Purpose Driven Kids Love Baking Wins SME Enterprise Innovation Award

26 Sep, 2023, No comments

Purpose Driven Kids Love Baking Wins SME Enterprise Innovation AwardLocal baking recipe kits producer and online retailer Britain Loves Baking has won a top accolade at the UK SME Enterprise Awards for their new purpose-driven Kids Love Baking range to add to its collection of other well-deserved awards.

Greater London SME Enterprise Awards launched to showcase the very best of business across the London region and celebrate the talent, entrepreneurship, and resilience of London’s amazing founders over the past year.

Local baking recipe kits producer and online retailer Britain Loves Baking has won a top accolade at the UK SME Enterprise Awards for their new purpose driven Kids Love Baking range to add to its collection of other well-deserved awards.

Founder and CEO of Britain Loves Baking Greg Wixted said: "I am honored that Kids Love Baking has won in the innovation category. We could not believe it especially as we were up against stiff competition and a rigorous judging process.

This project has been a real team effort and driven by our new business strategy of always creating new baking ideas that not only taste good but do good. The new brand and range of affordable purpose-driven educational baking kits for kids aims to teach kids more about where their food comes from and provides the funds to help food charities teach kids to bake for free.”

The SME Awards celebrate the success stories of one of the most important sectors in the UK economy. Small businesses alone account for 99.3% of all private sector businesses, making the sector the beating heart of the UK economy. This year Greater London Awards are dedicated to the achievements of London’s most innovative and creative businesses and their power to truly disrupt their industry

Airplane models to business models

26 Sep, 2023, No comments

This week we announced the launch of Kids Loves Baking. Our new purpose driven baking business dedicated to educating them about where their food comes from and giving them the skills to bake via a network of charity partners, schools community projects and not-for-profits who will benefit from 5% of all revenue.

It will also help disadvantaged young people turn their big food ideas into reality through our Freshly Baked equity of up to £10,000, access to our hyper local supply chain, our digital estate, production knowhow and founders will be supported with mentorship & an entrepreneurship programme similar to the one taught to my students at UNC as well as space within our production facility for up to 1 year for 5% equity.

PUTTING PEOPLE FIRST TO MAKE BAKING AFFORDABLE TO ALL

With today's rising cost of living and the average price of a kids baking subscription costing £132* pounds per year, making it unattainable for some 24 million families in the UK. We put people needs and purpose first over profits and shareholders to make baking affordable with prices average 70% cheaper than online retailers and subscription services.

To achieve that price point we have kept it simple and removed all the faff and expensive packaging that, doesn't really add very much to the baking experience itself. We focus on the quality of the ingredients and teaching kids more about where food comes from, learning new baking skills and helping them to build confidence in themselves and in the kitchen.

REMOVE THE RISK & THE FAILED DELIVERY

One of the biggest risks and costs to eCommerce start-ups are courier companies failed deliveries, theft, loss and damage and for the consumer it’s the delivery charge, To mitigate the risk and costs our new business model only uses couriers for shipping bulk orders to our network of community-based collection points, who will share in the revenue. And by couriers we mean the Royal Mail, as none of the others are regulated and do meet our new supplier standards. We are currently discussing partnerships with charity shops, food banks, churches school, community centers, mums, and dads who will earn up to 15% of the sale in revenue when they join our community collection points network. This model will help provide income and much-needed support to those organisations and people who need it most and lessen the impact a failed first deliveries of damaged and stolen goods by unregulated Courier companies which costs small businesses £770m a year.

PUT EVERYTHING IN THE BOX EXCEPT EGGS

Over the past six months, we have been testing new ideas and products to develop a range of kids baking kits that come with everything weighed out and measured, so there is no stress and no waste. There are no hidden costs or extra items needed, which can add up to 30% of the cost of a subscription box, the only ingredients needed are just a few eggs. The new range will include a fun bread making kit, chocolate and almond shortbread kit and cookie cutter, fruit, nut & oat cookies, orange chocolate cookies a Victoria sponge and a bread-making course made with natural, quality ingredients and no added salt, fat of sugar.

