[0:32] Darren Jamieson:
This week on The Engaging Marketeer, I’m speaking to a fellow Newportian, Joe Granville from Rogue Welsh Cakes.
Joe set up Rogue Welsh Cakes in partnership with his mother back in 2020, when they both worked in healthcare and decided that, for some reason, 2020 wasn’t the best year to be in healthcare — and that they wanted to set up a Welsh cake baking business.
What possessed them to do that? How have they managed to make the business a success over the last few years? What kind of clients have they got? And just how good are their Welsh cakes?
[0:59] Darren Jamieson:
Fine with me. Sorry, I’m just having my liquid lunch.
[1:03] Joe Granville:
Yeah, liquid lunch.
[1:05] Darren Jamieson:
I would have thought you’d be having Welsh cakes.
[1:09] Joe Granville:
I’m not, actually. Usually Wednesdays are my meeting days, so I do meetings, admin, business development — anything like that happens on a Wednesday. Hence I’m on the move today and in the van.
[1:17] Darren Jamieson:
Right, because it’s got to be difficult being a baker, making Welsh cakes all day, and just not eating them constantly. I would struggle with that personally.
[1:33] Joe Granville:
Yeah, I do struggle with it. I really like savoury foods as well, though. I like a bit of sweet after something really savoury, really heavy. Then I just want a bit of cake, and Welsh cakes are perfect for having just a bit of cake. Two or three warm — lovely.
[1:55] Darren Jamieson:
They are gorgeous warm, aren’t they?
[1:59] Joe Granville:
They’re the best.
[2:01] Darren Jamieson:
Is that the reason you’ve not become a savoury cook? Because then you really would be eating everything.
[2:05] Joe Granville:
I would just be eating all day. It would be hectic. I love cooking savoury food. I love meal prep and I cook for the kids a lot, trying to make every meal they have nice home-cooked food. But I don’t know if I’d want to do it for a living necessarily.
[2:28] Darren Jamieson:
How much time do you actually spend baking?
[2:33] Joe Granville:
It depends week to week. If we’ve got lots of orders on, I’ll spend a good amount of time baking. Some of the busier weeks, Monday is all day making. Wednesday we usually cook postal orders. If there are big orders on, I can cook for four, five, six hours straight in a day.
[3:00] Darren Jamieson:
Wow.
[3:01] Joe Granville:
Just cooking Welsh cakes, cooling them off, packing them up, cooking them, packing them.
[3:06] Darren Jamieson:
And you’ve got a spot in Newport Market, haven’t you?
[3:10] Joe Granville:
We do, yeah. We have our market stall, shop front, and kitchen all at the same time. It’s all cooked in there.
[3:17] Darren Jamieson:
How often is it open? Six days a week?
[3:22] Joe Granville:
Five days, Wednesday through to Sunday. Then we’re there Monday and Tuesday making and prepping anyway.
[3:31] Darren Jamieson:
Because it’s all cooked fresh, and it’s not like the stuff you’d buy in a shop that lasts for five weeks, you’ve got a very short shelf life. How far in advance can you make it and still sell it?
[3:45] Joe Granville:
We’ve got a good thing going with Welsh cakes. Obviously, the fresher they are, the better, but it’s a really good product raw. You can keep them in the fridge for a few days raw. You can keep them in the freezer for a few months frozen raw.
So we can make a lot more than we need day-to-day, and if a big order comes in — 100, 200, 1,000, whatever it is — we can take out freezer stock, cook them fresh, and go from there.
We don’t use any preservatives or additives, but they’re still good for three, four, five days. Even if you just kept them in a biscuit tin, they’re not going to go bad. They just won’t be at their best. If you pack them in really good sealed packaging, they stay pretty fresh. They’re sturdy little cakes.
[4:53] Darren Jamieson:
You mentioned somebody ordering thousands of Welsh cakes. Who’s ordering thousands?
[5:01] Joe Granville:
Quite a few people are ordering the thousands.
[5:05] Darren Jamieson:
Really?
[5:06] Joe Granville:
Yeah. We do lots of corporate events and corporate gifts. It’s a good world to be in.
For example, we work with a lot of events companies. An event company will charge a ticket price — say it’s £30 a ticket — and the people buying the tickets aren’t really buying the tickets. The corporations are buying the tickets for them to go to training, an event, or networking.
So the little gifts included with it are like the “free” tea and coffee in a hotel room, or usually a Welsh cake if you stay somewhere in Wales. It’s not free — you’ve paid for it. It’s included in the ticket price.
[6:00] Darren Jamieson:
It’s complimentary.
[6:03] Joe Granville:
Yeah, it’s complimentary, but you’ve paid for the compliment.
We provide Welsh cakes for that. If you go to a corporate event or networking and you get a goodie bag, they’ve paid us to put the Welsh cakes in, but the corporation you’re representing has paid for the ticket. So it’s a high-spend, high-volume world, and it works really well for us.
We do business with the Welsh Government quite a lot. If they’re showcasing Wales, or doing something in London, they want to bring a little bit of the best of Wales with them.
