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- 🚀 Your Weekly Slice of UK Consumer Startups #21
🚀 Your Weekly Slice of UK Consumer Startups #21
From viral Lime bike stunts to the meal deal: meet the startup showing brands how to stand out 💥
The Startup Slice
September 21, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes
Hey 👋
We’re back with a weekly roundup of the UK’s most exciting consumer startups. This week, paneer takes over Tesco, Prime Time brews a pear-fect fruit lager, and we spotted some clever brand moves from mission impossible launches to boozy Christmas crackers.
For our spotlight this week, we sat down with Shane Stewart, brand director at XOXO Soda, one of the UK’s fastest growing soda brands, who is now in two of the nation’s most iconic meal deals, after just 2 years of launching 🥤
Also keep an eye out on our LinkedIn… we’ll be posting about another brand’s unique way of getting feedback from customers.
📱 From the Feed
 Co-Founders of All the aunties, Riya & Jack (LTR) | 🧀 All The Aunties launch in Tesco in time for Diwali: In just 5 months since launch, they have gone national with Tesco in time for Diwali. Protein-packed, versatile, and celebrated: paneer is stepping into the spotlight. Huge congrats to Riya Patel & Jack Newton 👏 |
👀 ICYMI: Brand Moves Worth Watching
 Co-Founders of Good Ranger, Jenna & Tinsley (LTR) in Selfridges | 🍐 Prime Time x Nashi: Prime Time launches its first fruit lager, Prime Time Pear, into 279 Waitrose stores. A crisp, gluten-free, vegan-friendly brew with just 95 calories and infused with Nashi pear juice. 🥷 Good Ranger break into Selfridges: The team staged a mission impossible style “break-in” dressed in all black to secure their protein bars and announce their launch. Worth the risk? We think so. 🎄 The Pickle House x Sapling Spirits: We know it’s September but the Christmas Bloody Mary crackers are here. Each one comes with spiced tomato mix and a Sapling vodka miniature. |
💡 Bitesize Playbook: Shane Stewart, Brand Director @ XOXO SODA
Following their huge summer of sampling + OOH campaigns across London & Amsterdam. We caught up with Shane, as XOXO continue their momentum with the recent launch into the Sainsbury’s meal deal.
Shane Stewart, Brand Director @ XOXO SODA (what a cake btw)
For people who don’t know you yet, what is XOXO SODA?
XOXO is a functional prebiotic full flavour soda, all natural, low in sugar and calories and packing 6g prebiotic fibre in every can.
During the London Tube strikes you slipped cans into Lime bike baskets. How do you think about creativity in sampling, and why is it important for XOXO?
Hah yeah sometimes you just have to lean into last minute ideas. As a lime biker myself I saw the piles and piles of lime bikes stacking up on nearly every corner and it was a bit of a light bulb moment so I messaged the team on my way into work on the Tuesday morning and we got straight out and started placing cans in with a little note attached that read one of our slogans 'Show Yourself Some Love' which I think was perfect for the occasion given the stresses of cycling that week and around the tube strikes!
You’ve gone big on visibility, from 1,000 posters in Amsterdam to bold window displays in Whole Foods. How do you decide when to go guerrilla versus when to make a retail statement?
Big and bold is always important for us in every aspect - it's a fun looking brand so everything we do resembles that - but it doesn't have to mean hectic. For us, one of the fundamentals is doing the basics right. Luckily our cans do all the talking so a lot of the time it does all the heavy lifting - ie it featured on one of the poster designs on its own and it was also the focal point of our second WFM window display. I think guerilla vs retail statement depends on cultural moments and planned activity - we always want to be as well planned as possible with our retailers but we've also got to be agile enough to hop on anything at any given moment - but it has to feel right.
You’ve just landed in the Sainsbury’s meal deal, that’s huge. What does that milestone mean to you as a brand?
Yeah this is a big one for us! It's taken a lot of hard work from the whole team to get here. This launch puts in the eyes (and hopefully hands) of hundreds of thousands of shoppers all across the UK. The meal deal is a British staple but for us it unlocks so much more than just status, it's an unlocker for trial. As a startup, we hope for product trial - we need to get our cans into hands and being in meal deals in the UK is a massive one for that. We're also in the COOP meal deal too which now means we have 3 different sku's across 2 major meal deal retailers!
So what’s next for XOXO?
Where do I start!? We're investing heavily into building a dream team to make sure we've got the best (and fun) people for our growth plans. With major activity across Europe for both existing and new market launches but also signifying our presence and distribution across the UK to make sure we're always showing our customers some love and just being present. A priority for me is making sure both I and the whole team enjoy the journey and finding joy in the process - because if you're not having fun, you're not doing it right.
XOXO SODA now in the Sainsbury’s meal deal
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