Now, who doesn’t love a bit of ketchup or mayo – the perfect partner for so many foods. We certainly do, and that’s why we were extremely excited to catch up with Frankie Fox, the Co-Founder of The Foraging Fox, a multi-award winning All Natural condiments brand. Their business ethos is all about ‘Better Ingredients: Better Taste: Better for you’. Frankie talks to us about launching a food brand in the UK and overseas, and gives us some top tips for securing business funding.
What inspired you to create the product and the brand name?
The name of our brand is in homage to my late father – Roland Fox, a plant and mushroom specialist and the original Foraging Fox. The product was borne from a glut of beetroot from our kitchen garden and a kitchen project to teach my children about food and how to cook. A life skill in my opinion.
What’s next for your brand?
Despite the recent media about Millennial’s killing mayonnaise, Brits love their mayo and we felt for a long time that the category has lacked a natural alternative and real flavour innovation consumers are looking for.
How have activities such as Ocado Top Producer, Pitch at the Palace and Virgin Startup helped you grow The Foraging Fox?
There are so many fantastic opportunities out there to get listings and promote your business in both the UK and abroad. We relish and seize any and every chance to pitch our products and build our business profile, and these activities have been a great way to open doors.
What is your proudest achievement for the business so far?
Getting scaled production from a recipe devised on an AGA for one, of course closely following by a listing in Wholefoods in the USA. It was such a huge leap for our business and our aspirations for the brand.
What is your top tip for any food brand looking to launch?
Do your homework first – this needs to come before anything else. You need to be asking yourself – Is there a gap in the market for your product? Decide what your goal is for the business and how you are going to get there. Do your numbers stack up? On the branding, in the words of Oscar Wilde: Be yourself – everyone else is taken! Authenticity is key for any new brand.
Congratulations on securing your £700K funding. What are your top three tips for securing funding for a business?
- Business fundraising is very time-consuming so if you have already launched your business work out how you are going to manage the running of your business during the fundraising process.
- Decide what you need the funding for, how much you will need and who you want to raise cash from as there are various different channels available all with different pros and cons.
- Do your homework, crunch the numbers and have a concrete and comprehensive business case. Practice your pitch and persevere.
With exported sited as a key growth area for your brand, what resources have you found useful?
DIT (Department of International Trade) have been enormously helpful for Export, Open to Export and so have the British Library, Enterprise Nation and Virgin Startup for other resources to help grow our brand.
What are you top consideration for exporting?
We have been incredibly lucky in that we have excellent export partners and have been given an enormous amount of support from DIT.
What is your perfect pairing with a Foraging Fox ketchup?
Cauliflower Cheese, it’s my guilty pleasure.
If you’ve enjoyed reading this interview, then you can find out more about Frankie and The Foraging Fox here at Foraging Fox, where you can also view the fabulous range of ketchups and mayos.