Explain what your product is and how you came up with the idea
Mackenzie: Lucy and I have been friends since we were 13 and we first tried bircher muesli [a Swiss breakfast dish typically containing raw oats, yoghurt and fruit] on a school trip to Switzerland. We were staying in quite a basic youth hostel and it was by far the best thing to eat around there. We said to each other: “Why isn’t this a thing back home?”
Then, we kind of forgot about it and we went our separate ways to university. We both graduated in 2012. I was back home with my mother, who’s a very creative cook, and she was making all these bircher muesli recipes. They were more exciting and tastier than the versions of bircher muesli I’d tried before and I thought they would make a great breakfast in the UK.
I wrote up a basic business plan, but I never really intended to start the business on my own, so I was interviewing [potential business partners]. And when I caught up with Lucy at the end of the summer, I mentioned the idea to her and we had a lightbulb moment.
Lucy always wanted to start something of her own in the food industry and we got really excited about it. The next day we started working on it. That’s how it was born and we launched it a year later.
As such recent graduates, which skills did you each bring to the business?
Mackenzie: We have very different degrees – I studied psychology and business and Lucy studied fine art. I’d had a lot of jobs with startup companies over the summers, so I’d been in that kind of environment before. But we’re both learning on the job all the time.
Wright: We both have really different skillsets, which is why we make really good business partners. I look after the sales and marketing side of things and Anna looks after the commercial, operational and logistical side of things.
How did you get started?
Wright: We didn’t have any food or much business experience. So, first, we walked around supermarkets and wholefood stores and looked at other brands that were in there. Then we contacted those brands and asked for advice on how to go about setting up a food business – each person led us on to another person. Without those people helping us, we wouldn’t have got where we are today.
We also found a mentor in Neil Burchell who is the ex-managing director of Rachel’s Organic. He was mentoring us for about six months and we had a great relationship with him, so six months ago we invited him to become a non-executive director. He adds a lot of value to the business.
How did you develop Anna’s mother’s recipes for sale?
Mackenzie: They’ve developed over time. My mother’s weren’t commercially viable – really fresh fruit, which wasn’t that possible. We also sat down and did tasting sessions with friends and then made tweaks based on their feedback. We narrowed 50 ideas down to 10. Then we took those to offices and asked people to fill out a questionnaire about them, which helped us pick the final five.
What have been your proudest moments since starting the business?
Mackenzie: Our first achievement was getting into Selfridges, that’s where the products were first seen and it’s where we sold the first pot. We started approaching places like Whole Foods and Harvey Nichols and Selfridges because they really like having new brands and they love innovative products. We hoped they would be one of the first stores to take us and then we were delighted when they did. We got in contact with a buyer, we sent her a presentation on the brand and then followed up with samples. She said she wanted to launch the product exclusively for four weeks – that was just amazing.
We walked back from the meeting and we were pinching ourselves, not knowing whether to laugh or cry from happiness. Now it’s so lovely when you look on social media and you see people posting about it or walk into your friend’s house and it’s in their fridge.
What have been the biggest challenges?
Wright: For me it’s getting through to buyers. They’re incredibly busy and I have to think about how I’m going to get their attention. There are some buyers I have to call every day for three months.
Mackenzie: On my side of things the challenge is looking after logistics and operations. We work with a product that has a very short shelf life, around 20 days. We have weekly production and there are often things that go wrong in terms of our ingredients being delivered and products not reaching customers. They are things you can’t really predict and then you sometimes spend a lot of your day trying to sort them out.
What made you decide to start your own business straight out of university?
Wright: For us it was about timing, we were both from entrepreneurial backgrounds and we both wanted to start a business after we graduated. The enthusiasm was there and the drive. We don’t have a mortgage and we don’t have any children. So, if we have to stay in the office until 10pm at night we can. I’d say to graduates if they’ve got that drive too, then go for it.
Also, there’s a lot to be said for not having worked for a corporate before. In a startup, you make things up and learn on the job. And you don’t know how things are supposed to be done and do things in your own way, which is quite refreshing.
What advice would you give to business owners approaching buyers for the first time?
Wright: Try and think outside the box. If we can’t get hold of the buyers through email or by calling them, then we’ll just turn up to the head office with a beautiful box of samples. We’ll make sure on the card it is says “delivered by hand”. It’s been successful for us, buyers know we’ve made that extra effort. It gets their attention and we usually hear back from them. Persistence is just so key when dealing with buyers.
What are your plans for the future of the business?
Mackenzie: For the next year we’re focusing on our current range. But if all goes well this year we’d very much like to launch another range of products. All of our products will have the same theme in that they’ll be healthy, but really innovative flavours. A lot of our things are oat-based and probably all to eat on-the-go as well.
Lucy Wright and Anna Mackenzie are the co-founders of Cuckoo Bircher Muesli
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