The biggest order I had to do in a short amount of time was for the Welsh Government. We had to do 1,500 mini savoury Welsh cakes, and they needed to be ready for pickup at Newport Market at 10:00 a.m. I was there from about 3:00 or 3:30 in the morning, just cooking nonstop for hours. Then we followed up to London with loads of produce and Welsh cakes to cook fresh at the market as well. It was insane.
[7:28] Darren Jamieson:
How do you work out the logistics? Not just the costing, but the timing, the packing, the delivery. I watch The Apprentice, and every season they have a task where they pitch to make 300 mini cakes or mini pizzas for an event, and they overpromise something they have no idea how they’re going to deliver. Then they end up delivering 30 and they’re awful.
How do you know you’re going to be able to do over 1,000 Welsh cakes, how long it’s going to take, and that you’re going to maintain the quality throughout?
[8:21] Joe Granville:
That’s a really good question.
[8:24] Darren Jamieson:
I do have them every now and then.
[8:27] Joe Granville:
I think I’ve got this internal alarm clock where I know when the Welsh cakes need flipping. I don’t need a timer anymore.
[8:41] Darren Jamieson:
It’s more art than science now.
[8:44] Joe Granville:
Yeah, it really is. You’ve got a bit of a grace period with a Welsh cake. You don’t want to undercook them and you don’t want to burn them, but you’ve got about 30 seconds either side and they’ll still be good.
I roughly know because we started small. I used to make every single batch by hand. I know they take about seven minutes to cook, so I can work backwards. If I need to deliver 1,500 by a certain time and I can fit a certain number on the cooker, I know roughly how long it will take, give or take time to drink some water and so on. Then there’s a lot of hoping as well.
[9:46] Darren Jamieson:
There’s a bit of hope in there as well, is there?
[9:49] Joe Granville:
There’s a lot of hope going on. I’d love to say anything we’ve achieved was due to well-planned strategic marketing and business prowess, but it’s really not. There’s been a lot of luck, a lot of fortune, much earlier starts than were probably necessary, much later finishes than were probably necessary, and plenty of misjudgments.
My main thing is that I never want to let anyone down. I’ll push through. I’ll do the extra hours, skip meals, be dehydrated — whatever it is, I’ll get it done if I need to.
[10:45] Darren Jamieson:
What sort of early starts are we talking about? You hear stories about bakers being up at 2:00 in the morning. Is that the kind of ridiculous timing for you?
[10:55] Joe Granville:
Not so much. I don’t envy proper bakers, because I wouldn’t consider myself a proper baker. The earliest I’m willing to start is 3:30 or 4:00 a.m., and that’s if I’ve got something big on.
We’ve got a wedding order on Friday. They want about 200, and she’s picking up at 10:00 a.m., so I’ll be in at about 6:00 a.m. for that. That’s not too bad.
Wedding orders have to be really precise. Every single one has to be perfect. I won’t have one that’s smudged or not quite the right shape. You’ve got to give extras as well because of breakages.
[12:00] Darren Jamieson:
If you’re doing them for a wedding, they’re probably going to appear in the photographer’s work at some point as well. If you’re going to get credited with that, they need to be perfect.
[12:08] Joe Granville:
Exactly. I just don’t ever want to let anyone down. I don’t want them to say, “This wasn’t what I thought it was going to be.”
A lot of it is the conversation beforehand — making sure you’re clear about what is going to be delivered, making sure they’ve tested the flavours, and making sure they know what quality to expect. Some people have crazy ideas in their head about what something is going to be, and for £300 it’s not going to be My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding. It’s going to be something else.
[12:48] Darren Jamieson:
Do you get a lot of people wanting Welsh cakes for weddings?
[12:56] Joe Granville:
We get a few. It’s not part of the business we push, because they are quite hard work. There’s a lot of back and forth, and there’s a lot of pressure on the day.
If I messed up someone’s wedding cake, I’d be devastated. So we don’t push it. We put the price a bit higher because there’s more pressure. People complain about wedding prices being higher, but it’s because there’s more pressure on the venues, producers, makers — everyone involved. It’s a lot to deal with, the idea of ruining someone’s wedding day.
So I’ll take extra time, make sure everything is perfect, and put that pressure on myself. That’s why the price goes up compared to a corporate order.
For a corporate order, someone might say, “Can I have 250 packs of these three flavours?” Perfect. They tell us what stickers they want, we pack them, send them off, and they go into goodie bags. It’s not such high pressure.
[14:11] Darren Jamieson:
What’s the split of your revenue, if you’re able to share that, between weddings, sales from the market to consumers, and corporate events?
[14:22] Joe Granville:
I should probably know those figures. Weddings are probably less than 10%.
The remaining 90% is probably about 60% corporate orders and thank-you gifts, and 30% market and consumer sales.
It’s not just big corporate orders. We work closely with a holiday company. When someone comes home from a holiday they’ve booked, a few days or a week later a box of Welsh cakes lands on their doorstep with a thank-you note.
We do that for private health insurance companies, travel companies, IFAs — independent financial advisers. When they take on a new client, they send them Welsh cakes as a thank-you.
[16:00] Darren Jamieson:
How about estate agents and letting agents, for when people buy a new house or tenants move into a new house?
