Behind the scenes with Mummy Meagz
Mummy Meagz made the headlines when their vegan crème eggs hit the shelves of retailers across the country including Holland & Barrett.
Lisa Fox caught up with owner Willow Boyle, daughter of the original Mummy Meagz, to talk about their wide-found success and what tips they have for anyone thinking of launching a vegan business.
Where did the idea for Mummy Meagz come from?
Myself and my mum, Meagan, have been running Blondes café together since 2003, which turned from vegetarian to vegan in 2016. My mum has always been a star baker, and her delicious vegan treats have been loved locally by both vegans and non-vegans for years. Her reputation grew as a vegan wizard who could take any recipe and make it vegan, without losing any of the indulgence or taste. Her prestige expanded further, and before long people were making long journeys to visit the café for her culinary delights.
We began to wonder how we could take the best-selling treats from the café, and make them available to a wider audience as a nationally available grab and go retail product. So Mummy Meagz (a name the staff at Blondes have always called my mum) was born as a new business, with a goal of making delicious, affordable vegan treats accessible to everyone. My partner Dean came onboard with us, as he had a business background, and is also a passionate vegan.
How did you get from making these products in the kitchen and selling them through the café to getting into other retailers and online stores?
It took a long time to scale up the products from the café into something available to a wider audience. To find a manufacturer who could make the products on a large scale, without cheapening or changing the recipe, was no easy feat! It took months of searching, long conversations, recipe trials and all of our money, before we found someone who believed in us, and understood our goals and values, who could make a product that we were really happy with and that we knew people were going to love.
When we finally arrived at a product we were happy with, we had no money left and nobody to buy the product! So, we started a Crowdfunder campaign trying to appeal to our new customer base that we had built up on social media, and our loyal followers that we had gained from Blondes over the past 15 years.
The Crowdfunder was incredibly stressful! And it was reward led, so we didn’t really make a lot of money at it. However, it gave us a huge reach and great publicity, plus hundreds of people ready to try our products when we finally got them packaged and made.
Almost 18 months after we started our Mummy Meagz journey we finally had our products: a range of three amazing flavours of Rocky Road.
We began by selling through local convenience stores, a few further afield, and via our own website. However, we knew if we were to continue with our manufacturer then we needed a bigger deal. We will be forever grateful to the independent stores who believed in us and helped us get off the ground. We contacted every wholesaler we could find and sent out hundreds of samples. By the following year we had found ourselves a European vegan distributor and we were exporting and available in over 15 different countries.
How has this changed you as business people?
I don’t think it has changed us as business people at all. We have been running a successful business, Blondes café, for 17 years, and we always stay true to our core values. Our goal has always been to educate people about vegan food, create delicious treats, with no compromise on taste or texture, at an affordable price. We all want to live in a vegan World, and that is our aim. We do it all for the animals.
How much has veganism and compassion played a role in the development of the company?
It is absolutely at the heart of everything we do. In our café we have always held fund raising events for animal charities, we collect food and bedding to send to Romanian dog rescues, and all of our tips go to animal charities. The same goes for the Mummy Meagz business. When we did the Easter photo shoot for the Chucky Eggs, we went to a wonderful animal sanctuary that we have always supported!
The animals are what spur us on when we have a bad day. When we have felt like giving up (and there have been those times) we remind ourselves why we are doing it. Being vegan is not a diet, it is a lifestyle choice, and we always want people to understand that we are a vegan company, owned by vegans, who are all vegan for the animals.
We have attended the Surge animals rights march every year since it began, and last year Mummy Meagz was recognised by some other activists on the march, which was just brilliant! At 71 my mum proudly describes herself as an animal activist and is one of the original members of the Hull Animals Rights Team (a local, very active group).
There was a time when there was only a very small market for vegan products. How have you seen this change over the last few years?
It has changed hugely over the years, and I think that we have come to the market at the perfect time. A few years ago people would turn their nose up at vegan products, with the preconceived idea that vegan food is tasteless and bland. And to be fair, it often was back then.
However, there has been such a mammoth growth in both the number of vegans, and those who are flexitarian. We have been contacted by a number of people who took part in Veganuary this year who were struggling to stick at it when it came to wanting a treat – they found themselves reverting back to a dairy product for some indulgence. They have thanked us for creating something that can satisfy their sweet craving, so they can easily stick at being vegan. Life is about balance, 80/20. We want to help with that naughty 20%!
What are your top tips for someone thinking of launching a vegan business?
My number 1 piece of advice is do it for the right reasons. If you’re going into it to make loads of money, really fast, forget it. The market is growing, but so is the competition. The more businesses there are offering vegan alternatives, the harder it is to stand out. Especially when you are competing against giants who have been household names for years. But if you do it for the right reasons, and stay true to yourself and your beliefs, you can build a tribe of people who want to support you because they share your passions.
What advice would you now go back and give yourself?
I would advise myself to not take things personally! There is always going to be someone who doesn’t like what you’re doing and it’s hard to ignore negative comments, especially when they’re about your mum! But she laughs it off, so I have learnt to as well. When you open yourself up to the world, you open yourself up to a lot more than you think! So please, be kind!
Lisa Fox says:
We keeping banging on about this, but your product just ‘being vegan’ is no longer enough.
Vegan cakes and chocolates is fast becoming a crowded market; Mummy Meagz is a great example of a company creating a new space by launching a product – the Chuckie Egg vegan crème egg – that has no competition. Combine this with the company’s strong roots in ethics and activism and it’s created the perfect foundation for success in the vegan marketplace.
