Welcome to the Jazz Shapers Podcast from Mishcon de Reya. What you are about to hear was originally broadcast on Jazz FM, however, the music has been cut due to rights issues.
Elliot Moss
Welcome to Jazz Shapers with me, Elliot Moss bringing the shapers of the business world together with the musicians shaping jazz, soul and blues. My guest today I am very pleased to say is Matt Harris, Founder of both Thunderbird Chicken, the fried chicken restaurant and the pickle brand, Pickle Project. On the cusp of achieving his dream of a professional motorsport career after success in the UK and Europe lead to a scholarship to race NASCAR in the US, Matt’s hopes were crushed when the 2008 recession caused his sponsorship to collapse. Travelling the Deep South following the races and as Matt says, trying to bake my way behind the wheel. Matt fell in love with barbecue and fried chicken and the culinary craftsmanship that didn’t exist in the UK and he sought to try and recreate it. Tinkering with recipes using the same scientific mind-set he once applied to race cars, Matt launched the street food truck, BBQ Lab in London with his breakthrough Chipuffalo wings - which you’re happy I’ve said that properly, he’ll tell me later – Chipuffalo wings winning ‘best wings’ at London Wing Fest, the largest chicken wing festival in the world. Who knew? The success led him to found Thunderbird, now a fifteen site fried chicken chain in 2017 and unable to find a decent pickle to go in Thunderbird’s burgers, he decided to make his own and indeed launched another business, Pickle Project with his fiancé, Heidi in 2024. You obviously like food. It’s very nice to have you here. Are you a foodie? Must be.
Matt Harris
I am definitely a foodie yeah, yeah.
Elliot Moss
Not just chicken and pickles?
Matt Harris
Not just chicken and pickles.
Elliot Moss
What is the best meal for you? What does the ideal meal look like for you Matt?
Matt Harris
Oh, roast dinner obviously.
Elliot Moss
Really?
Matt Harris
Yes.
Elliot Moss
Lamb?
Matt Harris
Uh, mix, mix of beef.
Elliot Moss
Greedy.
Matt Harris
Bit of beef.
Elliot Moss
Greedy.
Matt Harris
Bit of beef, pancetta, yeah.
Elliot Moss
The lot?
Matt Harris
A lot. I’m very greedy.
Elliot Moss
But, but, I, I love the fact that I haven’t met many people that will almost be a Formula 3 Porsche NASCAR, you were almost a racing driving. That’s quite exciting. Now you make food.
Matt Harris
Almost a racing driver, yes.
Elliot Moss
Well you were a racing driver.
Matt Harris
I was, uh, I was almost a successful professional racing driver but unfortunately, uh, the world got in the way of that one, um, but I, I’d started out in racing go karts as a kid and progressed up from there so, racing lots of different sort of junior formula E, got as F3, ran out of money. Went into endurance racing, uh, raced Porsches all over the place and then all the stars aligned and I had this opportunity to go out and, uh, do a scholarship in the US to race in NASCAR which is like, yeah, a dream come true, awesome stuff. So, um…
Elliot Moss
The National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing.
Matt Harris
Yes.
Elliot Moss
I am reliably informed.
Matt Harris
Well part of the reason for that scholarship was it’s sort of very red necky, famously oval racing, Deep South, you know, throw a beer at each other in the grandstands, that kind of stuff. Um, and at the time they were looking for a bit less of that kind of Ricky, Bobby vibe and were looking for people with accents and I can, you know, really dial up the poshness, um…
Elliot Moss
That’s wonderful. Obviously it must have been Chiswick.
Matt Harris
Yes indeed. And they were looking for, um, you know, people with accents who had been successful abroad and as I said, all the stars aligned so got on my plane and as the plane wheels hit the ground, everyone went, foreclosure, foreclosure, foreclosure in the deep south and…
Elliot Moss
This is 2008?
Matt Harris
2008.
Elliot Moss
Yeah.
Matt Harris
And the rug was ripped out from under me, so…
Elliot Moss
Yeah.
Matt Harris
…before you know it, I’m there with a year’s visa but no money, um, and…
Elliot Moss
What, what is it like, I mean, and that, that must have been incredibly heart breaking frankly, I mean I can’t imagine…
Matt Harris
Yeah.