[16:13] Joe Granville:
They are 100% going on my next hit list. They would be great. We’ve just had an estate agent-type person join a networking group I go to, and I’ll be hounding him to take us on.
[16:32] Darren Jamieson:
That’s BNI, isn’t it?
[16:34] Joe Granville:
BNI, yeah. Business Networking International. Shameless plug — I absolutely love it. It’s been amazing for business, not just in terms of revenue, but in terms of making you a better business owner and being better connected.
I can say I have payroll, marketing, a VA — these are all people in my BNI chapter who look after me. I’ve got an HR company. I don’t pay for an HR department, but I pay an HR company to represent us as and when needed.
[17:16] Darren Jamieson:
It’s great having that experience, advice, and expertise on hand when you need it. Normally, if you wanted to speak to a corporate solicitor, HR solicitor, or financial adviser, it would be difficult and expensive. But you can ask a question in the morning and get an answer.
[17:39] Joe Granville:
It’s amazing. I see all of the above every Wednesday morning. They’ll give you their time and help you because you’re part of that group and you turn up every week. I just love it. I can’t sing its praises enough.
[18:02] Darren Jamieson:
It’s interesting with networking groups like that. Typically you’ll get a financial adviser, accountant, solicitor, estate agent. You don’t often get a baker.
In ours, we’ve got a piano tuner and a chainsaw artist.
[18:18] Joe Granville:
No, you haven’t.
[18:19] Darren Jamieson:
We have. We’ve got a chainsaw artist. He’s very well known. He carved the hand that goes up into the heavens out of a tree in Malpas, and he carved a Deadpool that Ryan Reynolds and Channing Tatum were touting around on Instagram a couple of years ago.
So you get some random people. What possessed you, as a baker, to join BNI? How does it work for you? What do you ask for, apart from hungry people?
[18:50] Joe Granville:
We might need to go on a side quest after this interview. I need to speak to the chainsaw artist.
[18:56] Darren Jamieson:
His name’s Simon. I can introduce you to the chainsaw artist.
[19:01] Joe Granville:
I’d love that, because Ryan Reynolds is someone we’ve actually been asking for recently. We want to do a masterclass over in Wrexham for Ryan and the Wrexham football team. That’s who we’ve been asking for recently in BNI. So it’s interesting you mentioned the chainsaw artist and Ryan Reynolds at the same time.
My introduction to BNI was through an event where I was selling Welsh cakes. There was a guy there selling beers, but he did printed labels on his beers from Cardiff.
[19:51] Darren Jamieson:
Bang-On Brewery. Neil, isn’t it?
[19:59] Joe Granville:
Yeah, Neil Randall. Neil was there. He introduced me to a guy who owned a café. Neil was in BNI, but this café owner started buying big bulk orders from us and we did pop-ups in his café. He invited me to BNI.
Neil said, “Ah, he invited you to BNI — you could have been my visitor.”
I was really interested in what Neil did. His story, in a nutshell, is that he couldn’t get the price he wanted for his beer in pubs. He started getting weird requests for pictures printed on bottles of prosecco and beer. He was paying someone else to do the printing and realised he was losing loads of money, so he started doing the printing himself. Now he’s become a printing company slash microbrewery that mainly prints labels onto bottles.
I thought, we kind of have the same clients. Sometimes they want beer, sometimes they want Welsh cakes. We started teaming up. I learned a lot from Neil, we shared clients, and I’d send his beers to my clients and he’d send my Welsh cakes to his clients. We did a lot of client swapping, which was great.
Then I decided to use BNI to build the corporate side of the business. But mainly, what I found and fell in love with was how it built me as a person, a business owner, and a general all-round human being.
All the principles and core values of BNI apply so well to life. They transfer particularly well to business and being a business owner. That’s what I fell in love with.
It took a year for me to really fall in love with that. I’d made enough money from it that I decided to stay. I’m in my third year now, and since then the money has become something I don’t really notice. I look at the figure and go, “That’s nice, I’ve made that much from BNI,” but I’m there for so much more. The money is an afterthought and a bonus.
[22:43] Darren Jamieson:
That’s really interesting, and really common. People join because they want business, clients, money, and referrals. But often they stay for other reasons: advice, support, and the people around them.
If you’re a business owner on your own and you don’t have people to turn to within your business, it can be lonely. BNI gives you that support.
[23:19] Joe Granville:
Definitely. Whenever you renew for another year, they make you stand up and say why you renewed. It’s always the same: “The money’s great, but I’m here for all these other reasons.” It keeps you honest, and I like to be kept honest because I like to be honest.
[23:47] Darren Jamieson:
One thing you should be asking for, if you’re not already, is estate agents and letting agents, because they have tenants moving into properties and people buying houses. Usually they give gifts like flowers, champagne, or chocolates. Welsh cakes would be better because they’re Welsh.
But an even better revenue stream would be Airbnb operators and serviced accommodation operators, because they have guests coming in pretty much every week. If someone comes from England or abroad to a house in Wales, what better thing to give them as a gift than Welsh cakes — especially around Newport or Cardiff, where it’s typical of the region as well as Wales?
[24:40] Joe Granville:
I agree. We did have an Airbnb service accommodation-type person in the chapter before, but she left. That is a great area to go into because the turnover is higher.