FROM AIRPLANE MODEL TO BUSINESS MODEL

The “Tastes Good, Does Good” business model came about after I started working with ReLondon - a partnership of the Mayor of London and London’s boroughs – on how to reduce waste and create a more sustainable business model. Kids Love Baking has always been bubbling away in the back of my mind. I knew I wanted to make baking more affordable to everyone and I wanted to recreate the same excitement I got as a kid with those magazines you bought and over 2 months you made something. The joy of getting your pocket money, rushing to the shop, picking up a copy, running home and starting to make the wing of plane or door of car. I wanted to do the same but for baking, but without the cost of the magazine, and I wanted a way for kids to make the buying decision, the right food choice and bake what they want. That is simple when you are dealing with a plastic car or plane, not so easy when you’re dealing with food.

At that point I started looking at the role technology had to play in all of this, outside of just building an e-commerce site, it needed to house our baking content, and location services to search for a pickup point or the location of a local baking club or register to become a collection point. Tracking the inbound delivery to the collection point, but also alerting the customers to tell them it is arrived and ready for collection. If we were going to enable kids to shop it had to allow parents to set up a kids’ user account. But only surface products based on product type, ingredient and allergen choice, nutritional value, cost. From there and how many little Tommy could buy a week/ month? or could he be rewarded for going tasks around the house. For our food bank partners who could give boxes to those families who cant afford to buy a box and ensure no kid is excluded and every kid was given the opportunity to learn how to bake and gain a lifelong skill as I did building those bloody airplane wings, which kept falling off!. But I did learn all about aerodynamics and lift, which I put to beneficial use when I trained as a pilot many years later.

It was the output from the time spent and the audit that ReLondon provided that helped me to refine the ideas and produce the delivery model, our overall technology roadmap and freshly baked grants, so I could create a truly sustainable business and revenue share model that will help build a future where nobody goes hungry.

COULD WE ALL HAVE OUR CAKE & EAT?

Of all the businesses I have worked on this one has proved to be the most challenging, after all it's not everyday you sit there and think how "I can develop a business that’s address several huge social issues and be catalyst for change". At the same time develop a fun way that enables kids to start making better food choices and gain new skills. Whist ensuring the business never deviates from its purpose and always puts people first, before profits and shareholders. Let’s be honest notions of “changing the world” and might sound great but a seasoned VC is going to look right past “does good and want to know when and how much profit will you make? Hence, they are more concerned with whether the idea high revenue potential over redressing the issue of food inequality

CAKE SMOTHERED IN GOOD WITH A SPRINKLING OF PROFIT

The “doing good” bit needed to be visionary and have the commerciality needed make enough profit that would enable the business to raise funds grow and scale globally, well if you look below that chart shows you how much 5 nations gave their kids £24.04BN a year ( we decreased it by 10% & took off highest earning households) and on average kids spend 21% on hobbies, education activity & games £5.04BN, but our margin is lower about 11% net add that the 5% equity in our incubated starts-up, more importantly all the good it would do around the world to ensure no one goes hungry including the VC's

With Evri Parcel Lost, Would Regulation Tame The Lawless Parcels Market Or Is There A Better Way?

18 Sep, 2023, No comments

am going to start this article with a shocking number most will know. Five and a half million (one in ten people) have had a parcel lost or stolen in the last year, research by Citizens Advice finds. The cost to businesses is £770m for failed, lost, stolen, or dumped, yes when they take on more than they can handle, but the couriers don't lose out, no they get paid for the one they dumped, and they get paid when you have to resend it and under the current law that cost falls to the retailer. It’s the perfect courier business model, do nothing get paid twice. So, the below won’t really shock you as I know of worse cases than mine.

In a little over 12 weeks, we have lost just under £9,000 thanks to Evri one’s favourite courier company. Yes, I have tried to claim and nothing, I have written to their CEO as the leader of Hermes and as the leader of Evri with their fluffy cuddly new strategy of Doing the Right Thing. well, I must admit from a brand perspective the name Evri, is better than being called after the God of Thieves! But you can’t change a toxic culture overnight or by just changing the name, oh sorry, did I say culture, more like a yeast infection. You can say your brand will always do the right thing, but only if you put the words into action.

But you can’t make such bold statements if you can’t even say sorry or even have a human response to a business customer's complaint email when they have had to refund £3,700 in one weekend, because you screwed up. As a purpose-driven business, we are focused on doing the right thing and if that were my customer, I would be on the phone trying to find out what went wrong and how can we make it right.