Elliot Moss
…what that felt like but before you, you go there, because the tears are going to brew, we don’t want tears too early. Um, what’s it like driving a car really fast, I mean, I am really scared, I’m a, I’m an unbelievably tentative driver, you know, not tentative but I know that I’m not brilliant at controlling cars at a fast speed. I’ve tried a Porsche on a track once and it was a laugh but I had someone sitting there, you know, guiding me. What’s, what’s the buzz like if you could describe it in words?
Matt Harris
Firstly actually as a side job I used to do, I used to be the guy in the passenger seat and I can tell you that is terrifying.
Elliot Moss
I bet it is.
Matt Harris
You get some random who gets in.
Elliot Moss
Some idiot who’s just bought a new Macan.
Matt Harris
Yes.
Elliot Moss
And then gets to go for a special treat. I mean theoretically of course.
Matt Harris
Yeah.
Elliot Moss
Silverstone on the side track.
Matt Harris
Some guy screaming brake from the passenger seat and grabbing the steering wheel. Yep, that was me, um, but, uh, yeah I loved it, I just, you know.
Elliot Moss
But just describe, give me a sense. You’re, what’s the speed thing like for a driver? Why, why were you so drawn to driving?
Matt Harris
Uh, initially it was watching F1 on the sofa with my old man when I was a kid and you know, seeing Nigel Mansell and Senna and Prost and all those, you know, legends and I got really, really into it and, you know, we did a bit of go karting and it was successful and then it sort of developed from there and I…
Elliot Moss
But when you’re in that car, that’s what I’m interested in.
Matt Harris
Well I just, I loved the sensation of driving and I have so many photographic memories of, you know, watching the car in front of me bouncing over a kerb and blasting sparks out from underneath it and flames shooting out of the exhaust pipes and, you know, you get all this, yeah it’s, there’s so many sensations that, even, there’s a track called Brands Hatch where you go down a really steep hill and back up the other side. At the bottom all the little formula cars would, would bottom out and they’ve got a wooden plank underneath them, you know, it, it reeks of sawdust at the bottom of this hill from all the cars burning as they hit the ground and it’s so exciting. Um, there’s so many things that I, I saw and experienced that are just unforgettable. You know, the dream is always to go back into but unfortunately it is an extremely rich man’s sport.
Elliot Moss
Mm. Stay with me to find out much more about my, my driving legend. I’ve just promoted you. Matt Harris, um, apart from being almost, well he was the drive and he almost would have been famous I’m sure, um, he’s here with me talking about Thunderbird and that’s a beautiful fried chicken shop, restaurant and also talking about pickles and that’s the Pickle Project and we’ll be hearing lots more about how he’s a bit obsessive about making food taste delicious in the same way he probably was about driving. I wanted to just talk about that disappointment for a moment though because I think out of adversity comes opportunity. You must have been in a very low place, joking aside when it was like your dream is, is smashed. How does one pick one’s self up from that? How did you pick yourself up and then go, do you know what, I love chicken and I’m in the south and I’m joying it, you know, I’m going to start a food business at some point. How does that happen?
Matt Harris
I would say not as organically as you might think. I mean I, I, so initially I wasn’t hit so hard with, oh no it’s all over, I, I still had this eternal optimism of, I’ll make it work so I, I thought, you know, I’ll find some way to get behind the wheel of a car again, um. Um, so I started travelling around the south with my year’s visa, trying to sort of beg, borrow, steal my way behind the wheel of a car and I did ultimately do eight laps in NASCAR and it was freakin’ awesome, um, but that was it so eventually that did hit home and I thought, well, damn what am I going to do. Um, came home, got a degree, got a rubbish job in media sales and passionately hated my life, um,…
Elliot Moss
But you did it passionately at least.
Matt Harris
I did, extremely passionately.
Elliot Moss
You really did, you maxed out on the passion for not liking your life?
Matt Harris
Indeed, um.
Elliot Moss
Again, serious point in there, you’re like you knew you weren’t doing the right thing for you?
