was in the. Content of the ad?

Emma & Kenny: Yes. Yeah. And so it was a nice way to introduce people to the brand, which we had to do back then.

But also you don't want to become a discount brand as well. So there's that kind of.

Juliet: it devalues your product.

Emma & Kenny: Exactly, exactly. But sometimes when you're starting out, you need to just get people tasting your drink. And we just had to read up on Facebook marketing, Facebook advertising, Google advertising, and a lot of it was make it up as you go along at the beginning until you can afford to recruit either agencies or good people 

Juliet: So, you did it yourself, you taught yourself and put some budget towards it, and then test and learned.

Emma & Kenny: We had an iPhone and a tripod and a light and we filmed me. Yeah, I was the ad and talking about, 'cause at that point we just made kombucha and we can come onto this 'cause we make [00:16:00] a broader range of soft drinks now, but we were talking about how I discovered it. You know, what it was like, because the other thing is people didn't really understand the product then, 'cause kombucha was quite niche, the UK so you had to give people some context, what are the benefits. I think what we learnt is in consumer, like other types of industries, people are really invested in the brand that we've still got customers to this day who have a subscription who joined us in 2020 when we taught ourselves how to do Facebook marketing because they saw two people who were building a brand, who were motivated by trying to create really good drinks that are a bit healthier. People really value that, and I think that was a big learning for us. It's that sort of personalized element to the brand. 

Juliet: Were you happy to put your face to it and sell your founder soul as it were to your brand?

Emma & Kenny: Yeah. I think, Emma, really [00:17:00] introduced, the drinks, and so it's our story, but it starts with Emma and her story in America and her story with fermenting food and drinks and I think that's the crux of it is telling stories.

People love stories, they can really buy into stories. And our story is truly organic. We didn't just create a story retrospectively, you know, it's a true story, where there was a problem, my problem, and, Emma sometimes speaks, on stage as well. and she uses me as a prop now, but it is a true story.

Thats the guy with IBS so everyone knows I've got IBS, She was doing a talk at, London Stock Exchange for 300 female entrepreneurs, I'm the only man in the audience, and of course, "There's Kenny, that's the guy with IBS. So I had 600 eyes looking at me, imagining me on the toilet.

Juliet: That's what you always want from your co-founder. [00:18:00] That's so interesting. 'cause I'm very fortunate to have interviewed, I think around 130 people now for the podcast, and we've been going through the back catalog and every single founder says storytelling is at the heart of their business success. How did you learn to tell your story? Or did you just do it?

Emma & Kenny: I think it was just doing it and just getting a camera in front of Emma, who's the most authentic human I've ever met. And I just thought, 

 Emma will be able to tell our story better than anyone.

And it worked and it worked with buyers as well because it's all good in an email. But if someone can actually see you and see the essence of you and what you're about,they say a picture speaks a hundred words or a thousand words or whatever. Well, a moving picture speaks even more.

And so I think video is really important. And our chair, Ed Ferris, he grew a jewelry business up to like nearly a thousand employees, nearly a hundred million in revenue, and a lot of that was through video [00:19:00] storytelling. He's very much into video as well, When he met us and we told him about our video journey as well.

That's another thing that he really bought into. people love stories, don't they? That's why we are talking to you today. Yeah. The growth of podcasting. It's just how humans connect with other humans. It's

Juliet: We're taking a quick 30 second break from this episode to ask, are you thinking of starting your own podcast? If so, this is great news because we run a course that will train you how to produce your own podcast yourself. This course is for people who do not want to outsource and pay someone else to do it.

You want to learn how to do it yourself. We teach you everything that you need to get up and running with your own podcast show, and so much more. Just DM us at hello at Fallowfield Mason. To book your spot.

for you now you've had success with company growth. You mentioned that you've started to outsource this, but given that you learned to do it yourself, was that quite a hard thing to do, is then hand it over to somebody else?

Emma & Kenny: [00:20:00] Yeah.

Juliet: There's a wry smile there 

Emma & Kenny: Massively for us, in particular for Em, because Em's role in the business as just naturally been, head of product obviously 'cause was the first creator of the product. Also head of culture, in more ways than one culture of the business, the people in the business, but the actual culture of our kombucha as well.

Juliet: was going to say that's a very

critical word within your brand culture.

Emma & Kenny: We do soda and kombucha, but within our kombucha, which we've sold millions and millions of cans, that very same culture was the culture that started off in Emma's kitchen, which is pretty amazing.

And for Emma to hand her baby over our baby kind of thing, to someone else to look after and to, cultivate.

Has been massive, but it's been a really good strategic move for us as a business. and do you wanna talk about the partner we have as well? Yeah. like Kenny said, it's about how do you scale? [00:21:00] So one way for us to have scaled would be to have continued making everything ourselves, which requires huge amount of capital investment.

