Rhythm 108 - Siddhi Mehta
People Doing Things
In this episode we are taking a look at the ‘little everyday luxuries’ quietly taking over the UK retail aisle with Siddhi, founder of Rhythm 108. Siddhi started her career far away from the food industry, working as an investment analyst in Mumbai. But a relocation to Switzerland inspired a massive career pivot. Embracing the slower, Alpine pace of life, she fell in love with the historic Swiss culture of craftsmanship and patisserie - and noticed a glaring gap in the market. Traditional chocolate was legendary, but it wasn't built for a modern generation demanding clean ingredients,...
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Spudos - Del Currie
People Doing Things
In this episode we are reinventing the humble crisp packet and talking about the brutal reality of viral scale with Del Currie, the founder of Spudos. In the UK alone, we buy roughly 6 billion bags of crisps a year, and the average packet takes about 80 years to decompose because it cannot be recycled. Del didn’t set out to fix this because of a lifelong background in food manufacturing. He actually runs Analog Republic, a custom app development agency building tech for clients ranging from the Foo Fighters and Kanye West to Stanford University. But when his daughter opened a zero-waste...
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The Heart Cut - Georgie Bell
People Doing Things
In this episode we are swapping the scroll for a moment of pause with Georgie Bell, co-founder of The Heart Cut - an independent bottler that is democratising the whisky industry for a new world. Historically, independent bottling was reserved for the 0.1% niche of traditional whisky drinkers. It was a bit dusty, heavily reliant on third-party cask brokers, and the true story of the distillery was often lost along the way. Georgie and her husband, Fabrizio, saw an opportunity to zag against tradition and do things a little differently. Georgie is a whisky prodigy. Starting her career as a...
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Spice Dept - Rupert Derham
People Doing Things
Here we look inside the dustier corners of our kitchen cabinets with Rupert Derham, the founder of Spice Dept - the brand redefining the spice aisle through particular quality. As a generation of home cooks, we care where our ingredients come from. The origins of our olive oil. The provenance of our heirloom beans. Our sourdough, made locally, ideally by someone we could name. But when a recipe calls for smoked paprika or ground cumin, we head to the supermarket aisle and grab whatever generic glass jar is closest. The unfortunate truth: most supermarket spices are already three to five...
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Better Sundays - Tarek Moursi
People Doing Things
Welcome Tarek Moursi, the founder of Better Sundays - the hard kombucha brand proving that you don’t have to choose between a good time and a good gut. We’ve spent the last decade watching the ‘low and no’ category take off, and while it’s great for a Tuesday night, sometimes you still want a drink - you just don’t want the beer bloat or the sugar-laden cider crash. Enter the ‘healthy hedonist’. Reflecting the cultural shift that’s happening where drinkers are moving away from the ‘all or nothing’ mentality and looking for what Tarek calls ‘sessionable’ alternatives...
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JENKI - Claudia Boyer
People Doing Things
Say hello Claudia Boyer, co-founder of JENKI - the UK’s favourite matcha brand, coming to a high street near you. Swapping the coffee jitters for a ‘calm focus’. As a coffee lover, I’ve always been curious (yet skeptical) of matcha. Isn’t it just ‘green tea’ rebranded for a new generation? For those who want to feel focused, not wired - swapping bean origin and moka pots for function and status - antioxidants and L-theanine, with an aesthetic that says ‘we’re on top of a chaotic life, not part of it’. This culture shift is a massive business opportunity. The UK matcha...
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Spill - Lou Cheadle and Sofia Buttarazzi
People Doing Things
Say hello to Lou and Sofia, co-founders of SPILL - the tea brand on a mission to 'spill the tea' on a broken global industry. We’ve all been there: standing in the supermarket aisle, reaching for a box of bags for a couple of quid. It’s convenient, it’s ‘British’, but as Lou and Sofia realised, it’s dull and ethically murky. That's because most 'everyday' tea is a blend of hundreds of cheap leaves, processed to the point where the flavour (and the farmer’s pay) - is stripped away. Lou is a tea heavy weight by trade. A former buyer at Tetley who went on to co-found Teapigs and...
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The Pass - Joseph De Klee
People Doing Things
Say hello to Joseph De Klee, the founder and publisher of The Pass - the tabloid publication staging a coup against the shallow scroll of the hype-led algorithm. Since the rise of fast-form, video-based social content, we’ve been ‘robbed’ of honest restaurant reviews. We’ve traded hard graft for hype, and the beauty of the written word for the ‘like’ button. It’s a landscape where the algorithm dictates our appetite, leaving us with a digital dining scene that’s lost its soul. Joseph saw this digital decay and decided to go analog. He’s created a nostalgic enclave for those...
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Wahaca - Mark Selby
People Doing Things
Introducing Mark Selby, the co-founder and CEO of Wahaca - the brand that sparked the UK’s Mexican food revolution. The big, bland problem: Back in 2007, the UK was stuck in a Tex-Mex time warp. Think heavy cheese, stodgy nachos, and sombreros. It was a caricature of a culture that deserved better. Mark and his co-founder Thomasina Miers saw this gap and turned it into a movement, bringing the vibrant, fresh, and zesty "market-style" food of Oaxaca to the streets of London. Today, Wahaca is much more than a restaurant; it’s a blueprint for regenerative hospitality. But as the...
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Roots Allotments - Christian Samuel
People Doing Things
Say hello to Christian Samuel, one of the great minds behind Roots Allotments, the brand that is completely reimagining local allotments for the 21st century. The big muddy problem: gargantuan waiting lists up and down the country. With the average waiting time being 2 years and some taking as long as 17 years - making it almost impossible for most people to grow their own food in the UK, made worse by the steep learning curve that often discourages beginners. Roots Allotments saw this problem and turned it into an exciting movement - the no dig revolution. Founded by a team of friends...
info_outlineHere we look inside the dustier corners of our kitchen cabinets with Rupert Derham, the founder of Spice Dept - the brand redefining the spice aisle through particular quality.
As a generation of home cooks, we care where our ingredients come from. The origins of our olive oil. The provenance of our heirloom beans. Our sourdough, made locally, ideally by someone we could name. But when a recipe calls for smoked paprika or ground cumin, we head to the supermarket aisle and grab whatever generic glass jar is closest. The unfortunate truth: most supermarket spices are already three to five years old before you buy them. And by the time they hit your plate the flavours have already started to fade.
Rupert lived in Delhi, where cooking with vibrant, peak-season, single-origin spices changed his relationship with food entirely. When he moved back to the UK, the lack of flavour on supermarket spice aisle drove him mad. So he decided to do something about it. Sourcing directly from pesticide-free farming groups in India and Sri Lanka, Spice Dept gets spices from harvest to kitchen counter in months, not years, and pays farmers up to 40% above market price. Wrapped in beautiful, table-ready tins, courtesy of my branding agency, Roleplay with creative director Hugo Ross at the helm, they're designed to bring back a sense of pride back to home cooking - in more ways than one.
In this episode, we dive into the world of commodity spice blending, the logistics of building a direct-from-farm supply chain, and why your spice rack is the last blind spot in an otherwise carefully considered kitchen.
Put down the dusty jar, grab your pestle and mortar, and enjoy.