What would you do as a business leader if you found out that your staff had lied and for 3 days your customer services told the retailers customers “they never sent the goods”? And to top it off you found out that your retail customer’s staff were called every name under the sun and some over mother's day weekend, knowing it was on you?. Well I would hang my head in shame!

But that lie unraveled really quickly when at 3 pm on that Sunday, Evri one of those 64 customers' mobile phones up and down the country went Ping! Your Parcel is on its way!. A bit late for a fresh afternoon tea which was handed over on Thursday, not to mention the failed collection that saw 50kg of food too in the bin, food waste is a sin in this and age. What made worse was they then took the rest of the week to deliver by now gone off out-of-date unsafe food and had the fxxing cheek to bill me for it.

What happened to them, I hear you ask?. Alas only the God of Thieves knows the answer to that, we have never been told where those boxes went, nor have we been given the vehicle tracking data as requested, nor did 64 customers get a response to their emails or an explanation.

Then some weeks later that same thing. But this time they had the parcels for 11 days and they were for a charity event over the jubilee weekend but after 3 failed collections and a consignment of Ghost Packages went but didn’t arrive before the jubilee and some have never arrived. No apology for ruining the jubilee for 195 families, just back-slapping, yipee we delivered them, so what if they are late they got there didn't they?. So that's what Evri Parcel Lost means when they say they followed their guiding Doing the Right Thing values?

So, as I put it to the CEO in my email that some business cultures can’t be changed with just a name change just Like A Hooker Never Changes Her Knickers, A Leopard Can Never Change Its Spots. And does the threat of me taking them to court make them see the error of their ways and want to Do The Right Thing? ..Nope, my claim would be added to the £30k in outstanding CCJ’s from last month. As it was put to me. For every start-up like yours, there are 10 begging to work with us and you’re not one of nor will you ever be a Vinted, Depop, Next or John Lewis any time soon”

Let me ask does Evri business customer get treated like this? And do the leaders of these large corporates find it acceptable in today’s day and age that their logistics partner can treat others this way or have you sold your corporate soul to the God of thieves in return for cheap deliveries?

The parcels market needs an end-to-end overhaul. The majority of delivery companies receive no penalty for lost or stolen deliveries. Currently, only Royal Mail is subject to fines if this happens, despite 58% of parcels being delivered by other companies. Royal Mail is also the only delivery company to have an Ofcom-regulated complaints process. This neds to happen to all parcel companies, but we need to find new business models that lessen the use of couriers, on top they face fines and even the removal of their operator’s license for the worst offenders because they are one of the biggest single risks to e-commerce start-ups. Here are my 10 valid reasons for regulation.

1. Increased Penalty Costs: Following a missed delivery, consumers today expect either a discount as an apology or a refund of the delivery charges

2. Operational Costs: For every missed delivery, retailers have to pay additional costs for re-delivery

3. Customer Dissatisfaction: When faced with a negative delivery experience, unhappy customers will never trust the retailer again and will avoid shopping with it anytime again in the future. So, if delivery gets missed, it could mean the last purchase made by the customer.

4. Damage to the Retailer’s Brand Reputation/Perception: Missed deliveries not only have cost implications but can also hurt a retailer’s brand reputation. Poor brand perception results in the loss of repeat customers and failure to attract new customers.

5. Poor Online Reviews & Ratings: Online customers are very swift in voting or rating a company/retailer with their clicks based on their experiences.

6. Decreased Customer Retention Rate: Studies indicate that increasing your customer retention rate even by 5% could lead to increased profits by 25% to 95%m, However, late or missed deliveries drastically decrease the customer retention rate of a business because most customers who have a negative delivery experience tend to abandon a business rather than stay on.

7. Increased Cost of New Customer Acquisition: Missed deliveries increase your Customer Acquisition, acquiring a new customer costs anywhere from five to twenty-five times more than retaining an existing one. So, any loss of an existing customer would mean an increased cost of new customer acquisition.

8. Lost Revenues: An existing customer will buy more from you and will also recommend your business more than a new customer. But when deliveries get missed or delayed, customers abandon shopping with that retailer altogether.

9. Ghost Packages: This is where drivers never scan your package and it never arrives, when you complain you meet with “what package “ you never gave it to the driver, the costs are huge when it's Evri consignment as they scan nothing.so they can blame the 3rd party they outsourced it to.

