Pip & Nut founder: 'Get good people around you, get good mentors, get a good network and find your tribe'

From humble beginnings blending nuts in her kitchen and selling her wares on market stalls, Pip & Nut is now a nationally listed brand available in supermarket stores across the country.

Born from a desire for a less processed peanut butter to fuel her during her marathon training, Murray rolled up her sleeves and made her own product that eschewed ingredients such as palm oil that had been linked to deforestation.

With no experience within the food and drink experience to fall back on, Murray worked to surround herself with the people who could share their knowledge on navigating the industry, advice she shared with any start-up trying to make it in the sector.

“Get good people around you, get good mentors, get a good network and find your tribe,” ​said Murray. “When you are starting something up, ask for advice and eventually there will be a tipping point where go from feeling like a bit of an outsider to suddenly understanding all the acronyms and jargon and it all becomes familiar.​

‘Jump in the deep end’

“There’s only really one way to do that and that’s to jump in at the deep end and start giving it a go. From my perspective, some of the things I’ve found most beneficial within my career were having a strong network and having access to people who can help and support and give guidance on the way.”​

As woman in food and drink manufacturing, Murray has had to face the hard truth that it is an industry dominated by men. While she didn’t speak of any persecution from her peers because of her gender, the presence of just one gender has created some disconnect in meeting rooms.

“In those sorts of environments, I’ve certainly had my own experiences of going into investment rounds and meeting only meeting men of a certain age and demographic on those meeting rooms,” ​Murray explained.

“What that means is you get one perspective and it’s also harder to find a balance and connection with everyone around the room when everyone is one type of person. On the flip side, there is a real strength in the community of women-led businesses.”​

People first

Despite the brand being named after herself, Murray admits that people don’t often connect the two to each other. In many ways, she’s glad that the two are separate entities, but that doesn’t stop her beliefs bleeding into the business ethos.

However, she’s quick to remind others that there are real people behind the brand.

“People buy from people. When you’ve got a person and a kind of humanness behind the brand, I think that really helps resonate with consumers on a level that a bigger corporate with struggle with,” ​Murray added. “When you’re a purpose driven brand and you have a passion behind what you’re doing, it’s quite infectious.”​

“When you’re a small business with a small budget up against brands that have more money than you, every touchpoint has to be really distinctive. You strive to be a disruptive and unique as you can possibly be to create emotional response from people.​

“When you’re a smaller business, you tend to pay more attention to all the little details because they really do matter and build up to more than the sum of their parts.” ​

Meanwhile, Food Manufacture hears from Wycliffe Sande​​, the founder of Blue Turaco, a 100% speciality Ugandan Robusta and the first Black-African owned coffee brand to be listed in UK supermarkets.