It’s similar for hotels. They’ve got 100 rooms, and rooms are being changed over every couple of days. We’re nearly at the point of setting up a meeting with a well-known five-star hotel in Cardiff.
[25:20] Darren Jamieson:
Not St David’s, is it?
[25:28] Joe Granville:
Well, yeah.
[25:32] Darren Jamieson:
I just guessed.
[25:35] Joe Granville:
I don’t think there’s another five-star in Cardiff, is there?
[25:39] Darren Jamieson:
Until you said Cardiff, I was thinking Celtic Manor.
[25:42] Joe Granville:
We’d love to be in the Celtic Manor. They do theirs in-house. For events at the ICC, they flit between myself and another Welsh cake company. We do stuff for the ICC and Celtic Manor, but it would be great to be the regular at St David’s.
[26:03] Darren Jamieson:
St David’s would be the big one for you.
Welsh cakes aren’t exactly rare in Wales. A lot of people make them, and some are really good. There’s a great one in Cardiff in one of the arcades that does different flavours and fresh Welsh cakes. You probably know exactly who I’m thinking of, but you don’t need to mention it. What made you want to go into Welsh cakes when it’s a crowded market?
[26:47] Joe Granville:
You’re talking about Fabulous Welshcakes, and they’re definitely the second-best available Welsh cakes in Wales.
[27:03] Darren Jamieson:
Second best?
[27:05] Joe Granville:
Definitely second best.
Although it seems saturated because so many people do Welsh cakes, I consider our product to be above even the second best. We use organic flour, proper butter, and we have a vast range of flavours.
We really have fun with flavour combinations. It’s never just white chocolate or milk chocolate. It’s white chocolate and cranberry. We do bara brith, so we soak the currants in sweet tea and use cinnamon, nutmeg, and mixed spice. We do chocolate and salted caramel, but we use dark chocolate to counterbalance the sweetness.
We’re very particular about the flavours we choose. The organic flour separates us as well. They’re super soft, really light, and we’ve gone for the perfect balance between quality and quantity. They’re a decent size, they taste great, and texturally they’re very pleasing.
It’s like chocolate. You’ve got Dairy Milk, Cadbury, Galaxy, Lindt — and then you’ve got small chocolate companies that make organic chocolate with beautiful flavour combinations. It’s £3.50 for a small bar, but the difference is insane and you know it when you taste it.
We saw a demand for that because there weren’t Welsh cakes out there that existed in the way we wanted. Before starting a Welsh cake business, I never purchased Welsh cakes because they were crap.
For the first six months of starting the business, I went to every supplier in South and West Wales and tried their Welsh cakes as market research. It confirmed my bias: these aren’t good enough and they shouldn’t be representing Wales.
I’m always gutted when someone tries Welsh cakes for the first time and says, “I don’t really like Welsh cakes. They’ve got that weird aftertaste, or they’re dry, or too dense.” Then they think they don’t like Welsh cakes, and I’ve got a battle on my hands trying to convince them Welsh cakes can be better.
It’s like buying the custard tarts Greggs do, with thick pastry and set, basic custard, and then going to Lisbon and having a proper pastel de nata from a shop that makes them by hand. Pastry flakes everywhere, soft custard, perfectly burnt on top. They’re kind of the same product, but if you’d only had the cheap version, you might think you don’t like them.
I’m sure people in Portugal think, “Please don’t think that’s what a custard tart is for us.”
We struggle with two sets of customers. One is the customer we don’t have yet because they think they don’t like Welsh cakes. The other is the customer who thinks a Welsh cake costs 80p for six in Tesco and has to be warmed up and covered in butter, so they’d never pay £1 for one individual Welsh cake.
We have to say to those people, “You think you don’t like Welsh cakes because you’ve had the Greggs equivalent of a pastel de nata. We need to change your mind.”
Then they say, “I don’t like raisins.” That’s fine — I’ve got options without raisins. Chocolate and salted caramel doesn’t have raisins in it. I’m not going to sneak them in. Try this. Then they say, “That’s amazing,” because it’s a nice bit of cake with two ingredients they like.
[33:33] Darren Jamieson:
That’s passion right there.
[33:44] Joe Granville:
Thanks. I feel like we’re winning the battle. We’re convincing people that if you pay good money for good Welsh cakes, you get good Welsh cakes.
We’re convincing people that Welsh cakes aren’t just something from a Tan Y Castell packet that cost next to nothing. You can pay good money, have good ingredients, and get a delicious cake at the end.
[34:19] Darren Jamieson:
I hope that passion comes across when you’re in BNI and doing your weekly presentation or your 10 minutes — that you basically just have that big rant about Welsh cakes.
[34:28] Joe Granville:
That’s basically exactly what I do. You can ask anyone in my chapter, Cardiff City. That’s pretty much how the meetings go.
I did my 10-minute presentation recently, and we did a blindfold taste test. I brought some packet Welsh cakes and some of mine.
[34:58] Darren Jamieson:
Braces or something?
