Barenaked Foods Noodles, 6 x 380g

Product Information

Breaking into the multiple grocery market. Our first listing in the UK was in Morrisons. What numbers do you look at every day in your business? Getting your goods into a big supermarket can be transformational (5) What made you want to take part in Dragons? Den? Since I first featured on Dragons’ Den it’s been an emotional roller-coaster and as with any business, it’s been challenging to get to the top. Even when you get investment, success is not guaranteed. But with hard work, we have managed to take Barenaked Foods to where it is today. To find out more, Business Advice caught up with Mendham and asked him how Jones has contributed and what his tips for dealing with supermarkets are.

Konyaku noodels are essential to my dietary plans, and the Barenaked brand is a significant technological advance; the noodles are white rather than clear, and in strands rather than bunches - so are superior to other brands. David Pybus arrived in the Den looking for investors in his perfume company. But it was not just any old perfume company. We have a turnover of 600, 000 as of June 2015, a 110 per cent increase on the previous year. With our extended distribution, turnover for the next year will hit 1m. I started off by importing 3, 000 units of product, and now we import 80, 000 units every six weeks.Since then, Bare Naked Foods has gone from strength to strength and is now on the shelves of big-name grocery stores. It's expanding year on year. Consumers are always looking at healthy alternatives. In the future, there will be a healthy gluten-free alternative for every product. What is the single most important piece of advice you would offer to a less experienced entrepreneur?

The only downside is the chicanery around declared weights (common to all konyaku noodle suppliers), which makes price comparison treacherous; as the noodles must be delivered in liquid, the drained weight vs full weight is rather important. Barenaked seems to be delivered in a minimum amount of liquid (good) but the drained weight is 350g, not the 380g claimed. The language barrier was difficult but he knew that he had to find a factory which met UK food production standards. His patience paid off when he found the ideal place to produce his own style of konjac (or shirataki) noodles. Ross Mendham is the Managing Director and brain behind Bare Naked Foods. He took his idea of low-carb, low-calorie, and zero fat noodles and protein noodles to the Dragons in season 11. The entrepreneur decided that he would make this food available in the UK, so he created his own recipe with a blend of konjac, soybean and oatmeal flour to give his noodles a texture similar to traditional rice noodles. His recipe had no fat, sugar, dairy or gluten and was low in carbohydrate — and so… Barenaked Noodles were born! Attached to the phone via a rubberised hoop, you would attach a clip at the other end of the cord to your trousers, ensuring that your phone never hit the ground when it was dropped.After struggling with “always being on a diet”, I wanted to make it easier for people in a similar situation to lose weight without missing out on the food they like and love. There was a gap in the market and I thought I would be able to launch my new product and food brand.

It was my girlfriend (now wife) that gave me the confidence and courage to construct a business plan and seek investment to start Bare Naked Foods. I can remember the pep talk! She told me to stop moaning about my current job and either carry on doing it, or write a business plan and go and start-up the low-carb pasta business I kept talking about. Mark Ferguson and Emma Jones arrived in the Den looking to wow the Dragons with their new mobile phone accessory - a bungee cord. How hard and competitive the food industry is and how difficult it is to create a recognised food brand. I still would have done it though! The tougher something is, the more I want it! Business book: Ross was given initial funding from his future father-in-law, to get the business started. He travelled to the Chamber of Commerce, in China, to find out more about noodle manufacture. Sadly, after hours upon hours of trawling through the internet, searching supermarkets and health food shops, he had no success. However, after further research, he discovered konjac, a food crop grown across south-east Asia.Although he admits to constantly working towards “world domination” with his business, the one thing Ross is most proud of is the birth of his son, Oliver-Jude. Born and raised in Berkshire, Peter Jones is one of the most famous faces to have emerged from the county in the past 20 years. The landscaping company emerged from a timber supplies business, set up by the great-great-grandmother of entrepreneurs Henry and Philip Blake.