It was in hers 30s when Ros Heathcote began to feel run down.
“I started to develop allergies and decided to figure out what was going on with me,” she said.
A doctor advised that Heathcote improve her gut health and one of the things that was being touted at the time was homemade bone broth.
“I started to make it from scratch because you couldn’t buy it anywhere and found it was really helping. It seemed to be the one thing that had a real impact.”
Striking a deal with a local butcher, swapping bones for website assistance (Heathcote is a bit of an IT whizz), she secured her supplier – but it wasn’t until she found out that the butcher’s bones had been originally going to waste that the idea for Borough Broth was sparked.
I think he [the butcher] thought I owned lots of dogs and he asked me one day – what are you doing with it [the bones]?
Ros Heathcote
The Londoner had always had an entrepreneurial spirit, having had a very successful car washing gig when she was a child. Her father was also an entrepreneur.
This combination of technical ingenuity and industrialism has done Heathcote well, with her business growing significantly since its inception in 2015.
When talking about her journey developing the business, Heathcote noted the importance of asking questions, admitting she’s never been afraid to speak up.
My nickname at school by teachers was ‘mouth of the South’.
Ros Heathcote
“I worked for a lot of big blue-chip companies in my previous ‘life’ and what I learnt was, loads of people don’t know what the hell they’re doing and you can go to these massive corporations and think they’re very impressive but often it’s been put together in a very odd way, and a lot of people don’t really know what they’re responsible for […] and don’t understand why they’re doing this [task in this way].”
Heathcote says part of the key to her success has always been asking people, including herself – ‘why are you doing this?’ In turn, she’s tried to develop a workplace culture where people are not afraid to ask ‘silly’ questions.
“It can be toxic – I’ve been in those environments where you’re sort of scoffed at if you ask a question. But I just think that’s borne out of insecurity.”
And her approach has paid off. Alongside scaling up her business – whilst maintaining its simple process and high quality ingredients – Heathcote has also acquired SpiceBox and, more recently, added to her stack of retail listings with Tesco checked off the list earlier this year.
Now, that’s certainly not something to be scoffed at.