[35:00] Joe Granville:
I think I got Braces and Tan Y Castell. It wasn’t really fair. I probably should have got some from Fabulous, because they do good Welsh cakes. Joe from Fabulous is lovely, but it goes up in levels, and people know that. Both things can exist.
[35:24] Darren Jamieson:
That’s another reason I’d love you in our group — coming in and bringing Welsh cakes in the morning. What a fantastic start to the day.
[35:32] Joe Granville:
Not every morning. That would get expensive.
[35:37] Darren Jamieson:
We used to have a butcher in our chapter before I joined.
[35:43] Joe Granville:
He didn’t bring steaks in, did he?
[35:44] Darren Jamieson:
He used to make his yearly fee back ten times just by taking pre-orders.
[35:57] Joe Granville:
I would so be up for that. I love a steak. To have a butcher bring in a steak on a Thursday morning — “Here’s your sirloin” — that would be amazing.
[36:10] Joe Granville:
Why aren’t there more butchers in BNI groups? I’ve got one who’s right on the cusp, but he’s taken on a care home and his delivery morning is Wednesday morning, which is when our chapter meets. I’m devastated, because he’d do so well. He’s a mobile butcher.
[36:32] Darren Jamieson:
Perfect.
There’s a question I was going to ask you, but based on your big rant, I know the answer. Do you have any intentions or ambitions to go into retail?
[36:45] Joe Granville:
Well spotted. No, I don’t think so.
I’ve heard horror stories from fellow business owners and friends who thought that was the dream. They thought retail was the world they wanted to go into, and then they ended up in the pocket of massive corporations.
[37:17] Darren Jamieson:
It’s the vanity of seeing your product on the shelf in Asda, Sainsbury’s, Marks & Spencer, whatever it is. But the reality is the margins are gone.
[37:27] Joe Granville:
The margins are gone, and you live in their pocket. They shock you at first and say they’ll order 10,000 units a week. You change your whole business model to fit them, and then they say, “Actually, this is the price we’re going to pay.” Because you’ve put all your eggs in one basket, they know they’ve got that hold on you. Your margins get smaller and theirs get bigger.
I just don’t think monopolies like supermarkets should exist in the way they do. It’s mental. When supermarkets say prices have to go up because costs are rising, but their profits perfectly align with the percentages they’ve increased prices by — is that not basic economics? They’re making billions. That’s profit, not turnover.
Why do billions exist? If you can’t count to it, you shouldn’t be making it. Someone isn’t getting what they deserve if someone is making billions from it. Either staff aren’t being paid enough, producers aren’t being paid enough — somewhere along the line someone is losing in a big way for someone else to win that much.
I’m all for people making money and being hungry for life and innovative capitalism, but there’s got to be a cap. CEO pay compared to the person cleaning the toilets, and everyone in between — why is the CEO paid so much more? Why are million-pound bonuses being handed out to water company bosses who can’t do their job?
Why are you dumping sewage into rivers and getting a bonus for it? That’s your only job: keeping the water supply healthy. We can’t swim in our local rivers because you’re doing your job so badly, and then the taxpayer pays for you to have a bonus. It’s maddening.
[41:03] Darren Jamieson:
I’m guessing no, then, is the answer. You’re not planning to go into Asda.
[41:11] Joe Granville:
No retail.
[41:13] Darren Jamieson:
To flip it around, I don’t know if you do this already. We had a baker visit our BNI a couple of months ago. He’s a client of ours now because we do his website, and he’s planning to join our BNI. He doesn’t just bake sourdough bread to sell it — he also does classes showing people how to bake.
Is that something you do, or have thought of doing? It could be team-building events, experience days, showing people how to make Welsh cakes.
[41:47] Joe Granville:
We do that already. We call them Welsh cake masterclasses. We sell that as part of the corporate gift offering.
There are three corporate offerings through us. We can do packaging and put stickers and labels on them. We can teach your staff and clients how to make Welsh cakes — we come to the office and bring all the equipment. Everything is transportable.
We also have a few venues we work with where we do them, in case people want nibbles or drinks afterwards. And we can do live cooking demos. So if someone like Admiral wanted to treat all their staff in the office to 300 Welsh cakes, they could pay for the Welsh cakes, and I’d come and cook them fresh and hot in front of everyone, chat, and make it a nice experience.
Those are the three ways we sell to corporates.
[42:52] Darren Jamieson:
You’ve got a lot of huge businesses down there around Newport and Cardiff. Admiral, Go.Compare was founded in Newport, Lloyds Bank has a big office near Cardiff. Massive potential for you.
[43:12] Joe Granville:
For sure. Cardiff and Newport both have big Welsh-based offices. They’re great places to be.
[43:23] Darren Jamieson:
I was reading about where you started. You and your mum were in healthcare. Your mum was a mental health nurse. You were doing that in 2020, when healthcare was a big thing in the country for some reason. I can’t quite remember why.
What happened then? You chose 2020 as the year to say, “Do you know what, I’m going to make Welsh cakes.” What possessed you to go from healthcare into hospitality when hospitality across the UK was dead? Were you insane?
[44:13] Joe Granville:
Someone said to me the other day, “If you start then, things can only get better.” Maybe subconsciously I thought, “If I fail now, there’s an excuse. It was COVID. But if it gets even a tiny bit successful, then I’ve done an amazing thing.”
