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big interview Adam Thompson
Lois Vallely
A
s a child, Adam Thompson was a per-
fectionist. He always pushed to be the
best at sport, and the best in school, and,
more often than not, he achieved it.
This hunger for excellence has carried
into the way he approaches running Rebel Kitchen.
“Our ambition is massive. We want to have the best
plant-based alternative products in whatever category
we choose to be in,” he tells The Grocer.
We’re sitting in the boardroom of the start-up brand’s
London head office. It’s just moved as the team contin-
ues to expand. “When the new people all come in there
will be 24 in total.”
When the role of sales director at Rebel Kitchen came
up in 2015, Thompson had just left Philips and, having
worked at various big corporates, he was looking for
something different. “I thought: do I now go and do
something by myself? I’d learnt along the way – with
corporate support and backing and teams and money
that was not mine personally – the pitfalls, the mis-
takes, how to not fall over in the future.”
He was introduced to Ben and Tamara Arbib, the
founders of Rebel Kitchen, “through serendipity”. They
had created their brand the previous year and wanted
to take it out, but weren’t sure on strategy, retail biases,
where to go first or how to build through fmcg.
That was the challenge for Thompson. “It happened
fairly quickly. We presented a sales strategy, we built
it out, and at the same time Tamara went on maternity
leave. It was very much like: here you go, here’s the
business – figure it out.”
From then on, his task was to build the solid founda-
tions and structure for long-term sustainable growth,
something you don’t always see in start-up challenger
brands. “It’s easy to get in, but once you get past that
first £500k sales, the next tranche is how you get to
£3m, and then how you get past that.”
He was determined to put the “stepping stones in
place” at Rebel Kitchen so it was consistently attrac-
tive to customers, and it was “selling a story that was
only skin deep”.
Setting yourself up for success in the long term isn’t
always easy in fmcg, where things are constantly
Rising up through
the ranks at Rebel
In roles from sales director to MD, Adam Thompson
has overseen Rebel Kitchen’s growth from a small
startup to a global proposition
“It was very
much like:
here you go,here’s the
business –
figure it out”changing and evolving. “There’s an increased amount
of competition, there’s an increased amount of desire
to be in the industry. It’s so fast-moving and you’re see-
ing this innovation coming out left, right and centre.
“You’re seeing more interest from the big corporate
guys in some of the smaller guys, so that’s quite fas-
cinating because no longer is it that you look to one
person or one business or one corporation for what’s
coming out next. It could come from anyone who has
a great idea.”Growth
Sustainable growth has been especially challenging in
the crowded alternative milks category. “Plant-based
milks have exploded over the past few years, so there’s
15 types of plant-based milk and there’s five of almond
and four of oat. But there’s no need for that, you only
need a couple.”
Rebel Kitchen wanted to create plant-based dairy
products under the umbrella of its ‘Mylk’ range, which
tastes and can be used like dairy. In August 2017, it
launched a range of one-litre milk alternatives which
“replicate the qualities of cow’s milk” by combining
six ingredients. These included coconut cream to mir-
ror the richness of milk, brown rice for sweetness, and
nutritional yeast for “grassy notes”.
It then moved on to yoghurts. “What people are tell-
ing us, or what the data we buy is saying, is that they’re
buying four or five different types because they’re not
using it in the way they want to. That can also apply to
yoghurt. You don’t want a coconut-tasting yoghurt all
the time, you just want something that tastes like dairy,
but is made from plants.”
This strategy looks to be paying off, as the business
has grown from a small startup to making annual
sales of around £6m across several countries, includ-
ing Australia, Germany and France. The brand “tried
the US”, but found it would have had to have put “all
of its eggs” into that market to make it work. “The US is
very much pay to play and requires big raises, privately-
funded, with longer-term plans. We would have needed
to actually focus on developing a US-specific range, or
decide to move away. So we pulled back because, whilst