Eureka Moment?
Sam: I used to be an avid batch cooker when I was working as a consultant, freezing food into tupperware and ziplock bags. Tupperware took up a load of space and ziplock bags created a huge amount of plastic waste. A ziplock bag of chilli burst in the freezer one day which was the final straw. My mum then told me that she used to freeze my food into ice cube trays when I was a baby which sparked an idea. I went home and cut up a bunch of silicon trays and the first Blocks were born!
Finance
We've grown STOCKED iteratively over the years. We put in our own savings to start out in Sam's mum's kitchen before graduating to a pie factory, delivering them around London in Sam's car. When word started getting out and people were telling us they loved our Blocks we knew we had to upgrade so we raised funds from friends, family, and angel investors to invest in setting up our own kitchen and in the brand and packaging you see today."
Regrets
We are both super optimistic, so any mistakes we've made along the way have been learning opportunities so not really! Apart from that time we spilt 150 meals worth of chickpea curry on the floor.....oh yeah, apart from that.
What would you have changed?
In hindsight, we could have let go of certain parts of our process earlier. It's been vital for us to be able to execute on every aspect of the business ourselves, but it's a been a game-changer bringing on skilled people and partners to help with logistics and marketing.
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