In a weird way, stripping life back to just working and going home affected people differently. I thought, I can’t travel, I can’t go anywhere, I can’t have fun with friends. I was young and free and did a lot of travelling. I worked in healthcare mainly because I could come back, pick up shifts, save money, and go travelling again.
With COVID, lockdowns, and sitting around, there was a lot of thinking about what we wanted to do. One of the things you could do at the start was go to outdoor markets. They were allowed.
I wanted something to get stuck into and enjoy. My mum and I had a side hustle before where we sold a refillable deodorant — a little tin of deodorant you could refill. We used to say, “If you put it on your skin, you should be able to eat it,” because your skin absorbs so much. It was organic, four ingredients, and all edible. We’d say, “It won’t taste nice, but you could put it on your toast.”
We were selling that at outdoor markets. I was going around like a little salesman selling it to zero-waste shops, which were big at the time and are massive now.
A really annoying side note is that a deodorant very similar to ours won Dragons’ Den quite recently. I think it’s called Fussy. It had more ingredients than ours. So I could have won Dragons’ Den by now, basically.
We were selling the deodorant at an outdoor market and saw food flying out — doughnuts with icing and sugar. We thought, is this the standard? Is this the calibre?
Instagram went crazy around that time because everyone was stuck in, watching food accounts. People would follow accounts where people ate food. That social media world went insane. If you had a product that looked good and got people to eat it, it could take off.
It wasn’t actually a bad economy to start a food business, especially one that was a little bit rogue — because we are Rogue Welsh Cakes. It gained traction quickly. People’s attention wasn’t drawn to holidays and normal life, and people had spare cash because they weren’t driving everywhere, weren’t going on holiday, and didn’t know how long it would last.
The only thing people could do was go out and buy food. You could do half an hour of exercise, but you could shop for as long as you wanted. Outdoor markets felt safer. It was a weird small bubble boom for artisan makers and crafters.
It also made a lot of people question whether they wanted to go to supermarkets all the time, or whether they wanted to say hello to the person who had spent three days preparing their food. Did they want to know that person’s name and be part of their community?
There’s that economics idea that spending £1 in your local community reverberates around the local economy many times, whereas if you spend it in Tesco, you’ve put a penny back into the local economy and a billionaire is laughing.
A lot of people questioned where they wanted to spend their money. I know a lot of people who started businesses. I know a lot of businesses that failed because they depended on people sitting inside a little shop. But there was definitely a boom for businesses that didn’t need to adapt because they started in that world. They were already adapted to the crazy world of COVID lockdowns.
[50:28] Darren Jamieson:
That makes sense. We started Engage Web, our agency, in 2009, which was a recession. Starting in a recession, there are people who need work and freelance work, and we’re still here 17 years later. So it does work.
[50:54] Joe Granville:
Exactly. With networking things like BNI, people might say January is a bad time to reach out because of finances after Christmas. But no — that’s a good time to reach out and say, “Do you want to grow?” They might need change. Necessity forces you to take steps sometimes.
Don’t catch people when they’re flying. Catch them when they’re a little bit low and say, “You can change this.” Then you get the right type of people who want to change it.
When you’re flying and smashing it, you should continue to plan ahead and keep doing the things that work. Don’t take your foot off the gas. But if things are on a dip, there’s always opportunity there.
[51:53] Darren Jamieson:
Speaking of flying, smashing it, and continuing to do things that work — you go to BNI, you get business and referrals from BNI, you have the market in Newport, you’ve got corporate clients, you’re targeting St David’s Hotel — although you didn’t tell me that, I guessed that one — and you’ve got a website where people can order and do subscriptions.
What types of marketing do you do for your business that you find effective?
[52:31] Joe Granville:
I think it’s person-to-person. It’s the BNI network, the connections, the properly warmed-up referrals. That makes the most money and is the most secure way of focusing your energy if you want to grow a business.
Word of mouth is always best. Someone told me the most successful way to run a business is to get customers and keep customers. If you keep your customers, get more customers, and then keep those customers, you will inevitably grow a successful business.
It’s consistency over time. It’s the same with life, health, relationships, and business. Do you keep showing up? Do you keep getting in people’s faces?
I don’t necessarily think that means posting on social media constantly. It means that what you do post is honest. I use myself as content and other people as content. I try to empower other businesses and put out positive recognition of people and businesses that do things well.
You keep showing up daily and to the best of your ability on those days. That’s what makes a business grow and what ultimately makes you financially successful long term.
We’ve been in business for six years now. After six years, if you didn’t have repeat custom and couldn’t find ways to get new customers, something would be wrong. Maybe you haven’t got the product, maybe you haven’t got the personality, maybe something is missing, and you need to go back to the drawing board.
I try to put my honest self out there as much as possible on social media. I try my absolute best not to put out highlights or just the best bits. If anything, I put the worst bits out there. I’ll say, “I forgot this thing,” or, “This didn’t work out the way I wanted,” or, “I took 700 Welsh cakes to an event and sold 100 because there were only 50 people in the room.”
These things happen, and they get more positive responses.