10. Increased Environmental Damage: Environmental experts estimate that with one billion missed deliveries annually, the total amount of carbon emitted due to redelivery is 3,742 metric tons, which 9,050 trees would have cut off over 58 years.

But regulation is one way to tame the courier beast another is innovation and with many innovations coming our way that are not from couriers many by retailers themselves. Self-driving or unmanned vehicles, it could take time for self-driving cars to become the norm on the road, but deploying autonomous semi-trucks seems more possible soon.

Drones offer the potential to provide fast and easy deliveries to congested urban areas that need reduced road transportation and to rural areas that are difficult to access by foot or vehicle.

Pop-up centers - feeding these 10-minute deliveries will be networks of mini urban distribution centers and warehouses. Acting as local neighborhood distribution centres, these pop-up centers will stock a set number of units and be able to service the super-fast deliveries residents and businesses in their immediate vicinity expect.

After our experience and losing over £25k and 100’s of customers in two years for failed deliveries through Fedex, DHL and Hermes/Ervi we decided that it was time to look for a new business model for our brand Kids Love Baking, a truly affordable baking kit business that’s non-subscription as most families can’t afford the £132 average cost of the kids baking box subscription let alone the £3.15 delivery cost.

What if we could reduce the costs to .29p, then we could give it away, but the money we would save we could also pay to our associated collection point. They work similarly to the pickup-in store, except that the store in question can be as well the church, school, home, local store or charity shop near home or work. We plan to recruit a network of partners so that the customer can choose the place that suits best.

Pickup points allow the customer to decide when to pick up their package, without having to stay at home waiting for delivery. By offering several options, they will only have to choose the one that best meets their needs, but we are also giving up to 12% of our revenue to those who need it the most – not couriers or retailers, real people, food banks, charities, community centres etc – no more failed delivers and double bubble revenue to couriers. We believe just like our baking boxes taste good our collection and pick-up will do good for those organizations and people in society that need it the most.

Not only that it allows us to give use 5% of revenue to fund free baking boxes for food banks so all children are armed with the skills to bake no matter their background. And we get to use 10% of revenue to give as grants to help disadvantaged young people turn their big food ideas into a reality. So we help create a future where nobody goes hungry

So yeah for sure regulation would help change their behaviour, but customers can vote with their feet, and walk to their local collection point, which would take from the courier's bank balance and give consumers hard earned money it to someone who cares.

Putting People and Purpose First

17 Sep, 2023, No comments

Putting people & purpose first

We are the only purpose-driven specialty food collective in the UK to use our revenue to create a positive impact in the fight against food poverty and inequality. Unlike large corporations who talk endlessly about doing the right thing, they mean their shareholders, not their customers or society.

DOING THE RIGHT THING

We are not profit & shareholder driven but are a business created with a purpose: to help end food poverty and create a world where no one goes hungry.

we donate baking boxes to anyone who is suffering with their mental health just ask and we will even cover the cost of the postage

We do this by providing 5% of our revenue to food charities for those in need right now.

10% of our revenues go fund and help disadvantaged young people turn their big food ideas into reality through our Freshly Baked Grants, and by offering space in our production facility, training, mentorship, supply chain & customer access, and know-how. so they can grow a successful business

they will donate 15% of their revenue so together we can all help create a future where nobody goes hungry

why ? because it's the right thing to do

Committed to helping our planet

10 Jul, 2023, No comments

Committed to helping our planet

We are committed to following, improving and promoting good sustainability practices throughout our activities. We use Climate Essentials an online carbon management system that makes our road to net zero and climate action easy by measuring, managing, and reducing emissions.

OUR PRINCIPLES:

Adherence to all regulatory or legal requirements relevant to our industry, in particular relating to the safety of the food we serve.

We pay above the London Living Wage and pay for staff travel and we offer all our staff free boes for our mindful banking kits

We operate a Hyper short supply chain, in fact, it's 810m long, and all our food is sourced from the street we audit them to ensure they pay the London living wage

we do not use any unregulated courier companies or do we do business with companies that use Eevri or YODE

viable purchase goods sourced within the UK

Develop our client portfolio as close to our premises as possible Maximise the efficiency of fuel used by our vans

Minimise energy consumption by use of the best available technology Purchase energy from a 100% UK renewable electricity supplier

create Maintain zero to landfill waste management, this includes branded doggie boxes at each event so guests can take yummy food home or sell on to good to go