Creating plant based milk for kids – with Amy Langfield, Grow with Iris

Welcome to the bring your product idea to life podcast. This is the podcast for you if you're getting started selling products or if you'd like to create your own product to sell.

I'm Vicki Weinberg, a product creation coach and Amazon expert. Every week I share friendly practical advice as well as inspirational stories from small businesses. Let's get started.

Hi.

So today on the podcast I'm speaking with Amy Langfield, the co founder of Grow with Iris and Fortified and free from plant based grown up drink. Nutrition is tailored for kids aged 12 months to 4 years. I had a really fascinating conversation with Amy.

I've never heard of a product like hers, I'll be honest with you.

And I had so many questions about how you actually formulate a product for children that's actually nutritious and gives them what they need as well as tasting.

Good so that they'll drink it.

Obviously there are so many regulations involved in selling products for babies and toddlers and Amy was really generous in all that she shared with us.

She also spoke about a grant and a number of grants that her business has been able to obtain, which has really helped with funding the design of the products. And listen on to find more about that and see if that can be applicable to you too.

There is so much to learn in this conversation and I would love now to introduce you to Amy.

So hi Amy, thank you so much for being here.

Oh, it's an absolute honour to come and chat with you today, Vicki. Thank you.

Oh, thank you. Can we please start by you giving an introduction to yourself, your business and what you sell? Yes.

So I am Amy Langfield. I'm the co founder of Growvirus. So here's Growavirus. We're a plant based, officially free from fortified growing up drink.

So a little bit like a formula but for kids 12 months to four years. So yeah, that's what we are.

Amazing. Thank you. So let's just jump straight in. Amy, tell us the story about behind Grow with Iris. So how, why, when you got started?

The reason that we found this out was because she had really horrific atopic eczema. I was breastfeeding at the time, but from her blood results we could tell because obviously she wasn't weaned then.

These were all of her allergies so I had to cut all of that out of my diet.

So I was returning back to work as an art teacher, full time art teacher, when she was just five months old and she'd just been kind of diagnosed and I knew for a fact that I wasn't going to be able to be pumping at school because kids are like in and out of your classroom. You don't get five minutes to yourself when you're teaching. And I was looking for an alternative formula for her.

I went to my gp, managed to get the medicalized prescription formula, but turned it over and just was like, oh, I really don't want to be giving her this. I've been breastfeeding. And then to be going to the first ingredient that was like corn syrup. And it just felt really wrong.

So my partner and I, we just kind of searched the Internet, looking all around the world just to see if there was any sort of alternative and we couldn't really find anything. We imported a couple of very expensive products, but then they'd sell out and I was like, why is this so hard? Like, why is this so difficult?

And that's kind of when coronavirus was born. I thought, you know what, I'm going to do something about this. I can't be the only one. And that's really where the catalyst, that's where it started.

And yeah, that was. Yeah, that's the beginning. I mean, it's a long time ago.

Yeah, well, thanks for explaining that. And as a little aside, does Ivy still suffer from allergies now or has she grown out of some of them or.

Yeah, funnily enough, I was just sending an email to school updating all of her allergies because she's going on her first residential. She's eight now. Just goes to show how long the R&D's been. And it's all tree nuts, peanuts, shellfish, particular prawns.

I mean, she's vegetarian but, you know, cross contamination and cherries and then she can't eat stone fruit unless it's cooked. She gets to give a big rash on her face.

Oh, gosh, that's really hard.

Yeah, no, it's a lot.

It's a lot to manage and we kind of think that we're managing everything, but allergies have a really, a really clever way of just kind of taking you by surprise and reminding you how significant they are. So she was at a club on Saturday and get a phone call to say hostess suddenly got really itchy, all up her arms, on her face.

And we don't think it's anything she's eaten, but, you know, then I brush over and she had her antihistamines. She didn't need to have her pens or EpiPens. And.

But again, I think every time that happens, I think for her, it sinks in and it makes her realize, actually, this is real. And it's horrible because, you know, I remember her saying to me, I, you know, I hate having allergies. I wish I didn't have allergies.

