Stu Macdonald’s Post

IS IT? (sound on.. it's worth it) It took Tyrell's 5 years... Ben & Jerry's 7 years... TOMs shoes 7 years... Nike 9 years.... to reach $5m in sales. A clip but not much more slower than ManiLife | B Corp™. Even the world's ( / Europe's) greatest can get off to slow starts. #believe #Scotlandsdaywillcome

I have contemplated this question at least monthly.. Occasionally daily since I was about five years old… Why are Bagels SO much tastier than bread?   Fortunately, some people have done more than simply pontificate on this age old question. 🤔 Some people have taken advantage of it's DEEP, DELICIOUS, TRUTH. 👀 Some people are B Bagel. 🔥   I first frequented a B Bagel only 43 days ago (embarrassingly). Tottenham Court Road. It was absolute pandemonium. It made a Friday night at London's Liverpool Street McDeen's look like a modern day Sunday sermon.   B bagel are definitely on to something. It’s probably the Bagels but it's possibly their penchant for OUTSTANDING peanut butter themed collabs.   Like this one. The Peanut Butter Hot Sauce Bagel...COLLECTION. For people who like chicken like Jefferson. AND for people who like plants like Mitch ☝ Shout out to Annabel, Chloe, Eve and Emma for descending upon the donut shaped revelry last weekend. Shout out to all at B Bagel for their fantastic work.   If you haven't been. If you haven't tried the PB hot sauce DELIGHT. STOP THIS MADNESS and go. Available for July only.   #Signatureserves

Last week's was probably my pleasantest pod experience. Ever. ☝ I'm doing a lot of pods (/podding?) a lot at the moment.. Five in a fortnight 😬   👨❤️💋👨 The ones face to face ALWAYS beat zoom. 🤙 Long meandering conversations with no real focus ALWAYS beat 27 and a half minute quick fire. The one that's A (literal) day… in the face of the UK's Sourdough scene's (Yes. It's a scene) kitchen… Where she cooks & one consumes a three course meal, in the presence of media powerhouse (and Foodbod Pod's producer) David Treadway… Where the chat flows so deep, meanders so wide that you're actually not even sure where it went... 👀 😬 - sorry Alice Gosnell Trumps all of them. 😍   A genuine joy to spend the day with Foodie sensation Elaine Boddy... in her fantastic kitchen... Showing off my absolute dogsh*te baking skills...proudly. I'm not sure when the pod is out. And I've genuinely no idea what's going to be in it. But production, at the very least, was GREAT.

INTRODUCING ManiLife | B Corp™'s LATEST ADDITION 👀 👀 Eve Edmunds landed this week AND (largely thanks to the wonderful Alice Gosnell) hers was the slickest induction week in Mani-history. Hailing from the Common Welsh Green's very own beating heart (Cardiff) Eve joins the fray as a fully fledged content sorceress and manager of all forms of sociable media. Like all great creatives' would be, her peanut butter work station was an ABSOLUTE STATE 😍. The results were magic regardless and the utter chaos only got me more excited for the the spells she will cast on our channels! Eve. Welcome to the ManiLife 👊 p.s if you're wondering whether all those magical references are a coincidence. They're not. In her spare time Eve runs one of the UK's leading Potter dedicated Tik Tok channels. Needless to say, as someone who's been devouring Stephen Fry's dulcet tones at bed time for the last two decades, I was pretty in to this. 😎

  A LOT CAN CHANGE IN 6 MONTHS   This pic is wild. Same beach 6 months apart in Vaasa, Finland.    As I posed awkwardly for the summer version my daughters cried out in unison…   'Daddy, do you think this is a social media appropriate metaphor for the speed of change at ManiLife in the last 6 months?'   No girls. No girls it isn't.   #Linkedin

EARLY MANI THIS WAS THE EVENT THAT CHANGED THE TRAJECTORY OF THE BUSINESS... Jason Gibb & Tara Mei's Bread & Butter Festival (I believe was the original name!?). Back then it was fantastic, BUT just as Butter is no comparison to JAM... The 2024 update - Bread & Jam festival is ANOTHER LEVEL to the one I attended many years ago. A tidal wave of learning 🏄♀️ - 60 hours of content (too much if anything) across 5 rooms. A metaphor for the biggest challenge in scaling a businesss - what do you focus on? 🤔 That horrible word that is often actually quite fun... NETWORKING 💃 🤺 ... lots and lots of networking. Loads of other fun stuff like pitching, tasting panels and food/drinks 👀 Upcoming event is here >>>> https://lnkd.in/eDTtrigi 16th July, London Business Design Centre (which is far nicer than the Excell) I'm speaking at it and we are pals so, if you're reading this and would like to go (and agree we're pals) use code SPEAKERPAL for 20% off 🤝