Matt Harris
No absolutely, I mean I had this sort of north star that I’d focussed on for my whole life of, you know, this incredible career and then it was gone but I kept thinking back to what I really loved from the US and that was, that was the food that I’d encountered over there so, so fried chicken, American BBQ to me. I’d had ribs in TGI Fridays, I’d had maybe KFC like two or three times that was it and then whereas over there when I was travelling, a bit like accents change every hundred miles in the UK, the styles of fried chicken BBQ change over there but they’re like religious about using a particular kind of wood in the smokers or, you know, it’s got to be pork or beef or whatever. I loved all of that stuff and I found it fascinating so when I came home, while I had this horrible job I started cooking in the background and then I very quickly went off the deep end into sort of food science. So using that engineering mind-set that I had from racing where to get the car to go fast you had to kind of understand how everything works, um, because every nut and bolt is adjustable. Looking at the car holistically of a little adjustment at the front might make the back of the car handle very differently in a corner. So you apply that to cooking in a really simple sense you put a, a steak on a pan, you want the outside nice and brown and crispy and the inside nice and pink and juicy. So how do I make outside crispier, inside juicier. Before you know it there’s flame throwers and liquid nitrogen and all kinds of stuff in the kitchen. It’s just like, what is happening here.
Elliot Moss
It’s a garage.
Matt Harris
Indeed.
Elliot Moss
It’s a garage for food.
Matt Harris
Yeah, my flat mates were like, what the hell is this but, um, they ate some delicious meals and some not delicious meals but that was, that was part of the fun of experimenting. I just, I loved it. And around that time street food was just the coolest thing in the world. It was just like late 2013, Twitter was blowing up and I had this idea that maybe street food would be something really fun to do. So one night I got drunk and bought an ambulance on Ebay. I think because sober me didn’t really have the cojonas to do it. Drunk me was just like, why not.
Elliot Moss
So you bought an ambulance?
Matt Harris
Yes.
Elliot Moss
And that became the BBQ lab.
Matt Harris
Correct. Yeah the next morning was a bit of a like, what have I done.
Elliot Moss
How do you pick up an ambulance from Ebay? Do you have to go and collect the thing?
Matt Harris
Yeah. You do.
Elliot Moss
It didn’t get driven to you?
Matt Harris
No, uh, some guy was using it as a mobile bicycle repair shop so I mean it was like, it was horrendous. Um, but I got a mate to fit it out with a, you know, some, some domestic kitchen cupboards and do a bit of wiring and off I went with street food.
Elliot Moss
And ripple dissolve, you win, I love this that there’s something called Wing Fest.
Matt Harris
Yeah.
Elliot Moss
And you win the award for the best wings.
Matt Harris
Yeah. So that sort of sciency, recipe stuff that works in my head pervaded through the whole menu. I did a different menu every single day which is a fabulously stupid idea I can confirm. It was so hard. Um, but I loved it. It was, it was all about experimentation and I really got a kick out of sort of breaking down a recipe into its core components, understand how every little bit works and then make them better, put it back together. So that, that was kind of the idea with those wings is take a traditional buffalo wing, break down every single ingredient, try and make it a bit better, put it back together and then Wing Fest was coming up and I thought, ah, this might be fund, might make a few hundred quid, you know, it’s a day out, doing a bit of street food stuff and then we won it and I was like, oh.
Elliot Moss
He’s on, he’s on the podium.
Matt Harris
He’s on the podium.
Elliot Moss
Number 1, holding it aloft.
Matt Harris
Indeed. My favourite trophy ever. Uh, apart from it did melt in a fire.
Elliot Moss
The trophy?
Matt Harris
Yeah, yeah. Later in the street food career, uh, a place called Dinerama burnt down which was a bit sad, um, but anyway. So that one has gone.
Elliot Moss
You’re listening to Matt Harris talking about trying to eat a trophy and that’s what happens Matt when you cook a trophy. That’s experimentation gone too far. Stay with me for much more from my guest today, it’s Matt Harris and he’s the Founder of Thunderbird and the Pickle Project and he’s an experimenter at heart. Right now though, and he’ll be back in a couple of minutes I said, but right now we are going to hear a taster from the Mishcon Innovation Series which you can find on all the major podcast platforms. Lydia Kellett invites Business Founders to share their practical advice and industry insights for those of you thinking about starting your very own thing. In this clip we hear from Tariq Ralph, Architect and Founder & COO of Catalogue, a digital work hub aiming to give people a radically simpler way to coordinate work.
