Category Disruption: How One Food Founder is Rewriting the Rules | with Owen Potts

Cooking sauces have a reputation problem. For years the fixture's been written off as the bland, play-it-safe aisle that skimps on real flavour. Shoppers walk past on their way to a ready meal, because a jar just doesn't feel like it can deliver a proper katsu, a proper puttanesca, or a proper anything. So how do you change expectations and stand out?

Owen Potts, co-founder of cooking sauce and stock brand Potts Partnership, has spent nearly twenty years building the brand and range. Working from the belief that convenient shouldn’t mean flavourless, Owen and his wife Michelle brought two very different food upbringings to the business. They turned that shared obsession about flavour into a brand built to compete with what you'd make from scratch, and it's also what pushed them to one of the boldest packaging bets in the category.

Listen to this episode to find out:

• Why cooking sauces got written off as bland, and what it takes to break that myth
• How Owen convinced a supermarket buyer to back an idea using nothing but two beer cans and some sticky labels
• The uplift that Potts’ novel packaging delivered to the business
• What independents and supermarkets each offer Potts – and its customers
• How they’re slowly returning to export markets post-Brexit
• What "doing an Owen" means, and how and where he gets inspired

Check out range and recipes, and buy online at:
https://www.pottspartnership.co.uk/

Also available in farm shops, delis, fishmongers and most major UK supermarkets.

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My name is Jo Densley, and I help food and drink businesses grow with joined-up sales and marketing. There’s a wealth of free webinars available on my website, where you can also explore my services and read my case studies as well.