EE512: The Food Founder’s Playbook - Matthew Collins, on Scaling Without Losing Quality

Matthew, welcome to the pod.

Thank you. Good to be here. I've listened to enough of them at this stage.

Well, I've eaten. I was joking with you off camera there. I've eaten. I came in this morning into the studio, went over to the fridge. I was like, "Where'd all the SIBLY balls go?" I was like, "I ate them all last week." [laughs]

Exactly what we want to hear.

I milled-

Yeah

... through, I won't say how many packets. You were kind enough to give us, um, SIBLY for the studio, but I milled through them a lot in the last week.

Good.

In the fridge or not the fridge is the key question. Which is your, uh, preference?

We'll get emails on the regular saying, "Oh, this, this shop had them in the fridge. I hated them." Two hours later, we get an email saying, "They weren't in the fridge, and I hate them soft." So it's, uh-

What's your preference? 'Cause I have mine.

I like them out.

Yeah.

And if it's a sunny day, put them on the dash of the car because chocolate melts.

Yeah.

We're getting into the real specifics now.

I think we might, we might need to wrap-

Yeah

... the conversation there because that's disgusting.

It's not that bad. [laughs]

If you're not having it out of the fridge, I don't wanna talk to you. [laughs] What do you do?

I feed 1.5 million people a year with snacks.

Oh, nice.

Yeah. [laughs]

Strong start there.

Yeah.

[laughs]

It is. It's, uh... Yeah, I am the founder of SIBLY. We're a snack brand. We're based in Cork, and I suppose we are handmade. We're Irish, but we do have that global ambition, and it's every day is a school day at the moment. So I started in 2018 at a Christmas market, as so many Irish food businesses have. And thankfully, it's between getting through college, doing a year of teaching in the middle. I'm sure we get to various bits and bobs throughout. We're at a point now where we, yeah, we're feeding 1.5 million people in 2026, with greater numbers again to come, hopefully, for '27 and onward.

They're big numbers. They are big numbers. We'll, we'll get to them. Um, I wanna start at the food market 'cause I love... I'm a sucker for a good startup story. I'm a sucker 'cause you and I see people start with, like, these grand ideas. It's like, would you start, though, just doing a market? Would you start just doing testing? I started in doing a market, and, uh, it teaches you a lot.

Yeah.

Teaches you customers, teaches you about markets, economics, supply and demand, weather-

It's unbelievable

... time of the year.

Yeah.

So talk to me about the original idea. Where did the original thing come from?

Yeah. So it was never with the intention to have a business, and I know people say that all the time, and there might've been, like, an underlying element. I, I hadn't grown up around business. Both my parents are teachers. But I suppose what I had grown up around was, I come from a very small village on the border of Cork and Kerry, Ballydesmond, and it's a tiny village, but there's just big industry there. There's Munster Joinery. They probably put the windows in, in here. There's golf, um, course manufacturers. There's everything. And I probably grew up seeing bits of it-

Mm

... and just being intrigued more than anything. The-- Like, I even remember back