How Hip Pop’s founders are bringing northern spirit to soft drinks

It’s emblazoned with logos of fmcg giants including Kellogg’s, Vimto, Warburtons and Boddingtons. If Kenny Goodman and Emma Thackray get their way, one day there will also be a place for Hip Pop – the “gut lovin’” kombuchas and fibre-filled sodas brand they co-founded in 2019.

“Manchester has always been an exporter of coolness, so if you’re putting stuff out there and claiming it’s ‘made in Manchester’, then it had better be good,” says Goodman.

That pressure was felt most acutely when Goodman first saw the brand’s kombucha on sale in Sainsbury’s last year – both his proudest and most nerve-wracking moment. “You get really elated. And then the fear of God comes into you, because you’re like: ‘What if people don’t buy it?’”

Happily for Hip Pop, sales are flying. Since the start of 2024, it has surpassed the £1.2m achieved in the whole of 2023 – bolstered by new listings and distribution gains in Sainsbury’s, M&S, Waitrose, Ocado and Co-op. The brand expects to hit the £3.5m mark by year end. “Just watching the rate of sale go up, you feel reassured,” Goodman says. “You think: ‘We are doing the right thing’.”

Hip Pop’s growth can be partially attributed to changing tastes. Its portfolio of soft drinks – made from natural ingredients, low in sugar and calories, and packed with antioxidants and living cultures – cater to an increasingly health-conscious consumer.

“We get parents who tell us they wouldn’t let their kids near a can of mainstream, super sweet, or indeed diet, drink, but they’ll let them drink a Hip Pop,” points out Thackray.

An added string to their bow are their functional credentials. Not only do the drinks play to the gut health trend, but some variants contain CBD. That taps a growing functional soft drinks category, which has reached the £100m mark – having soared by 27.8% year on year [North Star/Circana 52 w/e 15 June 2024].

It’s a double-edged sword, however. That growth has resulted in an ever more crowded market. Here, Goodman and Thackray’s perseverance and ingenuity have helped Hip Pop stand out from the pack and hit just the right note in functional.

For starters, the brand extended into soda in 2022 after recognising that kombucha was likely to be a step too far for some shoppers.

“We want to take our customers on a journey,” Goodman says. “We can help people go from soda, which is an easy entry, to kombucha and then to CBD. Kombucha and CBD are two of the biggest growth areas in functional drinks. And we think soda will be next.”

Smart recruitment has also helped. Hip Pop brought in Graham Beales, former operations director at Grenade, as a consultant last year. He was then appointed CEO last November on the recommendation of Grenade founder and Hip Pop investor Juliet Barratt.

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Beales’ impact has been tangible. As well as overseeing Hip Pop’s move into its new city centre brewery last summer, he has assembled a senior leadership team that includes ex-Britvic, Heineken and AB InBev staff.

“You should always employ people who are better than you,” says Thackray. “Kenny and I know our limitations. We’re good at being scrappy and building something and getting it going. But to get this business to where we want it, we needed to bring in people who’ve done it before.”

A ‘less conventional’ background

The likes of Beales weren’t always in Hip Pop’s contacts book. Initially, Goodman and Thackray bootstrapped the business – known until 2021 as Booch & Brew – using cash from the sale of a supplements venture they ran together.

Coming from working-class backgrounds, there were no wealthy friends or family to bankroll their ambitions. “We probably come from a slightly less conventional soft drink startup background,” Thackray says. “We don’t know loads of people in capital and finance – we’ve had to go out and find them.”

That only hardened the resolve to succeed, she says. “You need more than money and connections to build a brand. You need tenacity and you need drive. Everyone has to have that, no matter where they come from.”

This tenacity and drive – alongside honesty – are cornerstones of Hip Pop’s approach. They’re traits Thackray describes as part of “the essence of Manchester” that the brand is trying to channel.

Unlike Goodman, she’s not Mancunian by birth but a “pink rose” – hailing from Yorkshire and adopted by the city she now calls home. “My family are gutted my kids support Manchester United,” she laughs. “It’s a real bone of contention.”

 Manchester also feels like an ideal place to set up an edgy soft drinks business, given its industrial heritage, entrepreneurial spirit and thriving cultural scene.

Innovation “comes naturally to people here”, Goodman notes. Despite that, most of Hip Pop’s contemporaries have favoured London, lured by the proximity to supermarket buyers and lucrative investors.

Goodman admits convincing some to make the trip from the capital can be a challenge. “People get nosebleeds when they travel north of Watford. We have to go down there [to London], but we’ve settled with that.”

That is echoed by Thackray – albeit with a hint of frustration. “As a brand outside London, the only way to grow is get yourself down there.” For her, cost is an issue. “I can’t have a meeting before 12, because I’ve got to leave at 9.30 or else the train is £300 return.”

Still, there are benefits to being up north. By starting out selling their drinks in local markets in and around Manchester, Goodman and Thackray gained an understanding of tastes outside the London bubble.

“If something works in Shoreditch, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll work in Manchester or Leeds, or the rest of the UK,” says Goodman. “We’ve found that if you make it and serve it here around the markets, it does work around the rest of the UK. It’s very representative.”

It’s an important feedback loop. And one that’s given Hip Pop the confidence to steer clear of artificial sweeteners. This gives the brand’s drinks – the kombucha in particular – a refreshingly tangy kick. “We’re low in sugar and calories, and we’ve managed to achieve that without sweeteners because we take a lot of time developing the recipes ourselves,” Thackray says.

Its also why – despite needing to outsource some production to meet demand – the brand is determined to keep its brewery base in Manchester. “We care about every single can that goes out, and if we’re outsourcing we’ll send our team down there to test it. Ultimately, you stand and fall by your product,” she sums up.

It also means that when the time comes to repaint the Afflecks mural, Hip Pop will only have strengthened its case for inclusion.