Monk was born and raised in Leicester within sight of the Walkers Crisp factory and quipped that snacking had perhaps always been his destiny, despite the careers advice he received at school suggesting he become a librarian or a sewing machine mechanic.
“I realised that the ‘super computer’ was randomly feeding me jobs from the local jobs centre,” he chuckled.
Monk went onto study politics at Swansea University, working for a short time in the European Parliament. However, he found that the degree wasn’t particularly sought after on the jobs market and ended up heading into the world of sales and marketing.
His first job was a field sales rep for a tobacco company in the east end of London. Unfortunately, his first day didn’t go as planned with his entire boot load of stock stolen from his car.
“It was a horrific moment,” Monk said. “I had thousands of pounds worth of cigarettes in my car.
“I’d gone into the store, I’d made a sale. I came back, I opened my boot and there was nothing in it. And I just thought, ‘this isn’t my car’. It dawned on me that the stock had been stolen. I thought I’m gonna get the sack here.
“It made me a bit more street smart. I was lucky – my successor in that field had his stock stolen and they actually locked him in the boot.”
Despite the dicey nature of his first proper job, Monk reflected on his time fondly, saying that it was a great experience which taught him some very valuable skills.
From there he developed a career in marketing, moving across to another tobacco company, where he became assistant brand manager before being promoted to brand manager for Ireland.
It was after this that he moved into food and drink, securing marketing roles at the likes Bulmers, Unilever and Cadburys.
He spent 10 years in spirits at Pernod Ricard, managing Scotch whisky brands in global roles and the Pernod Ricard wines and spirits portfolio as marketing director in Vietnam and then the Middle East.
Returning to the UK in 2016, he joined bakery firm Pladis as marketing director for savoury, before being promoted to business unit director (general manager) for savoury and healthier snacks UK.
Monk’s venture into entrepreneurship was in 2020. He told Food Manufacture that he had been impressed by the new wave of founders who had successfully built challenger brands and decided that now he had the time and money, he could give it a shot himself.
“It’s now or never. If I don’t do it now, I’ll never do it. That was a catalyst, as I think it is for many people.”
He spied an opportunity to create a healthy savoury biscuit brand – an area he which is growing but in new of a refresh and attract younger consumers.
“You always have the parameters of those brands,” Monk said on marketing for a business, as he explained the opportunity to create “something entirely new with a clean sheet of paper” was an exciting prospect.
“I was perhaps a reluctant entrepreneur, but I was ready – it was always appealing to me.”
Once Monk had managed to get Good Guys a bit more established, he kicked started a funding round, with the aim of raising £500k.
“The advice I received from people in the fundraising space, half a million is easy – just ask your friends and family. I thought, ‘what planet are you on?!’ I’m not [from] the sort of background that I can tap up my distant uncle for half a million.”
Although Monk said he didn’t have a black book of contacts or rich relatives, he did have the trust of Nick Bunker, his former boss and managing director of Pladis, who came on as Good Guys’ first investor.
“It gave my business so much more credibility.”
Whilst Monk said he believes many entrepreneurs to be from more privileged backgrounds with funds to dip into, he said things are changing.
“There’s never been a better time to become an entrepreneur in food and drink,” he said. “You can do far more than ever before without relying on old school networks.”
Currently, Monk is the only full-time employee at Good Guys Bakehouse – yet the brand has still managed to secure a listed with Sainsbury, Ocado, Tesco Ireland, and Albert Heijn in the Netherlands, supplying with 100% reliability since launch.
He told Food Manufacture that the pivot from a big corporate with ample budget and resource to founding a start-up was a big change.
“When you leave your big budgets behind and go and start to become an entrepreneur as a solo venture, you’ve got to just forget everything you knew before. You’ve got to really embrace building a business on a shoestring budget and being more self-reliant.”
But he noted that he’s loved every minute of it, adding that those working in big corporations could probably learn a lot from the operations of a nimble SME.
Talking on beginning a business as a slightly older entrepreneur, Monk said that whilst it’s not easy for anyone the commitments he had weighed heavily on him.
“Giving up your stable, corporate career and turning down jobs in order to see where Good Guys would go is quite difficult to do when frankly – I’ve got a family, a mortgage…
“That pressure, I suppose, is something which I have to be very mindful of – and that means I’ve come into being an entrepreneur in a very calculated way. It’s about smaller steps for me.”
These baby steps he took were not risking huge amounts if money and has been careful to make absolutely certain that the business would work.
“I’ve been very dispassionate actually about the brand. When I’m talking to people in the street I’m try to get them to say ‘I don’t like’. I’m not trying to be too idealist about it.”
The brand is growing in the UK with multiple retail listings and has since expanded into The Netherlands and Ireland, and more recently the US with a listing on Amazon in the States.
Monk said the brand will continue its cautious approach – it won’t suddenly be heading straight for retail shelves in the States, but that doesn’t mean further growth isn’t on the horizon. As they say, slow and steady wins the race.
Monk hinted that more formats, flavours and a category stretch are all firmly on the cards, whilst keeping the guardrails of the brand in place.
“I’m very excited to stretch the brand and keep pushing it. We’ve only been going for a couple of years and right now very happy to be on the shelves on major retailers across now three markets.
“We’ll build it with the right stepping stones. I’m all about building a sustainable, profitable business.”
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