You can enjoy all our former Business Shapers on the Jazz Shapers podcast and you can hear this very programme again now in the fourteenth year, on the fourteenth day of the month - Happy Valentines’ Day if you are celebrating I hope you are - if you pop ‘Jazz Shapers’ into your favourite podcast platform. My guest today is Matt Harris, Founder of both Thunderbird Chicken, the friend chicken restaurant and the pickle brand, Pickle Project. So you talk about experimentation which I, I love. Is it true that a driver and now a restauranteur and a maker of different sorts of food, might be slightly obsessive?
Matt Harris
Yes.
Elliot Moss
It’s okay, it’s, it’s a good label but in that, there’s a really interesting thing because I imagined the answer to that question would be yes. In German, the word for search and the word for obsession is actually the same thing. Which I kind of thought was interesting…
Matt Harris
It feels appropriate.
Elliot Moss
….it feels very appropriate. Is there a buzz in the search for the ideal, the perfect ingredients and the perfect spices that you use. Is there something in that which is similar to you perfecting the way that you got the car to drive and the way that you actually drove it?
Matt Harris
Yeah I think you hit the nail on the head. I, I find it fascinating understanding how things work and then it’s only really when you understand how they work that you can the make them better. Um, and…
Elliot Moss
Have you always been like that since you were a kid?
Matt Harris
No, I think that probably developed from the motor racing and it was probably towards the, the latter years of that career that, sometimes I had to find a bit of a, there was a bit of a gulf between the, what I was trying to say to the engineers and what they were hearing and what they could then apply so I ended up trying to get them to explain a shock absorber does X, Y and Z and we can adjust it this way and blah, blah, blah. And you are like, oh right okay well we need to do that and then suddenly it starts working and you, you can apply that into just about anything.
Elliot Moss
Anything, yeah. And were people explaining the whole cooking process to you or have you learnt this on your own?
Matt Harris
Uh, no, no, um, books, Internet, experimentation, messing around, having fun, learning stuff. Um, and make it up as you go along.
Elliot Moss
And now we are eight years into Thunderbird Chicken, you’re in sixteen, sixteen locations?
Matt Harris
Fifteen.
Elliot Moss
I’ve just given you an extra one. Well done.
Matt Harris
Thank you.
Elliot Moss
We’ve just opened it together, what shall we do, 50/50?
Matt Harris
Wonderful.
Elliot Moss
That would be great. Um, fifteen different sites, I think a number of them are in the Parkdean, um, Resorts, the Parkdean Park places.
Matt Harris
Yeah.
Elliot Moss
What’s it like now you, you’ve got this machine, it’s, it’s a thing. Are you clear about all the moving pieces? Do you know how all of them work? Are there things that you continue to, to manipulate as it were to improve?
Matt Harris
Yes, as a Founder you are kind of doing everything initially, you know, from Pickles for example, today I am finance director, tomorrow I am the plumber, everything and so, we now have a very good team with, with Thunderbird which means I’m a little bit more surplus to requirements. So we’ve got a great finance director, marketing director, you know, all these people, um, who look after everything. So from a, sort of an operational day-to-day perspective the business is in really, really good hands. The challenge that we’re facing as a business though is that there has been a big American invasion. So when I started this back in like 2017, we didn’t have Popeyes or Wingstop or Slim Chickens or, now there’s Eggs for Layers coming, there’s Dave’s Hot Chicken, we’ve got, we are at the point of over saturation on most High Streets in the UK already. So as a small business trying to grow, they’ve suddenly come in with tens, hundreds of millions, that’s really, really difficult for us so we’re actually pivoting a little bit as a brand and we, we’re launching a, like Thunderbird’s little brother or sister, um, called Strip Shack which is a much more paired down version, uh, which is sort of designed for grab and go locations and, and places where you’re not going to have a giant, you know, six thousand square foot Popeyes next to it but to try and go to places, you know, stations and airports and all those sorts of places.
