🚀 Your Weekly Slice of UK Consumer Startups

Güsto Snacks is an award-winning snack brand on a mission to help people snack better while reducing food waste. We work with farmers to rescue fruits they cannot sell due to shape, size or colour, transforming them into delicious air-dried snacks.

The journey began in 2019 after my first drinks business failed. I still felt a strong drive to do good through food, so I teamed up with my co-founder and decided to try again. Winning our first Shell LiveWIRE competition gave us belief. Six years on, we are in five countries, have sold over 200,000 snacks this year, and saved more than 110,000 fruits from going to waste.

Building in public came from frustration. Supermarkets make it incredibly hard for independent brands to get on shelf, yet we are creating products for people, not buyers. So I asked myself, why not build with the people first? If the community helps shape the product, the flavours and the story, we already have demand. At that point, supermarkets are not taking a risk, they are responding to one.

It also creates real transparency. Too many brands hide behind ingredients people cannot recognise. By building openly, we are creating trust, community, and a brand that truly belongs to the people, inspired by what BrewDog proved was possible.

That experience taught me I did not have to conform to the usual rules or operate from fear. Retailers copy small brands all the time, and most founders feel powerless. I chose to respond with creativity instead of complaints. The post generated over 4 million impressions and reached more than 3 million people, sparking a wider conversation and encouraging other founders to speak up. 

My inbox filled with messages from brand owners who had experienced the same thing. The takeaway for the industry is simple: creativity and courage travel faster than copied products. Used well, creativity becomes a real weapon for growth.

My creative instinct comes from a mix of training and necessity. I spent five years studying art in Italy and two years studying product design in the UK, alongside a deep love for marketing. I am drawn to unconventional, gritty marketing that makes people stop and feel something.

I also learned early on that if marketing is not memorable, it is not marketing. As a startup, you do not have endless budgets, so creativity becomes the advantage. That constraint pushes me to think differently and achieve more with less, using bold ideas rather than big spend.

What’s next for Güsto is growth with intention. We are expanding globally while continuing to build a strong, engaged community, because community is everything. If you have the people, everything else follows.

Next year we are doubling down on new product launches and bold, creative marketing around those products. The focus is not just on putting more snacks into the world, but on building brands, stories, and products that people genuinely want to be part of.