Name
Johan Bülow
Age
40
Job title
Founder and creative director
Company and location
Lakrids by Bülow, Denmark
Education
Being from such a small island community in Bornholm, you have a very great urge to distinguish yourself and do well as an Islander. Over just three years, my little school with about 150 pupils hatched out a liquorice-maker, the restaurant Kadeau (named as one of the world’s 50 best restaurants), the singer Aura, and the entrepreneur Nicolas Michelson, the man behind the company AirHelp, which has been named by CNN as one of the world’s 30 most promising new businesses.
Favourite food/drink?
I believe food is deeply connected to experiences, like going out into the forest and picking mushrooms with my family. It’s a sensory journey; being out there, finding little gems, preparing them, and serving them on toasted sourdough bread for example. We used to do this on Bornholm where I grew up. It created a whole experience that required effort and involvement. For me, food is organic, simple and real. It’s all about the experience and should be done properly and thoroughly.
What inspired you to enter F&B?
As a child I grew up in something you could in many ways call an entrepreneur community. Close to my childhood home was a micro-brewery, a chocolate factory, an ice cream factory, a sweet factory, and a glass-blowing workshop.
My mother is one of the most entrepreneurial people I know. As young as the age of 16 years, she borrowed money from her father to start a grill bar in Denmark. She then threw her interest into glassblowing, and right now she is involved in bead production in Ghana.
From a young age, my mother always told me: “If it feels like work, you are doing it wrong”. She has inspired me greatly, and given me the love of entrepreneurship as a way to live out one’s childhood play and dreams.
One summer, in my early 20s, I travelled to Bornholm with my now wife, Sarah, to visit my family and see my uncle’s new sweet shop, where he cooked and sold handmade sweets. I saw how tourists were intrigued by the smell, encouraging them to come inside the store and taste the products. It was fascinating, the way the consumers interacted with the product and how the experience affected their curiosity. This inspired my idea to create Lakrids by Bülow.
I always loved liquorice but felt that there was so much more that could be done with the unique flavour. As someone who loves to challenge the status quo, I set myself a mission: to elevate liquorice into a gourmet experience.
Each time I make a new flavour, I am continuing to challenge the industry.
Tell us about your role
My role as the founder and creative director of Lakrids by Bülow is all about leadership responsibility for my employees and to run the business day-to-day, however I have tried to place myself in the organisation so that I am a very product-focused leader. I’m not the man who runs through the figures in the greatest detail and lists our KPIs; instead, I’m the man who runs about all the time and gets involved in everything that’s happening in the company.
There is still a great deal of entrepreneurship in the job I have. What matters most to me is that we create something that I can see people around the world getting excited about over and over again, through the thousands of liquorice tastings we conduct daily.
I’m still super intrigued by a product [one of ours] like Sour Strawberry, where no one questions the liquorice inside – it’s become a huge hit, rethinking what we have done before, a more international product with the sweet red liquorice inside and tart strawberries, while staying true to our brand identity.
A product like this has been on a journey throughout our community, from first being tested by our amazing taste panel, ‘Lakrids Lovers’, with more than 130,000 members, to now becoming one of our most popular seasonal limited editions.
I love seeing how that mechanism works and how it’s proving strategically the journey we create. I’m not a big fan of KPIs, but I am obsessed with seeing how things move, for example in our retail stores. They drive our brand with liquorice tastings every day.
What does a typical day look like?
My day usually starts around 6am to have time to eat breakfast with my family before going to the liquorice factory. Talking about the day ahead over breakfast with my wife and kids is the most important time for me!
At the factory I often have meetings with the creative team about product development, whether this be to plan a seasonal range with new tastes, or if we want to make tweaks to our existing flavours. We also discuss alternative ways of packaging, constantly testing redesigns that use less packaging seeking to improve our use of materials by experimenting with new, sustainable materials.
I am also always testing products. Our head of product development, Francisca, brings new experiments to my desk every day, and I give my input for small tweaks. I love this. We are experimenting with everything from taste, colours, shades, crunch, texture, bite and so on!
I often leave the factory around 3pm to have time to be with my kids after school and then work again in the evening once they are put to bed.
How did you get to where you are today?
I have always had a love for liquorice, so I threw my attention into making a slow crafted version using only high-quality ingredients. I spent an entire year, tucked away in my mother’s kitchen, trying to perfect the ultimate recipe and elevate the sweet into a gourmet experience. That year, we came up against a few challenges, specifically perfecting the recipe, but I was so driven. Each time I failed, the passion to succeed was greater, and I’d try again. We also had trouble finding someone to produce our first liquorice machine.
In 2007, I opened my first store in Bornholm at the age of 23 years old. It was received extremely well, and in 2008 I began creating chocolate-coated gourmet liquorice, now our bestselling product. Today we proudly still produce all our products locally in Denmark in our factory just outside Copenhagen.
Instead of investing in advertising, we then created a huge sampling campaign, because for us, the proof is in the taste. We know that liquorice is a flavour that divides opinion and the only way we could convert the haters was to get them to try it. The realisation of people actually enjoying their first Lakrids by Bülow is incredibly powerful. Then, we let word of mouth do its job which remains crucial in helping our brand grow today.
Curiosity drove me to start Lakrids by Bülow, and continues to drive us still, along with our passion to create the world’s best liquorice. We are constantly challenging ourselves and evolving our business, and everything from the product to the production chain is thought through every single day with a common desire to achieve our mission to make the world love liquorice – one liquorice at a time.
When you’re having a bad day, what cheers you up?
Working out or spending time with my family.
What’s your favourite part about the food sector?
This may sound philosophical, but I am proud to be part of a company that delivers a physical product you can feel, taste, and have an opinion about.
I love seeing how people look at our products on a shelf and interact with them because I know how thorough we have been in development and all the different migrations each product has been through. I have friends working in tech, dealing with numbers on a screen.
In contrast, we must hold ourselves accountable for producing tangible, quality products, and to the suppliers around the world who provide our raw materials.
Our recent B-Corp certification is a testament to this commitment, striving to be better each day. We’re not perfect, but we work every day to improve, always aiming to do our best.
If you could change one thing about the F&B sector what would it be?
The sector often seeks the consumer’s opinion rather than creating something itself. Take weight loss products, for example; they have spread all over the world because there is a demand for it. However, I believe we should focus on uncovering what the consumer doesn’t yet know they want, instead of simply catering to their existing desires. Is it challenging? Yes! But I strive to anticipate future needs and trends. It’s easy to ask consumers directly, but much harder to determine what’s on the next page. We should aim to redefine what is delicious and real and make it better for the world, utilising the many real ingredients out there, and we have the opportunity to use them to create superior products.
What’s next for you/what’s the dream?
The dream is, and has always been to make the world love liquorice – one liquorice at a time. We have already changed the way Danes view liquorice, and the UK has become one of our top focuses. We were thrilled to announce the launch of our first permanent stores across London last year, and we’ve seen a significant increase in brand awareness in the UK, rising from 4% in 2022 to 11% in 2023 among our target consumers. This is the highest growth of all global markets where our brand is available, alongside a triple-digit increase in UK sales in the first three months of 2024. We’re excited to continue this growth in the UK and beyond, eager to see what the future holds.
Another big dream of mine is to expand further into the United States. We’re currently focusing on developing products that resonate with that audience, as we believe there’s huge potential for our brand there. We can’t wait to enhance our e-commerce presence and to hopefully open physical stores in the US one day.
