🚀 Your Weekly Slice of Food, Drink & Wellness Startups #3

Hey 👋

Welcome back to the Startup Slice!

This week has been full of creativity from brands and it’s great to see brands leaning back into the fun. Sometimes when brands use rigid formulas for “what will work”, it sucks the fun and creativity out of it but we’re glad to see that’s not the case this week.

In this week’s newsletter, we’re exploring why failure is fine as long as we learn from it (according to the likes of Gymshark’s Ben Francis & BrewDog’s James Watt!) and having a look into some interesting collaborations between sweet brands and an unfortunate departure to UK startups.

👀 P.S. We’ve spotted another curious move from James Watt… keep your eyes peeled on our LinkedIn for more on that.

This edition is a 2-minute read, but if you're tight on time, there's a 15-second TL;DR at the bottom 👇

📱 From the Feed

What we posted on our socials this week:

🍻 Niko Omilana (YouTube Superstar) launched a sweet brand: It’s another creator turned entrepreneur, and he’s already built a cult following with a banging pre-launch → read here

💪 Retail Safari: Notting Hill Edition: We visited Raye’s pop-up store in Notting Hill and check out some emerging brands, check out the standouts and some images from the store → read here

☕️ Solo Coffee launched in Tesco: From meme pages to supermarket shelves, Solo’s journey has been anything but linear. They pivoted from DTC to B2B, built a cult IG following, and now they’re back on retail → Learn how here 

🥣 Oat Cult launched a wild marketing campaign: Oats milking themselves? Yep. Their latest campaign is as unhinged as it is unforgettable → Check it out here.

👀 ICYMI: Brand Moves Worth Watching

🍬 Shades Sweets x Candy Kittens… kind of? We noticed something interesting this week… Shades (the new sweet brand by Niko Omilana) has backing from Tuckshop London, the fund co-founded by the guys behind Candy Kittens. Dig a little deeper and Jamie Laing (yep, that Jamie from Made in Chelsea) is listed as a director of Shades.
So what’s going on? Basically, Candy Kittens is expanding its reach. By backing Niko, they’re tapping into a Gen Z, creator-native audience that wouldn’t necessarily be the market for a gourmet sweets brand. It’s a smart play and interesting to see established brands more subtly funding and backing new brands.

🪲 Yum Bug have closed their doors :(  This week we said goodbye to Yum Bug, the insect based food startup. They had sold-out pop-ups, national press, and chefs on board. But in the end, it wasn’t enough. The novelty wore off and the returns didn’t stack up.
It’s a hard but honest reminder: product-market fit > press buzz. Long-term sustainable revenue are important. Especially when you’re trying to change eating habits. Sad to see these guys go, wishing them all the best for their future endeavours!

🥤 Startups sweep UK Soft Drinks Awards from FoodBev Awards
Some familiar startup names got the win!

🏆 Hip Pop: Best Carbonated Drink
🏆 Lucky Saint: Best Low/No Alcohol
🏆 Virtue: Best Sports/Energy Drink
If you’re in F&B, don’t sleep on awards. They’re more than just ego boosts. They build credibility with buyers and retailers, especially if you can say “award-winning” on your sell sheet.

💡 Bitesize Playbook for Startups : The Case for Failure

Welcome to our new section serving up startup insight in a bitesize format. Whether you’re building, backing, or just obsessed with brands - we’re breaking down the playbook.

This week - why failure isn’t the end.

Everyone loves a good success story. Fundraising successes, launching into supermarkets and viral marketing results.

But behind every overnight success is usually a graveyard of flops, fumbles, and full-blown disasters. And in the UK startup scene, we don’t think they’re talked about enough.

People with successful businesses acknowledge and embrace failure as part of their journey.

• 🦈 Ben Francis (Founder of Gymshark), failed 6 businesses before Gymshark

• 🍺 James Watt (Co-founder of Brewdog) Lost £30,000 on a rookie logistics error.

• 🎨 Melanie Perkins (Founder of Canva) was rejected by >100 VCs before anyone said yes.

And yet… all of them still tried. Again and again.

Failure’s not just inevitable, it’s part of the process.

But most founders still feel pressure to play perfect on social media. They only post when there’s good news, when the press write-ups land, or when the stockists say yes.

The problem is, if no one shares what didn’t work, we’re all stuck guessing in the dark.

Here’s some examples of how to reframe failure:

• Marketing misfires → Maybe your audience isn’t who you thought it was. Or maybe your content’s too safe to stand out.
  

• Retail rejection → Doesn’t mean your product sucks. It might just need better timing, packaging, or proof of pull.
  

• Funding flops → Are they saying no to you, or do they not get the space you're in? There’s a difference.

Take Yum Bug. Insect protein is clever, but it didn’t move past being a novelty. They were early, but early isn’t always an advantage if the market isn’t ready.

Or Solo Coffee. They started with a consumer product, pivoted fully B2B, and then came back to retail. That kind of U-turn would scare most teams. But their meme-first strategy built audience equity that let them relaunch, this time with credibility and demand.

As uncomfortable as it is, failure needs to be seen as data. Feedback. Evidence.

If you’re not seeing it as something to iterate from, you’ll never build anything that lasts.

So send that wild email to the retailer you’d love to work with. Try that weird TikTok trend. Every failure is a free lesson, as long as you’re willing to learn from it.

📌 The Noticeboard

Your weekly list of things to check out:

📣 Events

🍷 London Wine Fair: 19–21 May @ Olympia

📚 Read/Listen

Grace Beverley: Founder of Shreddy (an app for female fitness transformation), TALA (women’s activewear), The Productivity Method (a planner) AND Retrograde (an AI powered talent agency). She’s a serial entrepreneur who doesn't seem to stop.

Her podcast (Working Hard) dives into the journeys of extraordinary people, pulling back the curtain on what success actually looks like and what it takes. 

💡 Expect smart convos and real insight into how people build things that matter, often in ways you wouldn’t expect. 

⚡️ TL;DR: This Week’s Takeaways

• Product Market Fit remains one of the most important considerations when running a business

• Creativity stays winning, brands who are fun and a bit weird go strong.

• Don’t underestimate B2B → B2C pivots. It can be a smart route back to retail.

• Failure is free R&D. Every flop is feedback to your business and how to improve. Don’t let it stop you from trying!

Thanks for reading this week’s edition! As mentioned, check out our LinkedIn for more regular updates.

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