We would've had to move site and actually. You are running two businesses, you are running a manufacturing business and you are running a brand. And I guess one learning at least for us is that it's quite hard to focus on brand when you are also a manufacturing business. And when our CEO joined the business, which we can talk about as well, he was.

Really instrumental in supporting us to make that decision. So we have an outsourced co-packer now that we work with. They don't do everything, so we still ferment our kombucha starter, which for us is which USP we think for that drink

Juliet: The secret 

ingredients.

Emma & Kenny: Yeah, because it's quite hard to outsource fermentation, particularly for soft drinks.

[00:22:00] It'd be much easier if we were making beer or something like that. So we keep that in-house and look after that culture and maintain it. 'cause that's our secret sauce and we can be super specialized and focused on that. The outsource partner that we are working with has really helped us to scale. it took us.

Probably 10 months in total to really from looking for a partner to getting everything signed off. And when I say we now, that is the Royal we now, because we didn't lead on that. It was Graham, our CEO and LER, head of operations. So, we've got a partner. We have a couple of partners actually 'cause we have some business continuity.

We've got a partner. They're based on a farm. Very large farm. it's a purpose-built facility. On the farm, they have an anaerobic digester, which is a really sustainable way of processing food waste, and that generates a lot of heat, so that powers the plant because it's a farm. The water that we use in the products is drawn [00:23:00] from the farm.

The digester also produces food grade, carbon dioxide, which we can use to carbonate the drinks. So it's this real circular kind of loop system. the partner really feels and understands how important the drinks are to us and how important it is to us that everything tastes amazing, that every batch is produced with the same love and care that we put into it.

They really do have those values, which is critically important. so yeah, we've been working with them now for six months, I think. It's enabled us to really scale the business. we sent Ryan, we call Ryan, our Willy Wonka. He's the guy who comes up with all of our NPD, but he was, our head brewer and he now just works on

making sure the drinks just get better and better. and Ryan went down and worked with them, for quite a while, until he was really happy with it as well. 

Juliet: Would you say that's the decision that you've made that's impacted your [00:24:00] numbers the most?

Emma & Kenny: It's one of them, I would say. Yeah, certainly in terms of going from super startup to getting into a scale up business, that for us that means exponential growth because they've got capacity for us now. And then when we need additional capacity. That can be plugged in. So in terms of scale, it's really important.

There've been a couple of other decisions that have really been commercially impactful. I think probably bringing Graham on board is quite significant. So we have a CEO, he's called Graham Biles. He was the CEOO at Grenade. he joined the business in,he came to consult for us in the summer of

2023 in operations and then we brought him on board A CEO, October 2023. it was quite early for a brand of our size to be bringing on A CEO. I think what Kenny and I knew is that we are really good at starting up. We are really good at being scrappy. We're really good at being [00:25:00] creative.

We're really good at wearing lots of hats, really good at being founders. What we are less good at is the nuts and bolts of running a business, a multinational business, a scaling business. And we're okay to admit that because it's our job as founders to bring in absolutely brilliant people who are better than us, who can help the business move forward and put a rocket up it.

Juliet: How did you find him? How did you know he was the one?

Emma & Kenny: We worked with him as a consultant and he just made very quick decisions, but impactful decisions. and we have Juliet Barrett, who was the founder of Grenade on our board as well, and Juliet's been with us from early on, and Juliet's done everything we want to do, really, she's built a business, she's built it into a position where, 

it was bought by Mondelez's for 200 million. So, you know, if you can build a business that [00:26:00] is in an, acquirable position, then you know you've done a great job. It doesn't necessarily mean you need to, exit at that point, but you've got that choice as well. and she's worked with Graham, so she understands that.

His capacity, his, ability to drive the business and we really wanted that. What we've discovered is what we're good at and what we're not good at. So Emma's fantastic at the product, the brand like Emma's the cool one out of us two. Emma came up with the name Hip Pop. Emma's good at the people within the business side and also,

once people are brought into the business, whether it's investors or,the team, Emma's really good at maintaining those relations. My like superpower is, I'm really good at bringing in people to the business, whether that's headhunting people or bringing investors into the business or buyers, getting us over the line with supermarkets and stuff.

That's [00:27:00] what I really love and enjoy. We are now freed up to be able to do that. we can do podcasts like this as well and really, put the brand out there and be the ambassadors of the brand and help open new markets as well. we like to go into new countries and explore and we've done quite a lot of that with, the department of, business and trade as well.

they've been really supportive, so Graham gives us that ability to be able to explore.

