What can you learn from other food founders?

Whatever stage you’re at, hearing from food founders who’ve built – or are building – a food or drink business is invaluable. It can save you time, give you the fix you need or just inspire you to think differently about your product, customer or business model.

Speaking to food founders for the Relish podcast always digs up some nuggets of insight and inspiration. So far, we’ve heard from Anna Gorman of Plantside, Alex Epstein the chief mess-maker behind Messy Face, Mimi and Camilla of Oshomo, Helen Johnston from SUCSEED, Oonagh and Jenny Simms of The Marshmallowist, and Gwen Bromley and Richard Smith, half of the team behind Nine Tines Yorkshire vodka.

Here are some of the most notable lessons and learnings that our food founders shared on the How to Grow a Food Business podcast.

Validation & market research

Let customers tell you the business exists before you decide it does.

Anna Gorman had no business plan and no formal consumer testing for Plantside. The signal to scale came entirely from customers asking to take Yorkshire puddings home, then receiving emails from around the country asking for postal delivery. Word of mouth told her what the plan should be.

A feasibility study buys confidence, not just data.

Helen Johnston had spent nearly two years building relationships with herbalists, nutritionists, food scientists and farming contacts before launching SUCSEED. What actually gave her the confidence to ‘take the plunge’ was commissioning a product opportunity report. Deep personal conviction and market proof are different things. As a founder, it usually makes sense to have validation from both.

Consumer testing panels can validate – or complicate.

Before starting to manufacture, Alex Epstein used the VYPR platform to test the Messy Face concept. He was candid about the fact that early taste-test feedback was polarising. Validation doesn’t always mean unanimous enthusiasm – sometimes it means confirming a real but divided reaction and deciding whether to change the product or embrace the niche.

Trade shows can be a food founders university.

Helen Johnston described trade shows like this. They were the place where she built supplier relationships and category knowledge long before a formal launch.

Standing out beats playing it safe, even in a conservative category.

Oonagh Simms of The Marshmallowist told us that she “wouldn’t have been a success” if she’d made conventional vanilla marshmallows on her original market stall. It was the unusual, cocktail-inspired flavours that got customers coming back and selling out her stock every week. That direct feedback pushed her toward bolder, more experimental flavours rather than safe options.

Naming, positioning and language

The label can be a bigger barrier than the product.

Anna Gorman deliberately chose “plant-based” over “vegan” on Plantside’s packaging. Why? She found that the word “vegan” is a turn-off to many mainstream shoppers. But vegan consumers will find and buy the product regardless of which label is used.

A polarising or unfamiliar category needs a translation strategy.

You can’t just PR your way through unfamiliarity. Messy Face is built on a food combination that’s been enjoyed in Turkey for centuries but it’s little known in the UK. Alex’s challenge wasn’t proving the product was good, it was giving British shoppers a frame of reference for something genuinely new.

Growth strategy: scale vs. control

Slow, deliberate growth can be the strategy, not a compromise.

Mimi and Camilla (Oshomo) were explicit that their steady growth through farmers markets was “exactly what was needed” to protect quality and know their customers deeply. A sudden expansion, they said, would be hard to contain and likely to be an existential challenge to what they do.

Growth sometimes creates harder decisions than survival.

Anna Gorman’s biggest tension wasn’t whether Plantside would succeed, it was whether pursuing supermarket listings would undermine the independent retailers who backed at the start. Success doesn’t remove hard calls; it generates new ones.

Staying self-funded can be a way of protecting a founding relationship.

Oonagh and Jenny Simms chose to bootstrap The Marshmallowist throughout, explicitly because they didn’t want a third party changing the dynamic between them as co-founders. They talked about their “very symbiotic” relationship, accepting cash-flow challenges as the price of keeping full control.

Media exposure almost always has a seismic impact.

A Hairy Bikers Christmas TV feature triggered a live stream of Shopify order notifications for The Marshmallowist while it aired. A reminder that PR wins need fulfilment capacity lined up in advance, not scrambled together afterward. Be ready for the spike.

Investment & partnership decisions

Take the right investor over the biggest cheque.

Oshomo’s founders were explicit that what they need from an investor is understanding of the business, not just capital. They were prepared to wait for fit rather than take the first offer.

Complementary co-founders can be a genuine structural advantage.

Nine Tines was founded by four people from unrelated backgrounds – a farmer, a doctor, an engineer and a financial controller – none of whom had any brewing or distilling experience. Richard framed the range of skills as helping them to go from “learning how to make vodka” through branding, sales, events and photography without needing to pay for outside help.

A founding team’s different risk appetite can be a valuable control mechanism.

Nine Tines’ Gwen Bromley described the dynamic plainly: one risk-taking co-founder gets pushed by the others when too cautious and reined in by them when too out-there. The mix functions as a built-in check rather than a source of friction.

Product & operations

Manufacturing constraints can be the real bottleneck, not demand.

Alex Epstein’s biggest early obstacle wasn’t sales – it was finding a UK manufacturer able to handle sesame as a major allergen, a problem specific to his category that a founder in almost any other food segment wouldn’t have anticipated.

A slower, harder manufacturing route can become the core of your story.

Nine Tines grows its own potatoes and controls the process from field-to-bottle rather than buying in a base spirit like most vodka brands. This approach is validated by the taste and by two gold medals at the Vodka Masters before they’d even officially launched.

Resilience, mindset & the emotional reality of founding a food business

A single moment of kindness or belief from a stranger can make all the difference.

Anna Gorman described a low point at a trade show where she was ready to walk away entirely, until a stranger’s encouragement changed her mind. When you’re a founder, morale can be fragile, especially at key moments.

Celebrate the first time someone approaches you, rather than the other way round.

Nine Tines described their years of “relentless” outreach – chasing retailers, press, partners – before reaching the point where people began approaching them with stockist and collaboration opportunities.

Ethics and mission

Sticking to your values can be a genuine commercial tension.

Oshomo’s food founders described an ongoing internal conflict between what’s commercially expedient and what feels ethically right for the business — a live tension rather than something resolved once and stated in a mission paragraph. Anna Gorman voiced an almost identical split between “what’s best for our business” and “what’s ethically correct” regarding supporting independents over supermarkets.

The food founders personal mission can double as the sharpest marketing.

Mimi and Camilla’s “food as medicine” framing – including their work adapting meals for chemotherapy patients with depleted taste buds and low energy – gave Oshomo a distinct, memorable identity built entirely on real customer need rather than invented brand positioning.

The recurring through-lines

Pulled together like this, the conversations with food founders we’ve enjoyed so far highlight themes across almost every guest, regardless of category.

Hear from these food founders for yourself in the Relish podcast. Search for ‘How to Grow a Food Business’ wherever you get your podcasts and subscribe so you don’t miss our upcoming conversations.