There’s astroturfed flooring (in fact) and an indication above a handwashing mirror studying “we judge on taste , not looks”.
With a second workplace in Sydney — 15% of Dash’s gross sales are in Australia — the entrepreneurial duo have come far since first assembly whereas working at a mushy drinks agency after college. They bonded over food waste — as you do.
Scott grew up on a potato farm which — like all fruit and vegetable producers — noticed 17% of fruit and veg binned on the farm gates because of blemishes.
“We were trying to come up with a product to use for this rejected, wonky fruit, and then we saw soft drinks stuffed with sugar and artificial ingredients. That was our lightbulb moment — infusing wonky fruit into spring water to create a delicious drink without sugar or sweetener.”
So in 2016, the duo stop their jobs in advertising and gross sales at a mushy drinks enterprise, received a small mortgage from Virgin Startup, labored with meals waste charity Feedback to seek out wonky fruit, and spent each weekend for 3 months with a desk providing samples in Battersea, Regent’s and Green Parks and Wandsworth Common.
“People were walking around carrying water bottles with their own choppedup lemon and cucumber, so we made it in a ready-to-drink format, using spring water infused with wonky fruit, and a SodaStream to add bubbles, and waited to see what people thought.”
At the time, Wright factors out: “We were the only drink of this type in Europe which did not have any sugar or sweetener in it. When they tried Dash, only about 50% of people liked the drinks, because they had sweeter palates, but it’s changed since then with the sugar tax and more awareness.”
Scott and Wright have been solely 24 once they launched Dash: “We had very little experience creating a product, business and team, and the most challenging thing was overcoming the mental hurdle of actually launching the products and getting it out to the world. We learned to follow Eric Reiss’s Lean Startup model — start small, get a product out to the world, test it and iterate to continually improve.”
The first stockist was Selfridges — “it took 20 million emails” is how Wright says they bought on the cabinets.
Persistence turned key: the entrepreneurs have been determined to get into Whole Foods, however its purchaser didn’t reply to their emails. “So I went and sat in their headquarters’ reception at 6am, waiting for the buyer to come,” Wright says. “Only to find out after a few hours she was working from home.”
He bought seen, although, and launched Dash’s raspberry flavour within the retailer; now, Wright provides, Dash is Whole Foods’ bestselling drink.
Today the model is stocked in 10,000 shops worldwide together with Starbucks, Tesco, Sainsbury’s, and British Airways, and in 20 nations.
Sales have greater than doubled yearly since launch, and followers embrace Richard Branson, Victoria and David Beckham and Maya Jama.
The founders have raised £21 million up to now, from VCs together with Beringea and angels together with former Tyrrell’s boss David Milner and the founders of Beavertown Brewery, Links of London, Charles Tyrwhitt and Sipsmith Gin.
The duo at the moment are targeted on rising their worldwide enterprise: they launched in Australia throughout Covid, producing the primary batches of Dash cans from Melbourne’s wonky fruit with out the UK group assembly farmers, producers, or retailers, and even tasting it till they’d been on sale for 3 weeks as a result of pandemic restrictions.
“Fortunately the drinks tasted outstanding,” Wright asserts.
Their success hasn’t gone unnoticed: main mushy drinks manufacturers together with Coca-Cola have created their very own fruit-infused seltzers.
Dash’s founders declare they’re unconcerned: “We’re beating them because consumers connect with our brand mission. We use fruit that battles food waste, real fruit and vegetables not flavours made in a lab, and spring water not tap water.
“We have the genuine story and they don’t.”