Juliet: I think we all need a Graham. And it's so hard because when you start, you are doing everything. You are wearing all the hats and hats you don't even know exist. And every day there's a new hat then learning what to delegate out. And someone who is, it said recently how then you're left with all the shit hats.

You pay people to do all the good hats and then you're like, oh, I've got all these bits left. 'cause no one else wants to do them. 

Emma & Kenny: Well,Emma was, COO. Or whatever. Head of operations and head of finance, I was head of sales and head of marketing, and

Juliet: And don't forget head of IT. 

'Cause there's always an IT problem

[00:28:00] you have to fix. 

Emma & Kenny: So I had those three and Emma had those two plus anything else that came in, generally landed on Emma's plate. And so we were just wearing so many hats and it was a game changer for us because then we were able to build.

Really good strategic senior leadership team. Alan, who was from AB in Bev and then the Hook group and Matt, who came from Nestle and Britvic and Ellie, who came from Heineken. And so we had all of these brains who were coming into the business, and really helping shape it. Then we were able to bring on the finance person Adam as well, so it really freed everything up.

And it's ever evolving. 

Juliet: Does it feel weird? Are you a bit like, do you walk around the office and be like, oh, they've got all the hats now? 

Emma & Kenny: I think it's still a transition. So it's not like Graham joins the business and we put an SLT in place and then suddenly off, Kenny and I go into the sunset doing podcasts. It's [00:29:00] not, it's been a transition and it still is a transition. So we are still involved in some day-to-day sales activity and we're still involved in some, day-to-day business running stuff because we've needed to be, because Graham needs us to be.

It's not a kind of chop, straight line. 

It's 

Juliet: Well there's always something

that comes at you that you can't forecast as well, that the team are gonna need to be like, guys, what do you think? And you can't, I worked with a coach for a few years and he's what about forecasting? And it's like. You tell me how to forecast in this environment in the last five years with what's happening in the news, it's very difficult.

But for you to have that flex in your schedule where you have a bit more bandwidth must be really enjoyable. And you'd be, should be so proud of that. 'cause that's every founder's dream is to get to that position

Emma & Kenny: Yeah, we are, lucky and they are a, a great team and it's our job to have their backs and give them the [00:30:00] autonomy to be able to do their thing and run the business, but just know that we're here to support, to do what's needed.

Juliet: So what's next for Hip Pop in terms of growth and sales expansion?

Emma & Kenny: Yeah, so we've only scratched the surface in the UK. the supermarket we've worked most closely with so far because we joined the Future Brands program was Sainsbury. So we've realized that, you can land the supermarket, but there's so much you can do within that supermarket, prove your case, and then,explode in other supermarkets as well.

So, for instance, Sainsbury's, we started off in back of store in four packs, right at the back in the functional drink section. So their healthy drink section. Which was quite difficult, but we managed to build that up so that our rate of sale, which is, each product sold per week, that's your rate of sale, per product that gradually grew, which was really good, which is what Sainsbury's wanted to see.

So then, [00:31:00] they allowed us to go into their chillers in the back of store, their wellness section, which is really good. 'cause then we go in single units in the chiller. Really easy decision, right? Just pick up one drink. You don't have to invest in four. So you can trial, with customers a lot easier that way, which is really good.

then we have been promoted to the 'Holy Grail' in drinks, which is the meal deal, which is the front of store with them. And there's still other stuff that we can work on with Sainsbury is where we can explore other areas in their store. But it's given us a really good test bed to ensure that we know that our drinks work in multi-format in different parts of the store.

 Obviously, Sainsbury's, it's the top four supermarket as well, so it's been amazing. we also went in front of store M&S as well and various other supermarkets working with, Morrison's co-op, Albert Hein in the Netherlands, co-op plus in the Netherlands, Holland and Barrett in the Netherlands.

[00:32:00] and 

food service is really important for us. So we really wanna grow our food service, which is, within offices, universities, schools. All of these types of organizations. And we landed Bid Food, which is one of the biggest food service, distribution companies, and they've been really supportive as well.

And we landed on their Open Doors program, which is similar to Sainsbury's Future Brands program as well. So, we've got a lot to do in the uk, but also international as well.

So this year we have done a big rebrand, so which launched in March. And that's a really critical piece of work for the year ahead, We've grown very organically. The brand has grown very organically. What we really needed to do to take the next step to become that massive household name is really focus on the brand and crystallize who we are, what we're about, why we do what we do. You will have seen if you're a regular customer of Hip [00:33:00] Pop, you will have seen the rebrand.

So we've made changes to the artwork. We are making changes to our tone of voice and how we express ourselves. That's absolutely critical, and a big reason for doing that as well is because, we started as a kombucha brand. That's where we came from. But we're not a kombucha brand, we're a healthy soft drinks brand.

