Northern Insight catches up with The Sweet Beet and Weirdly Relatable founder, Lizzy Hodcroft, to discuss how one food entrepreneur is changing the face of the food condiment industry and helping combat mental health issues in the workplace.
What does the Sweet Beet do?
The Sweet Beet creates and distributes authentic Americana condiments into the UK retail market. Our mission is to harness the bold, tame the heat and declare war on the mundane by bringing customers authentic innovation in food condiments that deliver pure, no-nonsense flavour that can revitalise your meal from lifeless to enlightened. We want to create a world where confidence is created through discovery and we actively seek to provide empowerment, encouragement and daring for our customers. Describe your achievements over the last 12 months.
Over the last 12 months, The Sweet Beet has gained listings in over 100 farm shop and deli stores across the UK as well as Ocado and Fenwick. We’ve created partnerships with two distributors and watched sales increase month on month. However, the best achievements by far are the numerous awards given to recognise me as an entrepreneur and our products for great taste, innovation and branding. The Sweet Beet has also seen us featured on BBC radio and pitching to the investors on Dragon’s Den.
What can you tell me about Weirdly Relatable?
Weirdly Relatable was created as an outlet to address the stigma of mental health issues in entrepreneurship and business. I found it quite frustrating as I hit barriers that would silence my own path and progression to find purpose within my business as well as my everyday.
I address what can happen to our well-being in a startup and why resilience is key for any founder- food industry or not. More than anything else, I’m trying to be as honest as I can with others and hopefully illustrate a picture of how important it is to share our truth.
Give us a brief timeline of your career so far where did you start, how did you move on?
Before The Sweet Beet, I was not in a good place. I was battling an eating disorder, depression, drug addiction and a horrible self-image. Since the age of fourteen, I’d been in and out of the hospital for self-harm and suicide attempts. I’d also been an inpatient while I went through rehab at the age of 17 and I couldn’t see a future for myself. I created my business with only a short amount of time after my last recovery period. In a weird way, I’ve moulded my own lifeline, my savour and my reason to wake up each day. I took the challenge with excitement and no forward planning, putting in all of my savings which amounted to about three grand and with absolutely no idea what I doing, apart from the vague idea of a street food business. I started my entrepreneurial journey and without knowing it- a path of recovery, self-discovery and enlightenment. What do you believe makes a great leader?
The ability to be humble and show vulnerability. The importance of creating strong connections with others and bring them in on your own journey can have an impact beyond the more traditional concept of leadership.
How do you alleviate the stress that comes with your job?
I try to be gentle with myself. I feel the anxiety and dread and patiently wait for it to pass. In the meantime, I take more time for myself (without the extra weight of guilt for not working). I walk my dog with a friend in the park. I nap. I let myself get lost in the alternative world of a good book. I climb more, rewarded with having with entire bouldering wall to myself during the middle of the day. I go on adventures in the middle of the week, hiking mountains and biking through forests. I left myself live and slowly shed myself of the burden that comes with responsibility and expectations. I also don’t let myself become all consumed in these little cocoons of pleasure. The trick is allowing myself to enjoy other aspects of my life without completely ignoring the rest, otherwise, guilt would have swallowed me and the mounting workload would have left me completely blindsided and overwhelmed causing the dominoes of a dangerous cycle to fall.
When you were little, what did you want to be when you grew up?
That’s the thing, I don’t think I ever did know what I wanted to be. I would fixate on passing ideas but never had a real burning passion behind those thoughts. It caused me a lot of stress and feelings of anxiety.
Any pet hates in the workplace? What do you do about them?
I work alone a lot of the time so I’m not able to really gripe about anything as it’s all my own doing. I enjoy silence and the ability to get lost in my own thoughts. I do get very frustrated with emails though, especially ones that contain important content. I wish people would just pick up the phone!
Where do you see the company in five years’ time?
We aim to lead the food industry into real change; re-engaging and re-invigorating consumers with personalised recipes, value for money and authentic innovation in flavour. I hope to still be very much involved in product development but would like to also explore other interests and passions.
What advice would you give to an aspiring business leader?
Celebrating the success we do achieve, reflecting on the failures in order to learn from them and having an intrinsic knowledge of your strengths and weaknesses is one of the most powerful tools you can access.
What do you wish someone had told you when you started out?
Don’t mix business with family. Learn to accept the fact that all roads seem to lead to capitalism and corporations.
What happens next for The Sweet Beet?
I’m hoping in 2019, our new flavours will be launching. We’ve got mouthwatering plans to see more innovation in flavour and food, branching out of condiments and into seasonings!
