Send us Fan Mail Emma and Kenny started Hip Pop in a kitchen in Manchester, making kombucha, kimchi, sauerkraut and fermented chilli sauce for market stalls. Today the brand is in Sainsbury's, Tesco, Co-op, Waitrose, Morrisons and Boots, plus Bidfood, Brakes, Matthew Clark and LWC, with a growing business across Europe. Getting there took two name changes, a full repositioning out of kombucha, and one very bad few weeks in 2023 where a broken canning line nearly took the whole thing down at exactly the moment they were launching into Sainsbury's. The problem they kept hitting is one a lot of founders will recognise. Retailers were not saying no to the product. They were saying no to the category, because they already stocked a kombucha brand. Emma and Kenny decided that if the category was the blocker, the category had to change. Booch & Brine became Booch & Brew, then Hip Pop, and the brand repositioned as a mainstream soft drink with better ingredients rather than a specialist ferment. That gave them permission to sit in much bigger spaces on shelf. Simon also gets them into the bit most founders never talk about publicly. The move that fell through at the last minute. The polytunnel on a farm that an insurance broker pointed out could be broken into with a pair of scissors. The canning line that ran for an hour and then went down for eight. And the £300k line that arrived from Calgary in three weeks because a supplier decided to help. If you are sat with a brand that is not quite working, or a category that is holding you back, there is a lot in here you can use. In this episode... - Why retailers saying "we already have a kombucha brand" was a category problem, not a product problem - How Hip Pop repositioned as a mainstream soft drink and what that opened up commercially - The name test that killed around 200 options, and why trademark availability in the UK and US shaped the final choice - Choosing to be good at one thing, and dropping the kimchi, sauerkraut and chilli sauce to do it - Bringing in advisors who know more than you do, including Grenade co-founder Juliet Barrett, and how a peer intro made that happen - What actually happens when a national listing and a factory move land in the same month - Why making everything yourself is running two businesses at once, and how Hip Pop moved to co-man while keeping the ferment in house - The hires that turned it into a proper operation - Their advice for founders who suspect the brand they launched is not the brand that will win Guest details... Emma, co-founder of Hip Pop. Emma started making fermented drinks and foods after returning from time in America, originally to help Kenny with his gut health. She created the kombucha that became the first product, came up with the Hip Pop name, and led the brand through two rebrands. Kenny, co-founder of Hip Pop. Kenny was the original customer before he was the co-founder, swapping diet soft drinks for something easier on his gut after years of IBS. Described by Emma as the connector in the business, he drove the strategy of bringing experienced advisors and operators into a young company. Neither founder came from a food and drink background, which shaped how they built the business. Hip Pop is a Manchester based soft drinks brand making fizzy pop with real fruit, fibre and live cultures. It began life as Booch & Brine, then Booch & Brew, before relaunching as Hip Pop. Stocked in Sainsbury's, Tesco, Co-op, Waitrose, Morrisons, Boots, Bidfood, Brakes, Matthew Clark, LWC and a long list of independents, with a growing international business across Europe. Links & offers... Buy Naturally Refreshing Drinks | Hip Pop 20% Off Code: HIPPOPMIGHTY Makin Mighty... Makin Mighty helps underdog food and drink brands sell like the big players do. Twenty years in FMCG, six of them inside a £16bn food business, now working fractionally with founders who are outgunned commercially and done with bad support. Stuck and not sure what to fix first? Email Simon and ask for the MOT Lite. It is free, it is a short set of straight questions, and you get back a clear read on the biggest thing holding you up. If you want the full picture, the Mighty MOT is the proper commercial health check. Around half an hour of your time, and within a week you get back the three things costing you most, what to do about each one, and an honest read on whether you need outside help at all. £795 + VAT at mightymot.com, and £495 + VAT when you run it again six to twelve months later. Follow the show so the next episode lands when it goes live. LinkedIn: Simon Greenwood-Haigh | LinkedIn Web: makinmighty.com If you found this useful, please share it with someone building a food or drink brand who’d get value from it. You can follow me on LinkedIn, TikTok or Instagram for clips and extra insights: just search for @MakinMighty And if you’ve got a question you’re wrestling with right now (brand, growth, retail, positioning) email it in. We’re collecting real questions from founders and we’ll use those to shape future episodes. Thanks for listening. See you next time makinmighty@gmail.com
