Female food founders build supportive WhatsApp network

Whilst any entrepreneur will no doubt be excited to start their own business, you’d be forgiven for finding it a daunting prospect at the same time.

The food and drink sector is a notoriously tricky beast, with eye-watering regulations, paperwork and technicalities galore. So having not just a trustworthy sounding board, but one that understands the processes is somewhat of an imperative.

Earlier this year, Food Manufacture met with four female food founders who have done just that. Using a Whatsapp group to keep connected, these leaders have created a central place to ask questions and gain support from one another.

The group – dubbed M-squared (named after a social gathering they’d planned, comprising both margarita drinks and margarita pizzas) – was started by Hedié Rhodes and Ros Heathcote, founders of Husk & Honey and Borough Broth respectively. Today, the group’s members have reached double figures, comprising both those who own factories and those who outsource – and they are all women.

In an exclusive roundtable, Food Manufacture was joined by M-squared members Rhodes and Heathcote, as well as Ellie Brown, founder of The Kinda Co; and Nicola Elliott, founder of Single Variety, to find out more about their self-made support network.

Setting the scene, the four explained the kinds of topics the Whatsapp group will see in a typical day.

“We have had questions which a lot of people would find quite boring – how much do you pay for your pallet; we’re trying to get a listing here – is it a good shop or have you had problems getting paid by them; how much did your insurance cost this year; who is your bookkeeper,” the quartet rattled off, explaining that the reassurances and recommendations from the group saves a great deal of time and aggravation.

While the members of the Whatsapp group all operate UK F&B businesses, none of them are competitors. In fact, much of the time they complement one another, with Brown saying she will often throw in a freebie from a fellow female founder into her own product offering.

“We have a cheese club. We send a box of different cheeses and we feature a brand we love every month. I put in a brand of Single Variety one month,” Brown explained. “I love to support female founded businesses - I love even more to feature my friends’ businesses. Next month we’re doing Spice Box dhals [acquired recently by Borough Broth].

“A lot of our customers, they love an artisan, small business. There’s so much cross pollination of customers.”

The group have also found that they can often split resources – such as sharing a baker – or find nifty shortcuts.

“This is where our group can come in useful – two people in the same boat, and we can share someone,” Brown said.

“I actually ended up making products the same size as Ellie and that fast-tracked me onto having the right box,” Heathcote added.

A safe place

One of the reasons for the group is to act as a safe place for honest chat, as Brown explained: “This is still a very male dominated industry. When you’re negotiating a contract or looking at machinery, it’s always men you’re dealing with. Having a safe place to ask questions without feeling stupid or embarrassed because you don’t know something just makes such a difference.”

And as the saying goes – there is no such thing as stupid questions. In fact, if Elliott hadn’t felt safe enough to ask a question, she may have found herself in a completely different situation.

“Nicola and I both got caught out by con artists,” Heathcote recalled.

“They make manufacturing equipment for SMEs; they promise to make a machine and it never works. Their whole MO [modus operandi] – at least with me – was to be like ‘well little lady’. If I asked a question like, ‘how does that work?’, they were like ‘oh don’t worry about that, we’re engineers’. It was very patronising. Looking back on it, they really took advantage of that.

“I gave them £25k for a machine and it never worked, it just sat there.”

Separately, Elliott had come across the same company; and while her experience was less condescending – which she ventured may have been because she was accompanied by her husband – she said they came across extremely confident.

“I went with Ross, they weren’t like that to us but there were still very much –” she paused, trying to find the words, “ – well, we believed them.”

She had been about to hand over £30k but something in her gut told her to check-in with M-squared.

“We were so excited to buy this new filling line and I was about to send them the money,” Elliott said, casting a glance in Heathcote’s direction. “Thank God we spoke.”

She added: “If you don’t have contacts elsewhere to talk to, then you trust what people [providers] tell you.”

Leading a business as a woman

While the four women said that, overall, their experiences of sexism have been far and few between, there have been several occasions where they felt belittled – particularly in the early days.

Brown recalled the early days of her business when she was almost convinced to give away a huge chunk of her business for £25k.