Elliot Moss
Is that happening already? Is Strip Shack already out there?
Matt Harris
It is happening already yep, which is really exciting so we’ve got a couple of operating locations, there’s one up with Parkdean up in Northumberland which is slightly inconvenient from London but still, um.
Elliot Moss
Time to think on the way up there.
Matt Harris
Indeed, uh, uh, but it’s really, really exciting, um, and we, we’ve, you know, we see a huge opportunity for that one.
Elliot Moss
And where did that idea come from Matt? Was it simply needs must?
Matt Harris
Actually the idea came from a fryer. Um, we found a fryer that doesn’t need extraction so one of the barriers to us opening restaurants in places is getting enough extraction to, to remove all that oily air from the fryers and we found one that’s got built in extraction. So we sort of built the whole business around that concept so going into you know, small places around London Bridge Station, you take over one of those old vape shops or a, a phone repair shop or something like that and we can put a little Strip Shack into there, you know, you only need a couple of staff. The fit out is relatively inexpensive and while it might only take £10,000-£15,000 a week, you can really scale those up very, very quickly and, and make a really good living off it. So again we’re very excited about that opportunity, um, and not to diminish anything Thunderbird is doing, I still think Thunderbird Fried Chicken has its place and it is brilliant and our restaurants are doing great but looking at, you know, some high streets, we’ve got three fried chicken shops next to each other. That’s a tough battle to go and fight.
Elliot Moss
But he’s found the place through a fryer.
Matt Harris
Indeed.
Elliot Moss
And through the actual utility of the fryer. There you go, he really does know his business. Matt Harris, my Business Shaper, Thunderbird Chicken, Strip Shack and the Pickle Project and there’s probably another one coming before the end of this programme. Um, you mentioned, you talked about the team and the juxtaposition with the Founder playing every single role. What kind of leader are you? Have you looked at other people and go, I want to be like that or is it just, I deal with what I need to deal with?
Matt Harris
Uh, that’s a very good question. Um, I’ve just got better at the leadership side of things. I don’t think I was especially inspiring sometimes in the past. Um…
Elliot Moss
Are you happier in the gadgety bit? Are you happier playing and fixing stuff rather than, this person you need to do that and I need to empower you. Is that not really your thing?
Matt Harris
That’s not really my thing although I’m a lot, lot better at it than I was in the past. I’ve learnt to deal with that a lot better. I think in my head I’ve always assumed that I’ve been very lucky in that I can pick things up very quickly, um, and sort of learnt to fix problems and so on. I kind of always assumed that everyone else is just going to be able to do exactly the same, just as fast, work just as hard and it doesn’t…
Elliot Moss
Quite work like that.
Matt Harris
…work that way. No, um, so now I am getting a lot better at, at that aspect of it.
Elliot Moss
So the bit, I, I was thinking about you, I imagine you spend a lot of your time thinking about how you want to improve things. Even when you’re not quote, unquote at work. Which is very normal for a founder anyway but is that true?
Matt Harris
Absolutely.
Elliot Moss
Are you, are you always thinking about…
Matt Harris
Constantly, yeah. Particularly now with the, the new Pickle business and doing things my own slightly daft way, you know, we are using ultrasound to make the brine for our pickles which is very unconventional.
Elliot Moss
What, sorry hold on. Ultrasound to make brine? Why would you use ultrasound to make brine?
Matt Harris
So…
Elliot Moss
The brief answer.
Matt Harris
The brief answer.
Elliot Moss
You go, well there’s a manual actually I’ve written here Elliot, it’s seventeen pages. We could be here until 3.00 o’clock in the afternoon. Simple terms.
