Sometimes there’s a blind spot in how we shop for food. Plenty of people who enjoy a Thai green curry, a tasty puttanesca or a proper katsu in a restaurant, will walk straight past the same idea in a jar in the supermarket. It’s not that they don’t want that, it’s that the category itself has been quietly written off as bland and uninspiring. So what do you do about that? Enter the category disruptor…
Traditional stocks and sauces with innovative packaging
Owen Potts has spent almost twenty years trying to prove that reputation wrong. In the latest episode of How to Grow a Food Business, the Relish podcast, he talks about how Potts Partnership began by supplying farm shops and delis with the traditional, comforting gravies and stocks nobody else was making. He then expands on how it’s now a brand doing double-digit growth and selling millions of cans. Their stand-out packaging is literally aluminium drinks cans. Why? Because somewhere along the way, Owen decided stock should be packaged like water.
That decision alone is worth the listen. It started with a hunch at a trade show, before a scramble to find the manufacturing technology. Best of all, it also involved a supermarket buyer meeting where Owen turned up with two cans of beer and a couple of labels stuck over the top. It’s one of the more unlikely pitch stories you’ll hear from a UK food founder. But it worked. Find out how well in the podcast.
Reshaping the cooking sauce category
Ultimately, the real insight in this conversation isn’t about packaging at all. It’s about why the cooking sauce aisle gets skipped by shoppers who’d really love what’s in Potts’ jars, sorry, cans. Owen has a theory, and it’s reshaping how Potts thinks about the way they sell and where, not just what they sell.
Along the way we talk about:
Find out more about Potts’ stocks and sauces at www.pottspartnership.co.uk and listen to the full episode now.