“When I first started, I won this competition which was actually asking me to give away a part of my business for £25K – which was a terrible deal. And all these guys, industry experts, were like you’ve won, you’re going to get this money, what an investment in your business!

“Luckily, I spoke to someone right at the last minute and then pulled out.

“I’ve grown so much throughout the process of having a business and I know my mind. I think a lot of soft skills are female traits, like being able to listen and communicate well. Not saying men can’t do this, but I think they’re more nurtured in women.

“Running a business is basically having relationships with people – your customers, your buyers, your suppliers. A lot of issues can be solved with your staff just by having a chat with them rather than telling them what to do.

“Apart from the early days, I haven’t had any bad experiences. I am hesitant to say it, because I don’t know how well it reflects on me, but sometimes because I’m a woman people bend over backwards to help me. Sometimes people want to help you out more because they’re like ‘she’s just a little woman, she doesn’t know what she’s doing’ and I’ll take it.”

“Really early in the business, I was at a market stall and this man came over to me and just ripped my business to shreds,” Elliott added on her own experiences.

“He said he worked in branding and to contact him and he’d help. And I just remember standing there so shocked. And then I looked at his card and the branding was horrendous! Luckily, there’s nothing that sticks to mind since then.”

Reflecting on her experience, Heathcote explained that as she had moved from one male dominated sector (IT) to another (food), she had become accustomed to asking for help without feeling embarrassed.

“I am very confident in saying ‘I don’t know how to do this, can someone help me’. I remember calling up an equipment company and saying, I want to put broths and vegetables together in a large vessel, what would you call that?” she laughed.

“Being a female leader, it can be really good,” interjected Rhodes. “With a lot of people, they can respond to it in a really positive way. When you get kudos and respect from people, that can be reassuring.”

“I do think the playing field needs to be levelled,” continued Heathcote. “So I think there is something to be said for supporting women and giving more opportunities. I know a handful of female founders looking for male co-founders because women tend to get less investment. That’s not in food, that’s in tech - but I think it works across any industry.

“But personally, day-to-day, it doesn’t really affect me that I am a woman. My operations director is a woman and I didn’t even think about that when I hired her.”

Rhodes agreed, saying that although the gender gap cannot be ignored, the ‘big fight’ has already happened. “We’re coming in at the end of the conversation.”

“There’s bigger, broader issues like childcare,” Brown added. “A lot of us don’t have kids [in M-squared]. Running a business is so all-encompassing…

She turned to Elliott and said: “I don’t know how you do it. You’ve got twin children and I have a dog and sometimes I feel like I’m doing a bad job.”

“The first few years after having Alan – that’s our eldest – I was feeling awful, like I couldn’t give the business what it needed,” Elliott retorted. “I have so many ideas and so much I want to do and I just can’t. I have just come to the realisation that the business is going to grow much slower than if I have more time to give it. I’ve just had to accept that.”

How did it all start?

With running a business entailing a lot of hard work - what actually motivated the quartet to do it in the first place and then decide to manufacture in-house?

Like many entrepreneurs, the first spark was ignited when they saw a gap in their respective markets. Moving production in-house was about owning their vision.

“I loved cheese and ate a lot of it growing up a vegetarian in the 90s, however when I stopped eating dairy I couldn’t find an alternative that hit the spot, so I started making my own. I would get requests from friends to buy my cheeses and the business grew from there,” Brown explained.

“I basically invented a process and when I first started outsourcing no one understood what I wanted to do. I just thought it would be easier to make it myself!”

For Rhodes, her food business was built on curiosity: “I love manufacturing and I am exceptionally interested in how things are made, particularly food. I love the manufacturing process of the food, seeing what can go in, how boundaries can be pushed, and even arguably nerdy things like process efficiency and streamlining, how can it be better, faster, stronger, easier etc.”

Heathcote explained that she had always been passionate about food and a chance meeting with a butcher, who admitted that his abattoir incinerated their bones, gave her inspiration.

