Peek inside a fridge of that rising band of health-conscious Londoners and also you’re certain to seek out some BOL inside.
The food model’s vary of “energy shakes”, “posh noodles”, salad jars, soups and wholesome prepared meals have soared in recognition since founder Paul Brown turned the agency vegan — serving to turnover near-double this yr to £18 million.
Not way back, Brown, 42, was, as he places it, “a conventional meat and two veg Northerner”, whereas BOL’s bestsellers had been Jamaican jerk rooster and Kerala rooster meals.
Then in 2017, Brown watched Netflix’s Cowspiracy documentary, learn John Robbins’s Meals Revolution and “started considering extra concerning the results that our closely meat-based eating regimen was having on each folks and planet. I shortly realised I could possibly be a part of the answer, not the issue”.
He determined to show BOL vegan. It wasn’t a preferred resolution — “it halved the scale of our model in a single day,” Brown admits.
“We misplaced a lot fridge house in outlets as a result of I needed to inform Tesco and others, ‘sorry, I’m not making your best-selling Jamaican jerk rooster any extra, as a result of we’re going vegan. “At the moment we hadn’t made the brand new recipes to exchange them, and being plant-based wasn’t a ‘massive factor’ like it’s as we speak. It was fairly scary — traders had been actually involved that we had been going to exit of business.
“Trying again, it was one of the best resolution we may have made.”
BOL
Based: 2015
Employees: 27
Turnover: £18 million
Headquarters: Paddington
Final month — albeit “Veganuary” — BOL bought £2.5 million-worth of its creamy chick’n soup (made with jackfruit), Japanese rainbow slaw salad jar and its different 34 merchandise.
The agency expects retail gross sales to hit £30 million this yr.Vegans’ achieve got here at winter sports activities’ loss: it was whereas working in California — the place a damaged wrist destroyed Brown’s goals of being an expert snowboard teacher — that he first dreamed of recreating the West Coast’s contemporary, wholesome comfort meals in Britain.
“I cherished the ready-made meals on the market that was so vibrant and good for you.”However as soon as he returned to the UK, in 2001, “I couldn’t get funding for the thought. I didn’t know what to do subsequent. At some point, I had an Harmless smoothie in a café, and on the bottle it stated, ‘come say hello at [its HQ] Fruit Towers’. So I did, and ended up getting a job promoting their smoothies out of the again of a van for just a few years.”
Brown, considered one of Harmless’s earliest staff, ended up staying 14 years, finally working its meals division and introducing its Veg Pots which, he claims, “basically modified the prepared meal class within the UK — till then it was principally over-processed, unhealthy merchandise.”
When Harmless was purchased by Coca-Cola in a deal price £320 million in 2015, “it quickly grew to become obvious Harmless can be all about drinks,” Brown says. Coke closed Harmless’s meals division, and Brown secured £500,000 backing from angels together with Harmless founders’ funding fund Jam Jar to launch BOL in April 2015.
You possibly can actually hear and see the Harmless-isms in Brown: employees are “epic crew members”, BOL’s workplace is “The Veg Pad” and is perched subsequent to Paddington Basin, which Brown jokingly calls “our infinity pool”. He says working on the smoothie agency “was my enterprise faculty — I dropped out of college however learnt a lot at Harmless. My contacts from working there have been invaluable in serving to Bol develop quick.”
Having a bulging contacts e-book helped Brown safe a formidable itemizing in Tesco in his first yr of enterprise.
The pandemic, nevertheless, hit BOL arduous: considered one of its largest prospects was Costa Espresso, whose outlets had been shut; its standard salad jars had been for workplace meeting-hoppers and workplaces had been empty. “We misplaced 40% of gross sales, however in contrast with so many eating places and different companies, I used to be simply grateful it didn’t go to zero.”Bol diversified, together with launching as an add-on in Hey Recent meal bins, and on Deliveroo, the place the account supervisor unintentionally listed Brown’s cellular quantity for buyer supply points.
“Fortunately the one name that got here by was from a comparatively native Deliveroo buyer who didn’t obtain two of the soups he’d ordered. I simply requested what he needed and the place he lived, and jumped on my bike and delivered them.”
Superstar followers now embrace Made in Chelsea’s Ollie Proudlock — who has invested in considered one of BOL’s 4 subsequent fundraisers, alongside fits together with Addison Lee’s CEO Liam Griffin — and Katie Piper, Kirsty Gallacher and Natalie Pinkham. Brown desires to launch in Eire this summer season, and throughout Europe too. “The plant-based motion is right here to remain — and now is an excellent alternative for progressive meals companies to go mainstream.”
