DIFG meet The Curators: How to build a brand with purpose?

The Curators makes delicious high-protein savoury snacks that deliver the macros to rival a sports nutrition brand and have won multiple Great Taste awards over a 4-year journey. We are on a mission to Supercharge Savoury snacks! To that end a big part of our mission is to serve people who lead active lives and who have an interest in getting good nutrition into their bodies, fuelling that next adventure, that next gym session, run, 5-a-side training session and whatever else!

How to build a brand with purpose: Ed Hauck, Co-founder at The Curators

When Max and Ed founded The Curators 4 years ago (this May) they shared a strong vision for a business whose products were firstly and most importantly, loved by their consumers. After that, creating a company with a strong sense of purpose was key.

Today, purpose can mean a lot of things; the planet, packaging, charitable causes, equality, and many more important challenges that society faces. Young businesses or ‘challenger’ brands like The Curators are doing exactly that; challenging the norms and building companies that can contribute to the greater good of society rather than just creating financial returns alone.

To the team here at The Curators, that ‘purpose’ must be aligned to the culture of the business, the interests we share as people and, perhaps most importantly, the values of the brand and the community we have built around us. This helps our purpose remain relevant to us as a team, ensuring that it has the best chance of success.

We also want to improve the planet and the local communities that ultimately surround our business every day. What benefits society and the environment ultimately benefits The Curators and all our stakeholders, so it makes sense for us all to care.

Becoming a B-Corp: Ed Hauck, Co-founder at The Curators

Like many aspiring businesses before us, we decided about a year ago to start the process of becoming a B-Corp. Having seen some amazing young food businesses join this movement, such as FUEL10K, Doisy & Dam and Prodigy we decided to learn everything we can about what being a B-Corp really meant.

Essentially, B-Corp is a framework for operating your business that ensures it maintains a high level of performance in key areas such as sustainability, employee engagement, charitable activity, and social enterprise. In other words, running our business with the triple bottom line; Planet, People, Profit.
Some of you may already know a little about this incredible movement. If not, you can learn more here.

The next step for us is to be properly evaluated and that is under way. We are quietly hopeful (and confident) that this should go well, and we will be joining officially at some point later this year. As part of this process, we have also identified three projects that we feel will make a huge difference and encourage other businesses like us to do the same…

Packaging for the Future: Ed Hauck, Co-founder at The Curators

It will come as no great shock to you all that packaging is one of the biggest challenges facing our industry today. We all want our food to be convenient, affordable, and importantly, safe. To do this, it is often required to use packaging that is difficult to recycle, and the snacks category is one category that faces a big challenge to innovate into more recyclable formats.

We have recently moved some of our snacks (Our nuts range) to packaging that is made of such a high paper content that it can be recycled anywhere, including the curbside, alongside all paper products. So, the same recycling bin you put your newspaper in can also take our ‘paper’ packs and recycle them. This is genuinely ground-breaking in the snacks category and something we want to do more with in 2022 and beyond.

We recently included an OPRL label to our leading range of high protein crisps, Pork Puffs, which will encourage consumers to recycle these packs. OPRL is a not-for-profit organisation that seeks to educate business and consumers on how to encourage more understanding about recycling and therefore inspire more action! So, make sure you recycle those Pork Puffs folks.

We are looking at ways we can reduce all our packaging content including things like the amount of cardboard we use in our boxes, to supply our valued customers. Small initiatives can go a long way, such as using recycled content in all our boxes and changing the number of units supplied in each box.

Feeding those in need with FareShare and The Felix Project: Ed Hauck, Co-founder at The Curators

Believe it or not, 7 million people in the UK are struggling to afford the basic food they need to live. Furthermore, it’s only getting worse as the cost-of-living crisis bites hard for households across the country. Amongst all of this, millions of tonnes of food are wasted across the industry every year. The Curators alone can only make a small dent into this problem, but we are proud to be part of a sum that is greater than the parts.

We have donated over 2300 meals in 2021 to FareShare, and we expect that to increase by 3 times in 2022. FareShare are an amazing organisation that collects waste food and redistributes it to those who need it most.

We are also forming a close partnership with an incredible charity called The Felix Project. The Felix Project collects fresh, nutritious food that cannot be sold. They then deliver this surplus food to charities and schools around London.

This charity is especially close to our business as our chairman is also the chairman of this organisation! We have committed as a team to volunteering at their brilliant new kitchen in London (not far from where The Curators HQ is) every 4-6 weeks and we are taking some of our customers and partners there with us to help.

Greenhouse Sports – getting young people moving through sport: Ed Hauck, Co-founder at The Curators

Our other main dedicated charity for 2022 is the incredible Greenhouse Sports – Developing young people through sport. A charity close to the hearts of The Curators founding team as it brings to the fore one of the areas we are most passion about – young people and sport!

The charity was formed by the parent of a pupil who went to the same school as Max, one of our founders, and has changed the lives of thousands of kids by giving them access to after-school sports coaching in areas of the UK that are so often under-funded and unable to give this support.

We will be launching a range of initiatives to support their work, raise funds and get involved with the kids to give them opportunities that go above and beyond the norm. Right now, they have a dire need to repair the roof of their famous flagship community centre in London. Unfortunately, the centre is suffering as a result and cannot provide the access it was created to give. We need £50,000 folks, and we are off to a good start. Please find the Just Giving link here.

How To Stock up on Curators today

Delicious Ideas Food Group supply snacks, confectionery and beverages including The Curators to thousands of sites around the UK. If you are a hotel, pub, café, co-working space, deli, farm shop or more, set up an account here and get wholesale deliciousness delivered to your site today!

If you have any questions or just want to find out a bit more about our service, get in touch with a member of our sales team today on 01733 239003.