🚀 Your Weekly Slice of UK Consumer Startups

Curdi was an all natural, deliciously creamy challenger cottage cheese brand. But the idea didn't start in a boardroom by any means. It started much earlier.

As a teenager, I spent several years battling anorexia nervosa. Cottage cheese was always in our fridge because my mum loved it, and one day, when I was struggling to eat much beyond Greek yoghurt and cucumber, she encouraged me to try it. I resisted at first because it looked lumpy and unappealing, but I checked the nutritional label. To my surprise, it was almost identical to the yoghurt I ate every day.

I tried it, loved it, and from that point on, cottage cheese became a daily staple for the next decade. Simple, nourishing, high in protein, and genuinely sooooo addictive… (or is that just me)

Fast forward ten years and I was working in management consulting, but I couldn't stop noticing the dairy aisle. The UK cottage cheese category felt completely under championed. It was dated, uninspiring, and miles behind the US, where brands were modernising and growing the category. I couldn't shake the feeling that there was an opportunity to do something better.

So I quit my job and went all in on Curdi, to reimagine cottage cheese as a modern, brand led product for a new generation.

Honestly, it was completely unintentional. I never set out with a plan to document the journey publicly. If I am being totally honest, it started because I was quite lonely building Curdi solo, and LinkedIn became a bit of a place to share the journey with the world. A coping mechanism of sorts.

Posting felt liberating, and the more I shared, the more it seemed to resonate. Once my algorithm and network shifted into the FMCG and food founder space, it became really obvious how much hustle culture and polished success stories dominate the conversation. Not that anyone pretends founder life is easy, but there is often a lot of glossing over the reality.

What I found most helpful when I was starting out was when people were genuinely open and honest with me about how hard it is. So sharing the highs and the lows felt like the most useful thing I could do in return. If it helped even one person feel less alone or more prepared, then it felt worth it.

And truthfully, I have always been an oversharer. I connect best that way, and LinkedIn unexpectedly became a place where that openness created real conversations, real connections, and real support.

Honestly, it's how exposed you are. With chilled, there is almost no buffer. No extra week. No 'we'll sell through eventually.' The clock is always ticking and you can feel it.

On paper, 30 days of shelf life sounded fine to me at the start. In reality, most retailers require around 75% of that life remaining when stock arrives. So before I had sold a single pot, a big chunk of its sellable life was already gone.

We had a 7 day lead time from the farm and wholesalers working on a day 1 for day 3 model. That meant producing before confirmed demand. At early stage, forecasts are educated guesses at best. So you are constantly balancing risk: produce too little and you miss sales, produce too much and you watch value quietly expire in a fridge.

Every single day mattered. You feel it when pallets are sitting in cold storage. You feel it when a delivery slot is missed by minutes and stock is turned away. Nothing dramatic has to happen. The system is just incredibly precise and unforgiving.

The biggest realisation for me was this: chilled economics only really work at scale. But to reach scale you need capital, proven demand and retail confidence. All the things you're trying to earn in the first place. It becomes a chicken and egg situation where the egg has a sell by date.

That constant tension is emotionally draining in a way I don't think people fully appreciate. You are not just building brand and sales. You are racing time itself. And when you are small, there is very little room to get it wrong.

That's why I have huge respect for anyone building in fresh food. It teaches you resilience very quickly.

First, make sure you actually care about the problem. Deeply. FMCG is operationally heavy, margin tight and capital intensive. It is not a cute logo and a nice Instagram grid. It is forecasting, cash flow, distribution terms, shelf life, retailer negotiations and logistics that can wipe out your week in one email. If you do not genuinely obsess over the category, you will not survive the boring, brutal bits.

Second, understand your route to scale before you fall in love with the idea. The biggest lesson for me was that economics matter more than energy. You can have traction, interest and even listings, but if the underlying model does not work at your starting scale, you are fighting physics. In chilled especially, volume is not a nice to have. It is survival.

Third, be honest about capital. Ask yourself: how long can I fund this? How much will it really take to get meaningful distribution? What happens if growth is slower than you modelled? Optimism is essential, but so is realism.

Fourth, separate your identity from the brand early. You will make better decisions if you can see the business clearly, not as an extension of your self worth. That was a big learning for me.

And finally, back yourself. Even if it does not become the next billion pound brand, you will come out sharper, braver and commercially stronger than you went in. The skills compound. The resilience compounds. The network compounds.

Just go in with your eyes open, because… FMCG will test you. But if you are wired for it, it will also teach you more in a year than some careers teach you in ten!!

Honestly I feel like I'm exactly where I'm meant to be. The last year stretched me in every direction. I built something from zero, raised money, navigated chilled supply chains, made hard calls and learnt what I'm actually made of.

Joining Tonic feels like taking all of that learning and plugging it into a rocket ship. I'm obsessed with health and nutrition. I could genuinely talk about it all day. So being able to work in a category I deeply care about, but within a team and infrastructure that already has momentum, feels like the right evolution for me.

In the short term, my focus is simple, to just deliver for Sunna and the team. I want to help them on their amazing journey in building commercially smart, operationally sound growth. Launch brilliant NPD. Help scale something meaningful.

Longer term, I still have the entrepreneurial fire in me. That hasn't gone anywhere. But right now and definitely for the foreseeable future, I want to sharpen my edge inside a high growth brand, learn at speed, and contribute to building something bigger than I could alone. 2025 taught me how to start. Now I'm excited to learn how to scale.