A BUYER CAN CHANGE YOUR LIFE And this CANNY (Cannay? Canneee? Canní?) lass from Newcastle did exactly that back in 2017.   Picture the scene.   A small (ish) group of inspired individuals, led by an inspirational German chap (with an unbelievable name) working out of a one up one down shed in Shepherd's Bush, slinging boxes of pre-portioned ingredients to help people cook were in a PANIC.   Timo Boldt's Gousto had been let down by their peanut butter supplier.   Fortunately for Timo and co there was a Geordie in their midst with her finger on the pulse of London's nichest food scene…   On the other side of London town, in a tiny office in Bermondsey a phone rings. It's said Geordie on the line… to a younger, naiver, slightly hairier headed... me.   "We need 9,000 mini pots of peanut butter… in 9 days."   Somehow, a week later, with the help of 14 friends (one of whom is now my wife 😍 ) a Fresh Fitness Food's kitchen and some piping bags... We packed that 9,000 over 2 nights and delivered it on time. JUST.😬   No doubt Laura Armstrong was a hero at Gousto BUT she was also a hero ManiLife | B Corp™.   In 2017 we were NOTHING but since that day…   We've supplied almost 8 million branded mini pots into the recipe box trade.😱 100s of 1000s have learned to cook with peanut butter (and discovered the greatest peanut butter on earth in the process. 👀 )   I hadn't seen Laura in about 5 years before last week. Needless to say, she is still absolutely.. World. Class.

WHO NEEDS PEANUT BUTTER ESPRESSO MARTINIS? 🤗 MASSIVE shout out to the ManiLife | B Corp™ team for throwing an absolute BELTER at Taste of London Festival last week. The lead up was a rollercoaster of concern. A late decision to pull out of paying a gzillion £ for an alcohol license meant NO. PEANUT. BUTTER. ESPRESSO. MARTINIS. on the stand... Would the masses descend into protest? 😬 Nay. No protests. Just Peanut Butter (and peanut and almond butter) fuelled Pandemonium. 😍 I LOVE Taste of London Festival. 😍 We've been coming since Mani's inception (see early pic 👀 ...RIP the Mani Bike) It eclipses every other show we do. 💥 It is ELECTRIC. 💥 The food (but mainly drink) fuels infinitely better conversations with customers. 💃 The MEGA pull of the event means 100s (/1000s?) more memorable interactions with consumers - most of them celebrities (shout out Chloe Stephenson's new best friend Mila Kunis) 🕺 Not a year has gone by where I haven't bumped into an old friend I haven't seen in years. 😍 But without the sheer GRAFT of Emma, Laura, Annabel, Victoria, Chloe and Toby and without the electrifying cameos from Alice and Alastair, Elinor and Billy... It would just have been a poor lad in a funny shirt riding a broken bike, stuck in a puddle trying not to crack under the pressure of millions of punters asking after Peanut Butter Espresso Martinis. See you next year 🤞 x

ALWAYS BE GOOD TO THE WAITER.   It is a sad fact that, in the UK, jobs in hospitality are seen as a kind of stepping stone. It's too severe to say they're looked down upon (though some absolute Pr***s do indeed look down upon them!) but there is a bit of that. In my experience this is a uniquely British trait and doesn't exist anywhere else.   I HATE IT. 😡   BUT at ManiLife, for as long as I can remember, we've used this sad fact to put people to the test. ☝   "THE WAITER TEST"   Usually final stage but invariably at some stage I take potential Peanut Butter slingers to a café, bar or restaurant for a casual conversation. There's always a list of things to probe, often around values but top of that list is "HOW DO THEY TREAT THE WAITER?"   It demonstrates manners, social aptitude, ego, sometimes it even shows how one performs under pressure (if you can still make a stressed out waiter feel good whilst you yourself are stressing an interview - MASSIVE PLUS!)   Most importantly, it shows peoples TRUE COLOURS.   I have ignored the Waiter test results (once) to my detriment and I have not hired people purely based on how they treated the Waiter.   Aware one might consider sharing this so publicly as a potential perversion of The Waiter Test BUT ☝ We've got a supreme talent incoming, no planned hires for a wee while after that... and I'm relying on 21st century attention spans/memories holding true.   Keen to hear if anyone has any weird and wonderful interview techniques. Please share! 👀   --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Photo credit goes Rupert Hill - Ground zero Mani well before it was called ManiLife | B Corp™- Buenos Aires, Argentina 2014. #simplertimes