Describe the business
We are a coffee manufacturer specialising in a range of flavoured instant coffee. It is a family-run business that was started by my parents in 1987. My wife Caroline and I came on board five years ago.
What’s the story behind how the business started?
To go right back to the beginning, my dad is American and my mum is Finnish and they met in Sweden. They ended up moving to Finland together and starting a family. We used to spend winters in California – winters in Finland were pretty horrible.
In the 1980s, there there was an artisan renaissance going on in California. The artisan food producer trend was really kicking off, and there was nothing like it in northern Europe at the time. People were using natural flavours like vanilla in coffee, and they tasted amazing. When they returned to Finland one year, my parents bought a roasting operation and started to make their own flavoured coffee.
As a family we decided to move to England when I was 11. Back in 1999 my dad started to think: “Everyone in the UK is drinking instant coffee and we are flavouring coffee beans.” So he started to play around with flavouring instant coffee. He persevered and by about 2002 had found a supplier who was freeze-drying quality coffee. A few years later they launched a range of flavoured instant coffee.
So why did you get involved?
After two years working in London, I was getting into coffee myself. For the first time I could see how to improve the family business. I had been doing work in graphic design, marketing and advertising, and with my new-found skills I thought I knew what we could do with the flavoured coffee. I knew that my parents’ product was great and there was this artisan coffee movement in London. The supermarket offering at that point was pretty dreary.
Doesn’t instant coffee have a bad reputation?
Instant coffee is a mainly British hang-up. By its very nature it was always lower grade. To make one kilo of instant coffee you need at least three kilos of roasted coffee beans. So to make it financially viable many of the big manufacturers have always used the cheapest grade coffee you can buy.
Our coffee is not just better quality but we use more coffee beans to make it. Instant coffee has a bad rep, but it doesn’t have to be that way.
We are calling our products “flavour-infused” instant coffee. Our heritage is in coffee roasting so we respect the coffee.
What are the challenges of running a second-generation family business?
It is a unique experience. The way of communicating is different with family members. That can be a really good thing, or it can sometimes be a challenging thing.
All the changes that Caroline and I have implemented have always been openly accepted by my family. They are not marketers or natural salespeople, so they need help with that. We have all this heritage and we are trying to channel that, but you don’t want to force the family thing down people’s throats.
What’s the thought process behind your rebrand?
We started a rebrand in November and decided to roll it out in April. We enlisted the help of a branding agency called This Way Up. The brief was to take our products and really tell the story.
We have two hands on the front of the pack to represent the husband and wife team and the second-generation theme. We wanted to call on Scandi style and the US influence in our brand.
What about your export strategy – why target Russia and South Korea?
The UK market is super important to us and we are proud to be British, but the rest of the world is a big market opportunity. In Korea, a law has been passed to limit the number of coffee shops permitted on one street – there’s a lot of coffee being consumed there. In Russia, there’s a lot of affluence in Moscow and people are looking for imported products. We are aware of where the hotspots are, and we want to grow the export market.
What’s next for the business?
We are still a small company. Last year we turned over about £700,000. We have been steadily growing at about 15%. Now is the time to start hitting it a bit harder. We are looking at doubling our turnover in the next two years and doubling it again two years after that.
We have just completed on a new unit that gives us a lot more space. We are going to completely redesign our manufacturing space. It is super exciting, it is going to give us much more room.
What advice would you give to budding entrepreneurs?
Get your house in order, get your brand right. That’s something which has taken us a couple of years to understand fully. Who are you marketing the product at, and how do you talk to them in the right tone?
If you have the right product and the right brand, everything falls into place from a sales point of view.
Will Little is the managing director of Little’s Coffee
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