This completes the missing ending from 55:28 onward. Source:
## Continued Transcript
[55:28] Joe Granville:
One, because people like to see you fail a little bit, but two, people respond to honesty. There’s so much truth and honesty missing in that social media and marketing world.
Even to the point now where people have learned that, and they’ve learned that the algorithm likes it. So they’ll tell you stuff like, “Put a blooper at the start of your video before your video.” And you go, “Ah, you’re just gaming the system a little.”
[56:00] Darren Jamieson:
Faking honesty now.
[56:05] Joe Granville:
Yeah, faking honesty. If anything gets you sent to hell, it’s got to be faking honesty, hasn’t it? Surely that’s not legal.
So I just try and put my honest self out there. We do use some social media marketing people — On Deck Consultancy are great. They’ve just joined BNI, but I used them before BNI. They reached out, and some people you just have that connection with straight away.
Lucy and her dad Ian — instantly I knew, “Okay, yeah, we’re going to make the kind of content I want to make, but you’re just going to do it professionally. It’s going to be nice. It’s going to be me on camera, doing one shot, and that’s the shot. There are mess-ups in there, or there aren’t, or I’ve nailed it first time.” That’s what goes up.
We do work with them, and I’m about to sign a package with them this week, hopefully.
The in-person stuff is just how we push it. Turn up. Go to those events, go to those networking things, go to the exhibitions, and make those connections. It has that ripple effect.
Business has that natural snowballing effect where you’re constantly picking up a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more. Then, next thing you know, you go, “Yeah, we’ve actually got 30 corporate gift clients now.”
Sometimes, if they all order in a month, we could be looking really nice. Some months, maybe only four or five of them order, but there are 30 of them there, and whenever they need something like what we provide, they’ll use us.
[57:56] Darren Jamieson:
It’s interesting what you said there about being in business for a while and, if you’re not picking up new clients, there’s something wrong.
It’s a big problem with salespeople that they’re going to struggle to sell if they don’t believe in the product. You have to believe in your own product, your own business, or your own service if you’re going to sell it, because if you don’t believe it, you can’t convince somebody else that it’s good.
I see that with people who come along to BNI as visitors and think about joining. In the end, they don’t, and it’s not because they haven’t got the budget or because BNI wouldn’t work for them. It’s because they don’t actually believe in the business they’ve got, or in their own ability to sell it.
You obviously have absolute, unwavering belief in your product. That comes across in spades, which is going to make you very good at selling it and very referable. People are going to say, “Speak to Joe. He’s got fantastic Welsh cakes. You’ve only got to look at his face to know how good they are, because he’s lit up by the thought of them.”
That comes across and makes you very good at representing your brand and your product.
[59:03] Joe Granville:
Yeah, but it’s funny you say that because I haven’t always been that way. I could sell dog poo to a lamppost, but when it’s your own, it’s different.
I’ve got so much better at it, and I’ve had some business coaching and talks with people. I think if you don’t have imposter syndrome, you’re weird.
[59:40] Darren Jamieson:
Yeah.
[59:40] Joe Granville:
It’s definitely a hurdle. It’s a barrier I had to overcome, and it took years.
We entered the Great Taste Awards two years ago with one of our products — the bara brith Welsh cake — and it won a one-star Great Taste Award. Things like that help you overcome it, because you go, “Okay, professional food tasters think this tastes good, and that it tastes like the things I said it should taste like.”
That’s validation. Although you should never rely on validation for happiness, sometimes you do need to double-check. If you convince yourself you’re the world’s fastest 100-metre sprinter, but then you race someone and they’re much faster than you, you’ve got to go, “Okay, maybe I’m not the world’s fastest.”
[1:00:47] Darren Jamieson:
You need a reality check.
[1:00:50] Joe Granville:
Yeah, you need a reality check.
For us, it was really important to enter the Great Taste Awards and ask, “Are these what we think they are, and what a good handful of customers think they are?” We needed to double-check with chefs and actual food judges.
Also, do we know how to describe our product? Part of the process of the Great Taste Awards is that, if you enter a product, you can’t just say, “It’s a bara brith Welsh cake. Try it. Do you like it? Score it.”
You have to describe the flavours they’re going to experience. Describe the textures. You’ve got a limited amount of words, so you’ve got to drill down and get to the point quickly. What is someone going to experience when they taste this product?
That’s such a big part of it. Do I know exactly what this product is? Do I know what people should expect from it? Does it deliver those things?
That was really good validation for us. It read like a two-star review but ended up being a one-star award. We’ve re-entered this year, and I’m hoping to get two stars this year with a slight tweak.
Stuff like that helps me overcome the barrier of selling my own product. Honestly, if you gave me a rundown of your web design business and your USPs and asked me to go out and knock on doors, I’d be superb at it. I can sell.
But because there’s no pressure about the product — because it’s not mine, it’s someone else’s — I can just be a salesman for it. I found it hardest to become a salesman for my own product and my own company.
It’s not such a barrier anymore, although sometimes I still have to check in with myself. I used to hate taking money off people at the market. I’d rather someone else was working and selling the product. I’d always want to give a discount, or it would be some sweet old lady and I’d think, “Just have them.” I couldn’t take money off people. It was crazy.