Matt Harris
Well the genesis idea for the pickle, for Pickle Project was, uh, I’d been looking for good pickles to go in the burgers for Thunderbird for a couple of years and also kind of looking for something else for my brain to get really focussed on and I realised that all the pickles that were available to us were not great and in my head, you know, I remembered going in a Walmart in the US and there’s a quarter mile long shelf of pickles and then you go to, you know, my big local Sainsbury and there’s maybe a foot and a half wide shelf with a couple of jars. I thought, oh my god, there’s a huge opportunity here so then I started playing around with some recipes and stuff and if you really break if down to its core components, what are pickles. Well it’s a vegetable in a delicious liquid. Who makes the most delicious liquids, cocktail nerds, or I should probably call them mixologists or whatever they prefer. Um, and I found that quite a lot of them are using ultrasound. So you, you, you know, you vacuum pack your raspberries and then put them in a bath of water and then blast it with high intensity sound waves.
Elliot Moss
What does a soundwave do?
Matt Harris
It creates cavitation in the water which is kind of like it sounds, little cavities. So tiny little voids in the water, uh, and as they implode on themselves they create shockwaves which the help shatter stuff out of other stuff. So scaled that up, now got a massive tank that, I think it was sold for like cleaning car parts like, you know, you put a lorry gear box in it and it blasts all the dirt off. But it will do the same thing if you put spices and seasonings and stuff so you get tonnes of extraction. Whereas traditionally if you are making pickles it’s, you know, cucumbers, vinegar, water, salt, sugar and then some seeds. But, you know, natures designed a coriander seed or a black peppercorn to grow into a plant so all of the nutrients and stuff are locked up inside.
Elliot Moss
So this explodes them out basically and then gives you the flavour.
Matt Harris
It gives you tonnes and tonnes of flavour and then also looked at what are their core components of the flavour. So dill for example, has a-phellandrene and limonene and carvone and all these different flavours. So you look at other flavours that are complementary to that and that’s led us down a really interesting path if there are some other ingredients in there like we use a tiny blue mint, and cardamom and there’s some liquorice root and things that you wouldn’t traditionally expect, all in very small amounts, but it just amplifies that pickly flavour to make the cleanest pickles we can possibly pickle.
Elliot Moss
Pickles we can possibly pickle.
Matt Harris
Yeah.
Elliot Moss
And, and I’ve just learnt…
Matt Harris
That’s your new voice memo.
Elliot Moss
No that is, welcome back to pickles that can possibly pickly. Um, that’s amazing, wow, I mean I’ve just never gone so deep inside of a, a jar of pickles but now I feel like I have. Final chat with my guest today, Matt Harris is coming up very shortly and we can hear more about the tank if we so desire and the explosions and we’ve got some music from Jordan Rakei, that’s in just a moment, don’t go anywhere.
Matt Harris is my Business Shaper, uh, Thunderbird Chicken, the Pickle Project and Strip Shack which is the future I think, sounds like a really, a really good idea. I love the way you, you get into all this and it is kind of engineering and science as you said meets taste which. Which is fab. Where does it go from here Matt? If we have a conversation in five years, what’s the shape of this universe you’re creating going to look like? What’s Strip Shack going to be? What’s, is Thunderbird Chicken still going to be there in this guise do you reckon and what about the Pickle Project? What’s going to happen?
Matt Harris
I sincerely hope so. Um, despite everything I’ve said about, you know, sort of always having a plan or a goal or a, you know, I want to progress through the motor racing career and all that sort of very ingrained in my head of, uh, where I want to be in the future. I’ve not been that good at five year plans because everything that I’ve done historically miles and miles away from my actual plans. So where we’ll be in five years? I really don’t know. I just sincerely hope that Thunderbird is, is still great and growing and Strip Shacks doing brilliant and I guess, this is going to sound a bit sort of watery eyed, but when I started everyone always said, how many restaurants do you want to own? I don’t know like, you know, five hundred. It’s, it’s sort of a meaningless number but what I actually really wanted to create was a business that was kind of loved equally by the people who work for it and the people who shop from it and if you’ve done that and built something brilliant that people love then, then that’s, that’s something really great to achieve. And then with the pickles, pfft, I don’t know, it’s growing so, so fast.