We were talking about what perfect means, because she was saying that our dog was perfect. I said, well, no one's really perfect. She said, well, Winston is like her brother. And I'm like, well, he's not really.

But she says, well, he doesn't have allergies, does he? And I'm like, well, that doesn't make you imperfect. It just means something that you kind of live with.

And that's really difficult to hear her say that.

And we've always kind of celebrated her allergies and said they are part of her, but I think it is a heavy load that she carries, but doesn't necessarily communicate.

Yeah. And she is. She is still so young as well. It's a lot, isn't it, for a young child?

Yeah, she's eight. And she always seems a lot older. But, you know, that is a burden. It is a burden, and it is. You know, it doesn't stop her from doing anything.

You know, we really encourage her to do everything she wants to do, and we put things in place to protect her. Her as much as we can and control the controllables. But, yeah, it's always there. It's like this kind of underlying thread. Yeah.

It's really hard, and I'm really sorry. And when she was coming back to. When she was very little, when you were going back to work. So what was the solution?

Because I guess you mentioned that you were sourcing milk from abroad and then that would sell out and then I. Presumably you'd be looking for something else.

Was there anything at all you found that worked, or was it just a case of waiting until she could have solid food?

Yeah, so she. I found a formula from France which we imported, so I'd still breastfeed in the morning and the night, just so, you know, almost because I wanted to.

But also that kept the cost down. So she'd have, like, one feed of this formula at lunchtime with the childminder.

We were so fortunate to find a childminder who actually did have a nut allergy herself because she was at another One for a day. And this lady just did not understand and was in such a state over looking after her and I just thought we can't be doing this.

Like you need to be able to, you know, allow Iris to be who she is without making a big deal out of it, you know.

Yeah.

So yeah, we managed to import that but then it would sell out so she'd just have to.

If we didn't have any left, I'd either like pump at home and send that in and you know when you're working full time in a school with and I taught, you know, 4 to 11 year olds, it's quite high energy, it's a lot.

And then you're constantly worried about her every time the phone rings and I still get that when the phone call, when the, when it's the school like my, my stomach just drops and I feel sick and every time like nothing to worry about because they know. Yeah, it's a lot, it's a lot to, to carry.

But we do try and you know, make sure that she lives with allergies that she doesn't, she's not an allergy sufferer.

That's one of my pet hates saying that you're, you suffer from having allergies, you don't, you kind of live with them and it's like you live with wearing glasses or you live with other things and you just have to kind of manage it and, and try and be as positive as you can.

Yeah, that makes sense but it does sound like it was really, really tricky and I can definitely see the catalyst for you wanting to create growth with ibis.

But what I would love to know now though Amy is how did you get from sort of in the situation where you had a problem, there was something you needed that you couldn't source to actually developing it yourself because that's a really big step to take.

It is a big step and I think at the time probably naively thought oh I can do this. So during school holidays this was before my co founder came on board.

I found a food scientist who is local, a company called Frog Hop and a lovely, lovely food scientist called Mel who I went to see and I invested some of my own savings into developing a paper based recipe telling her what I wanted as an allergy parent, the kind of vegetation, vitamins and minerals that I, that I knew that she would need. But that's just from a mum's point of view.

Since then we've done a lot more research working with medical experts and so we, we had that as a paper based recipe. Then I did lots of focus groups around the concept, you know, with friends, family and kind of local mums.

And that's when Sophie came on board and we had this little kind of focus group talking about it and she'd done concept work of what it might look like, what it might feel like, you know, old packaging. I've actually got them in my loft still. It's like we sometimes look at it.

It used to be called Little Iris but we realized, you know, we want to be more growth mindset and big, you know, Grow with Iris and thrive in a way with Iris.

And yeah, that's when Sophie came on board as my co founder because I realized that I needed her and she was really keen to get involved and she's from a brand perspective.

She was a designer, a creative director and she brought Grow with Iris to life really in terms of what it to help with its values and how we looked and we felt. And from there that's when we applied for our Innovate UK funding which allowed us to do two pilot batches. All the risk and regulatory work.

Like.

Calls and calls and calls and calls of so many people.