I’ve always been much better at taking criticism than compliments. I love criticism. I love finding out different people’s opinions and what I can learn from that. It’s fantastic.
But give me a compliment and I’m like, “Just write it down and put it on Google or something.” It takes me two weeks to reply to Google reviews saying how lovely we are as a company. I need a week to read it, then a week to process it, then a couple of days to reply.
[1:03:54] Darren Jamieson:
That is strange, but I get it.
When I first started Engage Web, I was the one building the websites. I was the one doing the digital marketing. I was the one fulfilling everything. When you’re selling something, there’s a part of you thinking, “I’ve got to do this.”
If you’re selling 2,000 Welsh cakes, you’re thinking, “I’ve got to make them.” But now I’ve got a team behind me, I’m not so bothered. I can say, “Yeah, we can do that. You want a custom ordering system and custom delivery based on the weights of the products, calculated directly by the website? Yeah, that’s not a problem.”
Because Gab or Nick has to deal with that. I can make it as complicated as I like because it’s not my problem anymore. But you’re still the one fulfilling it, so you’ve got to think, “I’ve got to do that.”
[1:04:48] Joe Granville:
Yeah. I do love biting off more than I can chew and really testing myself.
[1:04:55] Darren Jamieson:
Pardon the pun there, with Welsh cakes.
[1:04:57] Joe Granville:
Yeah, true. I didn’t even notice that one.
I very much say yes. Someone says, “Can you do a thing?” and I go, “Yeah, of course. Absolutely.”
[1:05:13] Darren Jamieson:
That’s Richard Branson’s advice.
[1:05:16] Joe Granville:
Is it?
[1:05:17] Darren Jamieson:
Say yes and then figure out how to do it later.
[1:05:20] Joe Granville:
I didn’t know that when you said it, but yeah. I’m kind of “shoot first, ask questions later.” Say yes first, then ask questions later and figure it out.
I don’t think anyone’s creative enough to think of something that would be impossible to get done.
[1:05:44] Darren Jamieson:
Those are dangerous words, Joe.
[1:05:50] Joe Granville:
Yeah. What I meant was—
[1:05:53] Darren Jamieson:
He’s putting it out there. If you can think of anything really ridiculous, Joe says it’s possible. Whatever it is, it’s possible.
[1:05:58] Joe Granville:
Whatever it is, it’s possible.
No, I mean within the boundaries of possibility.
[1:06:07] Darren Jamieson:
People would be bound by the impossible.
[1:06:10] Joe Granville:
And even if they took it right to the edge, it’s still possible, I guess.
[1:06:16] Darren Jamieson:
Have you had ridiculous requests?
[1:06:21] Joe Granville:
Yeah. Some of the most impossible requests are getting Welsh cakes to places.
Somebody ordered £50 worth of Welsh cakes through the website the other day. I was trying to put the address into Royal Mail, and it wasn’t coming up. I double-checked it, and it still wasn’t coming up.
Then I saw he’d emailed again saying, “Sorry, I put the address in wrong.” It was Toronto, Canada.
[1:06:53] Darren Jamieson:
Wow.
[1:06:55] Joe Granville:
I said, “Kenneth, I’m really sorry, mate, but we don’t send Welsh cakes to Canada. They could take a month. I have no idea what state they’re going to arrive in. They have to go through customs. I’m sure there are laws around food crossing borders.”
[1:07:13] Darren Jamieson:
Fruit, no.
[1:07:19] Joe Granville:
Exactly. No raisins or currants, I’d have thought.
I emailed and said, “Unless you want them sent to an address in the UK, I’ll refund you.” And he just never replied. He spent £50 on nothing on the website.
[1:07:39] Darren Jamieson:
So weird. Random Canadians.
[1:07:43] Joe Granville:
I know. Random Canadians, right?
[1:07:47] Darren Jamieson:
We are out of time now, Joe.
[1:07:51] Joe Granville:
Oh my God, yeah. It’s 3:00.
[1:07:53] Darren Jamieson:
It is. As a final note, anyone listening who, like myself, is getting quite hungry listening to you — anybody who wants to get in touch, whether it’s for corporate orders or to come down and see you in person, what’s the best way for them to reach out or visit you?
[1:08:09] Joe Granville:
The website has all the contact info. The email address is [info@roguewelshcakes.com](mailto:info@roguewelshcakes.com). If you go to roguewelshcakes.com, you’ll find my number on there as well. A lot of people order through WhatsApp these days because it saves all the back and forth over emails.
Darren, I hope you managed to get through the questions.
[1:08:33] Darren Jamieson:
I haven’t got any questions, Joe. I told you, I haven’t got any questions. It’s just a conversation. There are no questions written.
[1:08:41] Joe Granville:
Fantastic. Okay, that’s good. I hope I didn’t ramble on too much.
[1:08:48] Darren Jamieson:
Absolutely not. It was perfect, mate.
[1:08:53] Joe Granville:
That’s good.
[1:08:54] Darren Jamieson:
I really appreciate it. Thank you for being a guest on the podcast.
[1:08:56] Joe Granville:
No, mate. Thank you so much for the invite. I’m absolutely buzzing we got to do it.