Elliot Moss
It must taste great. I am now going to go into Panzer’s, one of my favourite places in the world on St John’s Wood high street in North London, um, and I’m going to go and find. Because I know it’s stocked there. I’m going to find the, the Pickle Project and go and taste these ultrasound exploded coriander, dill and mint extravaganza’s that are going to happen to me with the pickle. The humble pickle. Is the buzz for you similar to, you know you were describing the sparks and the smell of the sawdust on that Brands Hatch bit you go up and down and you said you can see people hit the kerb in front of you. Are there moments like that in the business or is it a bit more like, not quite watching paint dry but is it a bit more things happen slowly and then you look in the rear view mirror and you go, oh I did that?
Matt Harris
Yeah I’d definitely say working in the pickle factory is a bit less sort of visceral and exciting.
Elliot Moss
Less exciting than going round a corner at a 100 miles an hour.
Matt Harris
Yeah. I mean I was in there yesterday, it was 3 degrees, um, so…
Elliot Moss
It’s not romantic.
Matt Harris
No, it’s, it’s not glamorous in the slightest, um.
Elliot Moss
So where’s the, what’s the buzz then?
Matt Harris
It is, however, it is that progression. So it’s looking back at stuff I was doing a few months ago and going, oh my, what was I thinking and, you know, learning and growing and then also seeing the sales just, you know, that, that upward trajectory is, is so exciting. You know, yesterday we, we got some very exciting, uh, interest from, from a major retailer, um.
Elliot Moss
This is on the pickles?
Matt Harris
Yeah, uh, and then, you know, it’s we went live on Ocado in December and it’s, you know, for a business that’s only been trading for just over a year, uh, and bearing in mind I was working one day a week on the pickles up until November, you know, to see that happening is amazing. We still don’t have a single staff member, um…
Elliot Moss
Wow.
Matt Harris
…because it’s all been just me or agency staff and then my lovely fiancé, Heidi, does some marketing and sales and stuff for us but otherwise it’s basically just me, listening to an audio book being cold in the factory.
Elliot Moss
Yeah.
Matt Harris
So the glamour is not quite the same as, as NASCAR driver.
Elliot Moss
Um, but the drive, where’s the drive from? That I see in your eyes, that I see when you talk about the race, that I see when you are talking about all these different things. Where’s that been instilled from?
Matt Harris
I’ve wondered about this in the past. I think it’s probably really just do it down to problem solving. I just get a kick out of problem solving and with a small business it is kind of whack a mole with problems. You just get, you know, every day a new one pops up. You improve something and then something else becomes a bottle neck and, and I find that really exciting. And it should be, well and it is, exhausting and self-destructive and all that sort of stuff but I just…
Elliot Moss
You’re really selling it.
Matt Harris
…I just love being in the deep end.
Elliot Moss
If you want to be exhausted and self-destructive you should become an entrepreneur. It’s another great advert for being a Founder and inspiring.
Matt Harris
Yeah but no, but it’s the truth.
Elliot Moss
And, and what I love about the people I meet here on Jazz Shapers is exactly that. It’s the story that people say, it’s like I love it, I’m driven but it’s hard, it’s beyond hard and you’ve, you’ve got to be up for the fight. As you are going at 100 miles an hour jiggling around in the car it hurts, it’s going to hurt but it’s good, it’s good stuff. It’s been great talking to you Matt. Really good luck, I am genuinely going to go and buy some Project Pickles because my wife’s a massive pickle fan. Um, so I am looking forward to that. Just before I let you disappear, to your 3 degree centigrade factory. What’s your song choice and why have you chosen it?
Matt Harris
This is Outstanding by The Gap Band, uh, and it’s one that, well I think the lyrics are probably quite self-explanatory but it’s for, uh, my fiancé, Heidi. Sorry if that’s a bit weepy,
Elliot Moss
We love weepy eyes. Here it is just for you and Heidi.
The Gap Band with Outstanding, the song choice of my Business Shaper here on Valentines’ Day, Matt Harris for his fiancé, Heidi. He talked about how he loved to understand how everything works. He talked about problem solving and the fact that if you’re an entrepreneur you are essentially playing what a mole every day where one problem pops up and then another. And finally, and I love this message to all founders of businesses, he believes in building something that people are going to love. If that is what’s at the core of why you do something it’s going to make it a whole lot easier because the truth is it’s really hard to build a business. That’s it from me and Jazz Shapers, have a lovely weekend.
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