If I'd written down how many calls we've had over the last like seven, eight years just to kind of put the pieces together, we always said it's like a big jigsaw piece, big empty jigsaw piece, jigsaw puzzle and we're just filling every tiny little piece to it finally come together and it's not complete.

Now we're still working on the formula in the background, but we've got our growing up drink and we have all the, you know, the base and the kind of framework to build on and we have the most incredible team of risk and regulatory experts, someone particularly called Rachel Ward, who we worked with very early on and we've been on calls with her this week as well. She's still there. She's our fairy godmother. She literally knows everything about risk and regulatory work.

So yeah, there was all the interesting pieces like IP formulation, making sure it's nutritionally tailored for children aged 12 to 4 months. There's just so much to think about.

You know, you think about even the nice things like marketing or pr, that's still an absolute minefield and it makes you realize there's a reason why there's experts in every single field.

Yeah, definitely.

It's so much.

Yeah, that is a lot.

And how long did it take, if you don't mind me asking, from, you know, deciding that you wanted to create something to actually having a product on the market.

So really probably thought four years before that was all kind of concept work and trying to juggle having a second child and working only in school holidays when I. Because you can't. When you're at school, you can't do anything and you get home and you're exhausted.

So it was school holidays and then, gotta say innovate uk. Without them, we wouldn't be where we are because we've needed so much research and the pilot batches cost a lot of money.

We do a lot of testing and being. It's enabled us to be able to afford the right people to help with our jigsaw puzzle and, and get us to the place where we need to be.

It's been really complicated. We joke, we say, oh, I wish we were just like selling a blanket or something, you know, something simple.

It makes sense it would take this long. And actually, it's good it's taken this long because if you'd said to me, oh, we got it out in six months, I would think, oh, that seems a bit quick.

Yeah.

So I think it's good. And I think it's a credit, though, that you've for that long persisted on the formulation and the safety elements and all. Like you say, all.

It is a lot, isn't it? It's a lot. So I think it's brilliant that you've persisted with it because I think it. It sounds like it's probably been a str at times.

I know it's something you believe really strongly in, but I wouldn't have thought it's been easy.

No, it's a good job that we do believe in it because it's been really challenging and it. And it. It's taken a long time, taken a lot of energy and resilience. On both Sophie and my behalf. We only some. We only reflected on this recently.

We've been having a bit of a tricky, you know, couple of weeks and we're like, you know what? We're actually really resilient and we'd never really give ourselves that compliment. You know, women don't, do they?

They're like always kind of on the back foot. Never really kind of celebrate what. What. What you've done and then you step back.

We're like, no, whatever we do, what we've created is so worth fighting for. And I think having our Partnership as well. We balance each other out. But we've also been friends for a really long time, since we were 11.

So we have this as like our kind of solid rock at the bottom.

And when it gets really tough, we always come back to our friendship and our silliness and our connection because without that, you know, we would just be co founders. But it's bigger than that. It's all made from love.

And yeah, we're not the most, we not the most qualified people to have done this in the first place. But that's the point. You get on board the experts to support you with your vision.

And the vision is both Sophie and I as allergy parents and wanting to help other allergy parents have a plant based parents, other kids, people who have fussy kids or you know, all of those, we're for all of those children. It comes from allergy but it, at the end of the day it's to provide more choice for more children and their families.

Yeah. Thank you, thank you for sharing. That makes a lot of sense and I think you're right that you don't have to be the expert.

If we all had to be the expert in everything, we wouldn't do anything because let's face it, we're all experts in something but it's not necessarily the thing that we need at that time.

And I think that's really good advice, people just to know that you don't need to know it all and you can just go ahead and find the right people to help you.

Yeah, I think, I really do think it's believing in yourself, believing in your product. And I'd never ever admitted to being an expert. The only thing like I say I'm an expert in is being analogy mom and that's an accidental expert.

I'm also really determined and so is Sophie. And we, you know, we, we won't give up easily and we've got, you know, we still got a long way to go with the formula.

But at the moment, you know, our growing up drink, we're so proud of it and we're so proud that when we get little messages from parents saying you've, you're a lifesaver, you're a game changer, my child is, this is the only thing my child will have. And it means I'm not worrying about their nutrition because I know that kind of the basics are covered for them.