“I immediately saw an opportunity to save these bones from becoming waste and turn them into a wholesome, nutrient-dense ingredient,” she said. “After experiencing the health benefits of bone broth first-hand, I realised there was a gap in the market for high-quality, organic options. Borough Broth started as a way to bring these nutritious products to a wider audience, focusing on traditional slow-cooking techniques but in a modern, convenient format. The desire to create something meaningful and sustainable is what really drove me to start my own business in food and drink.”

She continued: “I couldn’t find anyone who could make this product. I wanted to be organic certified – there’s hardly any factories that are organic and that’s really important to me, especially with meat. I remember one soup producer saying to me, we gave bone broth a try and my staff nearly walked out because it was just too messy.

“I’m a control freak and a massive spreadsheet nerd and actually got super excited about creating processes and figuring out yields. Now I love it and would never dream of paying anybody else to touch it.”

“I had a love of food and chemistry so I studied Food Science at Leeds University, which led to jobs in both manufacturing (Northern Foods) and retail (Sainsbury’s, Waitrose and Selfridge) in product development and buying roles,” Elliott shared.

“However I always wanted to have my own food business. On holiday to Sri Lanka in 2015 I had the most incredible passionfruit jam for breakfast, I came home, was inspired to start making jam and developed our Single Variety Co brand, got a pitch at a local farmers market and started there!”

On her decision to move production in-house, it was centred around control and cost: “The reason we brought it in house is because the manufacturer we were working with didn’t want to do anything more complicated. I really wanted to make something I was proud of. There are so many brands out there that aren’t making their products.”

Moreover, during Covid she also saw supply issues, with the manufacturer struggling to keep up with demand.

Heathcote agreed: “You hear all these horror stories from brands, if you’re not top of the pecking order on their white label list. It happened to a member of a group who struggled with supply. You have no control. If they say they can’t make it for a bit, you are at their mercy.”

But it’s not all about creating products, it’s also about creating career opportunities.

“I’ll tell you what I love, which makes me happy, is creating jobs,” Heathcote added.

“When you’re a brand, there’s only so many marketing roles you can have, but when you scale manufacturing, you’re creating a lot more jobs, often for people that need the work.

“I think the hard part is making responsible decisions from a HR perspective for your staff, but also making sure it’s sustainable business. A lot of us were told by bigger people, when you present your business to a panel of experts, they say that’s not going to work at scale. You can’t patent that properly, you can’t charge people what you’re charging, you can’t make that in the UK. You’re told it won’t work. That’s really hard to just push through.

“There is no blueprint for doing this either. We’re all challengers in our space and we’re trying to do things differently. I think maybe because we’re women, we’re already starting off on the back foot. So then we just have to keep challenging everything.”

Support for female-led businesses

Of course not everyone will have their own version of M-squared, but the group agreed there is now much more support for women in business.

“There’s a lot of other initiatives now that really like championing female brands and where you can ask questions in a more public space. “It’s amazing that there is that resource there now,” Brown said.

On starting a business, she said she would “encourage any other female founder to really go for it” stressing the importance of finding a trusted person in the industry.

“Even if you have one person that makes you feel so much better if you are having a stressful day,” Brown said. “The amount of times I’ve rung Ros and been like ‘can I just run this by you?’ Having some kind of camaraderie can just be a huge support. As much as you can have supportive friends and family, they can’t always understand.”

For Heathcote the advice for fellow female entrepreneurs is to follow your gut: “Every time something’s made me feel uneasy, there’s a reason - even if you can’t explain it.”

The businesses behind the women

Borough Broth

About the business: London-based, B-Corp certified Borough Broth is an organic food business that specialises in creating slow-cooked bone broths, organic fats, and convenient ready-made meals. Its ethos is centred around quality, sustainability and using 100% organic British ingredients. It operates out of its production kitchen and warehouse in Greenford, Ealing, London, where we strive to balance traditional slow-cooking methods with modern convenience.

Established: 2015

Employees: Currently at 35 full-time employees, including warehousing team, production crew, finance, operations, and marketing teams. Certain areas of the business are outsourced, which expand total workforce to around 45 people.