Kombucha is just one of the drinks that we make. We also make a soda, a healthy pop, and it's still got a gut health slant to it. So it's got probiotics in it and it's got prebiotics fiber in it.

Juliet: So you 

Emma & Kenny: It's really important that

people Exactly, and that's been a real. To date, we are still early doors.

We're only about six weeks in, I think, or two weeks. Yeah. And, but it's going fantastically well. It's just been really well received, even in the design world, like lots of massive, huge design publications have commented on it.

It wasn't the best design of Q1. in the top five in [00:34:00] Q1 with a really big design, publication. the other four were based in America, so we were the only British one. And so it's really landed well. And, testament to Eleanor, our head of marketing, who was really pushing for this it wasn't just about a rebrand or redesign of the brand.

It was about finding our essence. Our positioning in the market, which we already knew.

it was about pulling out of us, what we already know, but really distilling it into one, even just us, our slogan they brought out, which was like, I dunno if you ever watched Mad Men,

 but it was like we had a Mad Men moment 

Whereby we sat there and they presented it to us and they said, look, we think the two words that really describe you after interviewing you guys, interviewing your team, interviewing your investors, interviewing your customers,we've distilled it into two words, and that is 'get real.' and for us, that was like a real moment.

Yeah. Because [00:35:00] everything about us and everything we want to be about Hip Pop is real ingredients, real flavor, real people. and they really did get that across for us. and living in the moment, best enjoyed live, not via some fakery, we wanna be, landing with people.

in the moment. 

Well, I was gonna say, we have this question from our previous guest, which is Lucy, who founded Hair Syrup and she'd sold through viral TikTok, and TikTok shop and everything like that. And her question for you guys was, how do you launch internationally? Yeah, There's a couple of different ways we've done it. So we have a decent footprint, a good footprint now in the Netherlands and Belgium, and Holland and Barrett in Holland found us on a site that various brands go on to say, here we are, these are our drinks. And really liked the drinks, and wanted us to be in store.

So we had to find a distributor. [00:36:00] So we, through connections in the industry, we were recommended a distributor out in the Netherlands who'd been fantastic and we went. And we started out there quite small scale, but getting to know each other, making sure that we got the good, strong relationship in place. And from there, with that distributor, with that partner, we've been able to build out into Albert Heijn which is one of the largest supermarkets in the Netherlands and Belgium.

We're now in a thousand stores and we've got more distribution hopefully to come in there. So it's about not going all out. And throwing everything at it because you need to build relationships and you need to test things and test ways of working. That's worked out really well in the Netherlands, so we're gonna now apply that model across different European countries in terms of America,

that's every brand's dream to crack America. But also we know it's incredibly tough. So again, it's about being focused and careful in how you do it and surrounding yourselves with [00:37:00] the right people. One of the people that's on board with us, in an advisory capacity, is a guy called Phil Trowler and, and an investor.

He is invested in US as well. That's right. And Phil was the CFO for Ollipop. So if you are into soft drinks and you know what's going on in the industry, Ollipop is a tasty, healthy, better for you soft drinks brand out in America. And in 2019 they did a million dollars in revenue. And then last year they did 

 Half a billion. Half a billion. Phil was with that business from, even before they started to where they turned over $200 million. So now Phil is part of us, and Phil is advising us on America and helping us think about it strategically and carefully so we don't, throw everything at America.

So we do it in the right way whilst we're continuing to grow our business in the UK and apply the model that we've adopted in the Netherlands to other European countries.

Juliet: That's amazing. Huge congratulations. It's so [00:38:00] exciting. domination in the best possible way. And what would your question be for our next guest? 

Emma & Kenny: yeah. So my question when we were discussing earlier, is if you had a sliding doors moment where you had a fork in the road, which most entrepreneurs had. Do I run a business or do I do what I'm originally doing? Or do I do something completely different? They chose running a business. That's 'cause that's why they're on the podcast.

What were the other options that were on the table that were tempting them in that direction?

Juliet: I love that question. I love this 'cause no one has the same question, is interesting. it just goes to show any bloody answers there are. 

Emma & Kenny: Yeah. 

Juliet: but no thank you. That's wonderful. I'll be sure to let you know their answer. Thank you so much for your time. It's been lovely chatting to you and massive congratulations on everything Hip Pop.

It's wonderful to see the success coming outta Manchester. yeah, let's look for you in the States [00:39:00] soon.

Emma & Kenny: Thanks for having us. Thank you.

Juliet: Thank you for listening to How Startup If you'd like to contact Emma Kenny. You can find all of their details in the show notes along with a recap, the advice they have kindly shared. Tune in next week to Jamila Brown's answer to their sliding doors question.