We had a message from a lady who's pregnant this week and she lives, she's been plant based for like 30 years and she was saying how she's just stumbled upon us and she's just so relieved that in the UK there's people supporting people like her. And yes, it's lovely. It's really lovely. And again, that helps when days are tough, because it is tough. It's expensive, expensive, stressful.

And, you know, we're not getting paid, so, you know, it puts pressure on. On everything because all the money we have goes back into the business. And that's a lot when you have kids, you know, that's.

Yeah, it is. It definitely is. And that's brilliant feedback you've received. That's amazing. How do you.

Just out of interest, how do you make sure that the milk is not only nutritious but also tastes nice as well? Sorry if that's a really bas question, but I think. I always think that that's.

That must be really, really hard because of course you can put all the right things in it and not in it as well, you know, leave things out. But how do you make it taste good?

That's such a great question because funnily enough, Dr. D Hadad, one of our pediatricians that we work with, he actually said that to us.

He said, look, we could have the best formulation and it would be amazing and would do all the right things, but if a child's not going to drink it, what's the point? And we do use Date sugar in our product and there's a lot of kind of negative connotations around sugar within children's food.

We chose Date specifically because of its low gi.

It actually brings a really lovely taste and it means that we can balance it and it gives that balance that a child is going to actually take the drink. And we went, oh, goodness.

Like, we've gone through so many rounds of testing, because also having the viscosity, right, because when you have, like a cow's milk, like, everything kind of all the molecules work together because that's just cow's milk, you know, that's naturally engineered, but we've had to put something together. So split pea protein isn't soluble. Like, it doesn't. So it's going to.

It needs to be able to work with all the other ingredients so you don't just get like a big lumpy mess, which isn't appealing to anyone. So we work really hard to try and make it as kind of milky as possible. And that went back and forth a lot.

And, you know, sometimes people will say, oh, it's, you know, when they're used to drinking a product with lots of Emulsifiers in it or, you know, things like that, which we don't have. They're used to it being slightly smoother. It is smooth. It is smooth, it is creamy.

But if you're used having cow's milk or an oat milk with laser emulsifiers in it, then it's going to taste like, slightly more textured. But kids love it, so. And I love it. My dad drinks it. My dad's 18, he drinks it.

Oh, that's really sweet.

And I know what you mean, by the way, because I, I drink oat milk and almond milk and they are like, I try and get the good ones that got the fewest amount of ingredients and they are milky, but they're also not, they're not the same as.

Cow'S milk or watery. Like, they're not the same. It's the tea test, isn't it, what works in your tea? Yeah, yeah.

I mean, you can get away with a latte, if you can froth it, then you're okay. But it's really hard. Yeah, it is hard to find to get that balance. Yeah, 100%.

But it seems like you're doing a really good job of it.

Oh, thank you. We're trying. We try every day. We. We try our best. And that's all you can do. Right.

Can I ask a little bit about Innovate UK as well? Because I don't know much about them and it'd be really interesting to know who they are, what you do and how they've helped you.

Yeah, sure, if that's okay.

Yeah, absolutely. So Innovate UK is, is a fund, It's a government funded. How would you describe them?

Innovate UK are a government funded agency initiative and they have lots of different awards and competitions and it's purely for research and development. So we have had three grant funds. The first one was sustainability and Innovation. So we were grant funded to do that sustainability research.

And you have to. It's really tricky because you have a lot of boxes to tick, lots of paperwork.

They don't just give the money away, they want to see results, but they're investing in British companies to ensure that, you know, we are at the forefront of innovation and thinking about the future. Our second grant fund was Women in Innovation. So it's supporting women who are making innovative products.

And that was incredible because, again, it was the network. For anyone out there who has, like an innovative idea, it's definitely worth thinking about.

And that can be innovation in, like, food, health, you know, femtech, all of there's lots of different competitions. It doesn't just have to be, you know, like tech tech.

You know, everybody always thinks that the money goes to the digital tech type stuff, but it's not and they don't. Yeah, like I said, it's not just about the money, it's about the network.