Size of site: 15,000sq ft

Capacity and output: Currently produces around 40-50 tonnes of broth per month. This allows the business to supply both small and large retailers across the UK and meet growing demand for healthy, organic products. The business has the ability to more than double that in its current facility, with planns to move to a larger facility in 2026.

Investment: Initially, Heathcote borrowed £6k to buy first set of equipment and set up the business. Launched online and shortly after in Selfridges. Over the first two years, she ran the business alongside her full-time job, reinvesting anything the company made. After that, she took £125k in investment from friends and family to move to its last scaled-up kitchen. Since then, it has taken around £550k in additional angel investments to scale operations in its new site in.

Produces: A range of organic slow-cooked bone broths, fats, and convenient ready-made meals under the Borough Broth brand. Additionally, under its sister brand, SpiceBox, it offers a line of organic dals and curries inspired by traditional recipes. All its products replicate scaled home-made recipes, with slow-cooking at the heart. Every ingredient used mirrors what consumers would be able to use at home.

Products sold via: Sold across the UK through retailers such as Waitrose, Ocado, Planet Organic, Whole Foods, and various independent health food stores, delis, and butchers. It also has a direct-to-consumer channel through its websites.

Single Variety

About the business: Single Variety Co makes fruit preserves and chilli jams that each showcase just a single variety. Multi award winning, the brand is now in more than 500 stockists across the UK, and export to USA and Saudi Arabia, along with having a thriving online business. It also manufactures for foodservice and food manufacturers. The business began is life in London and now operates from its factory in Bristol.

Established: 2016

Employees: Nine

Size of site: 4000sq ft

Capacity and output: At time of interview (26 September 2024), was almost at capacity of 10 tonnes per month, but now filling room has been built (October 2024) it will be able to produce over 25 tonnes per month.

Investment: Reinvestment of profit and most recently a £200k loan from South West Investment Group which will enable the company to build a separate filling room with an automated jar filling line, and a foodservice tub sealing line.

Produces: Single Variety Co brand of premium fruit preserves & chilli jams in 30g, 225g and 1.13kg jars, and 3kg foodservice tubs.

Simply Jam good value range of foodservice jam in 3kg tubs: more fruit than most foodservice jams, clean label (no allergens) and ideal for manufacturers who use jam in their products.

Number of number white label customers which it produces bespoke jam recipes for.

Produce sold via: Independent deli‘s, farm shops, butchers etc across the UK, Waitrose, and through business’s own website.

Husk & Honey

About: Husk & Honey is the UK’s first and only dedicated bakery for premium, tray-baked granola. An independent producer of premium cereals – mainly granola, it has developed hundreds of recipes (more than 613) and continues to develop and test the boundaries. This London-based manufacturer has a core range of 5 granola blends, porridges and cereals which it retails directly to customers as well as in bulk for food service. It also boasts a range of monthly rotating ‘specials’ for the granola. The business often collaborates with other brands to create interesting cereals, as well as developing and producing for establishments (a recent example being two granola flavours for Youngs pubs).

Established: 2017

Employees: Four

Size of site: Approximately 100sq m

Capacity and output: Estimated to be two tons of granola a month, plus some other cereals/porridges etc.

Investment: Around £5k

Produces: Best known for its granola but also make four porridge blends and cereals like puffed honey and orange blossom rice, and puffed cacao. It also retails some complementary products but doesn’t make these (such as enamel mugs and glass granola jars).

Sold via: All over the UK across 100+ sites as well as via its website.

Kinda Co

About: Makes award winning dairy-free cheese. It blends authentic cheese making methods of culturing with new techniques and use cashews as a base to make its range of vegan cheeses.

Established: 2017

Employees: Eight

Size of site: 2,000sq ft

Capacity and output: Around 10,000 cheeses a month.

Investment: Fully bootstrapped and self-funded so far!

Produces: A range of 12 core cheeses with seasonal limited editions. Its best selling cheeses are Farmhouse (a cheddary flavour), Summer Truffle, and Smoked.

Sold via: Abel & Cole, Selfridges, Planet Organic, and premium independents nationwide. Plus a new grocery listing in 2025!