You get mentors, you get like a growth expert and this kind of pool of people that you can tap into just to support you. And then the last one we did was the Biomedical Catalyst, which was more of a medical focused grant and that was for the formula.

So we managed to work with the University of Leeds on a paper that we're publishing, hopefully next year. It's all written, just has to go through, through the kind of hoops it needs to go to before it can be out in the open.

But we were doing work on different proteins for infant formula.

We sometimes get people questioning the pea protein because that some people do actually have allergies, are allergic to peas and that can be kind of a close link to some people that have a peanut allergy or soya.

But yeah, we were kind of looking into a way of creating an innovative new formulation, but it supports that rather than us funding that as a tiny little startup.

And Innovate UK gives you that platform to be able to explore it and do the things that you need to do that the big companies would just be able to fund. Like, we can't do that. We're not genome. Or we're not.

You know, Procter and Gamble or something.

Yeah, exactly, we're not. And yeah, and they do funding from like a hundred thousand pounds up to millions and millions.

You're, you know, it just depends on, on what you're doing and what competition that you go for. They're on hold at the moment because of the change in government. So we're just waiting to see if there are any more awards.

They used to come out kind of January time or kind of springtime, but obviously we're in autumn now. So we're kind of hoping for us to be able to do the next steps in our innovation that we can get another grant fund because yeah, it's.

I highly recommend it.

Well, thank you, thank you so much for sharing that.

And I will try and find a link for Innovate in UK to put in the show notes as well because I think it would be really useful because I do often speak to people who have ideas but just don't know how they'd get them going or how they'd pay for it because as you say this, it's not cheap to develop.

A product and especially, you know, we've invested our own money into Robot Iris, but there's no way we would have been able to do that. You know, we've had like a finite amount of money that we could put in. And again that was a really long time ago as well because it's taken so long.

So yeah, I, it's like I said, it's not just about the money with IUK, it's the kind of 360 and the community and the contacts and they really want you to succeed so they do everything they can to support you. So yeah, no, I would definitely, definitely check it out.

That's brilliant. Thank you. And you mentioned that one of the grants was around sustainability and I know that's a big part of your brand.

So do you want to share for some of the things you're doing in that area? Yes.

So when we had that grant we did a lot of exploration into the packaging and looking at different ways to, to create a packaging that would be more sustainable than the usual kind of tins that you get formula in. And it's really tricky because it's a food product and it's for babies. There's a lot of limitations. But through that we learned so much.

We also managed to do something called life cycle analysis which shows you know that what you're doing, how it measures up against like competitors. So our this is like 80, 86% more sustainable than other like ready made plant based competitors, which is crazy.

And that's mostly because we did the testing on the powder. So it's just add water so you're not carrying the water weight while you're transporting importing it around the country.

There's all these different like little tweaks. Like we decided, we explored having a recyclable scoop and putting that in, but then decided actually everybody has a tablespoon.

It came back to something really simple. Everybody has a tablespoon in the house. Why not? Just you know, we did all the testing, working out what would be the best option.

And actually a tablespoon, a humble tablespoon be, you don't need to put that in. It's not going to travel anywhere. It's not creating excess waste.

So there's all these different things that you can do to kind of measure and then make informed decisions over how you want to be and what you want for your brand. I would definitely recommend doing an LCA so you can benchmark as well.

And then you know if there's anything you need to change, then you've got targets and you've got KPIs for the future to be able to, you know, if you're reformulating or you're thinking about your packaging, then it can inform your decision making.

Yeah, that makes sense. Thank you. And so it sounds like a lot of development went into the packaging side as well, as well as the product.

Yeah, everything. Yeah. It's like we sometimes say that we've been on this kind of deep dive university degree.

We've done about six different degrees in, like, nutrition, packaging, marketing, marketing, finance. All these things that I just wouldn't, you know, wouldn't have had a clue about and we've kind of learned about over the last few years.

I think that's what makes it exciting as well, is that you are learning all the time, every single day.

Yeah.

About something. Something changes or.

Yeah, yeah. But there is a lot, like we've said, there is a lot to learn and a lot to get to grips with.

So I guess having that personal drive, like, because the product clearly means so much to you and to Sophie, really got to help, you know, help just keep you on track and keep you working towards it.

Because I think if you don't have that personal connection, if this had been like a random idea you'd had in the middle of the night, I think it would have been a lot harder to keep pushing forward with it.

Absolutely. Because you wake up and you see your kids. Sophie didn't have kids when she first started and then had Lenny just over a year ago.

And ironically he has a dairy allergy, but you couldn't make it up. And it's like we've both allergy mums now. It used to be, you know, an allergy mum on a mission, but now it's two allergy mums on a mission.

And what advice do you have for anyone else, if any other founders are wanting create products and it's around like a personal experience or personal challenge that maybe they're having. Do you have any advice specific to that?

Yeah, I think a really good place to go, which both Sophie and I found quite interesting and really helpful and inspiring and where you can get to meet lots of different founders and lots of different talks, is the Bread and Jam Festival, which you may have heard about. So especially if your food and drink, they just do talks on everything, whether you're early stage, mid stage or, you know, way down the line.

I have learned so much going to that festival. I think went three years in a Row and just. Yeah, definitely.

Another thing, I guess if you're starting out is just reach out to people, talk to founders. If there's someone who's doing something similar, most more than likely people will talk to you.

They will, they'll make the time because we've all been there. Some people might be more closed, but, you know, they might end up being your mentor. You just, I think, don't hold back, always ask for help.

Like, don't try and do it all yourself. Like Google can only tell you so much.

Having real conversations with real people and finding out what the next step is, that definitely, definitely, definitely. That's my biggest tip. Thank you.

No, thank you. That's great advice. I think you're right.

There's a lot to be said for getting in a room with like people doing something similar to you and people you can learn from.

Yeah, absolutely. Even just like a little, a quick zoom or you know, just they might live in Scotland but reach out to them on LinkedIn or however you.

Why do you want to speak to them and mostly people. Well, yeah, of course I can share my knowledge.

Yeah, I think you're right that most people are really happy to help and actually like being asked. Yeah. I mean, I can say for myself that if someone contacts me and they want help with something, I'm delighted to help if you can.

It's a nice thing to be able to do, isn't it? So, yeah. So I try and remember that when I'm on the other side.

Yeah, exactly. Because I think we've, I think because Sophie and I've asked for help so much along the way.

Someone contacted me a couple of weeks ago and had quick call this week with her and then passed her on to some of our contacts and, and that just saves that person so much time of trying to find that right person when you do, when you do get your product. Another really great platform is the by women built platform.

I definitely recommend any female founders with a product, consumer product to join because it's the most incredible network of people.

You've got people like Joanna Jensen on there to Lemon for lemonade dolls, but also people like us and people starting out, people with teeny tiny brands like micro brands, but everybody is in this big pool and kind of helps each other and supports each other and it's like we can like cheerleading one another and it's brilliant.

That's brilliant. Thank you.

Now I've got a final question which is one that I ask absolutely everyone who comes on Amy, and it might be tricky given You've just shared lots of advice with us. What would your number one piece of advice be for someone wanting to start a product business today? What's the one thing you would say to do?

Slow and steady, one step at a time. Just work out the first step that you need to do.

Break it down, it might feel massive, like an infant formula, and then just kind of almost work backwards. And then what's the first thing I need to do? And just really making sure that you definitely want to do it.

Because there's many times we think I don't, but I can't do it anymore. But I think if you feel really strongly about it and you're following the little steps, it kind of feels more manageable. Yeah, definitely.

That's really helpful. Thank you so much, Amy. Thank you for everything we've shared.

I'm obviously going to link to your website and all your socials, everything in the show notes for this episode. And thank you again so much.

Thank you, Vicki. Lovely to chat to you.

Thank you so much for listening. Right to the end of this episode. Do remember that you can get the full back catalogue and lots of free resources on my website, vickiewinberg. Com.

Please do remember to rate and review this episode if you've enjoyed it and also share it with a friend who you think might find it useful. Thank you again and see you next week.