Joe’s journey hasn’t been all rainbows and unicorns (mind the pun). Read on to delve into Joe’s journey of overcoming challenges and emerging wiser, his insights on effective networking and his experience as a member of Home Grown.

Tasty Mates has kept me creative and on my toes! How Tasty Mates has kept me creative and on my toes!

Getting the sweets right took time. “We worked with the developers for the best part of a year and learned a lot from them.”As Marketeers ourselves, we cannot help but ask about one effective marketing technique Joe has used for Tasty Mates. So why vegan? “First and foremost, I wanted my mates who don’t eat gelatine to be able to eat what I made. And you don’t need to eat beef gelatine when eating sweets.” We’re sadly coming to the close of our interview, but before we break off, we want to know about Joe’s biggest achievements.

Vegan sweet brand founded by two Jewish entrepreneurs

Secondly, charitable Initiatives. Across the world, people are suffering and we at Tasty Mates are dedicated to helping our ‘Mates In Need’. We promise to donate a percentage of profits to our charitable programme that provides support to those in need. At present, we donate a percentage of our profits to Mind and Crisis, two charities that do huge amounts of good and help thousands of people across the UK. Mind was founded in 1946 in England and Wales; with the aim of providing support to both the government, and directly to those living with mental health conditions. They provide a 24-hour helpline and publish research and campaigns that raise awareness of mental health problems and the vast amount of people living with them. Crisis is also an incredible charity that was founded in 1967 and offers year-round housing, education, and well-being services across the UK. They also focus on long-term solutions such as ending homelessness altogether by enabling people to access support early on so that homelessness can be prevented. Excitingly, ‘Tasty Mates’ is the name of our latest ‘sweets’ brand, rather than a so-not-needed news title on cannibalism. A Global Pandemic has thrown a lot of (really annoying) obstacles our way, but this is the start of the upcoming launch of Tasty Mates; The New Gummy Sweet Bursting with Flavour and Personality. Our aim is to promote meaningful moments with mates and the importance of being there for your friends and catching up with your mates, so a lot of our social media is around that. We’ve done that on a small scale, and one thing we’ll be doing next is putting this in practice on a much bigger scale. We want to be the driving force in food and drink of promoting Meaningful Moments with Mates,’ says Joe.

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The market is massive and the environmental side of the business with vegan products being better for the environment, was really important to us,” says Woolf.

Mixed Mates – Tasty Mates Mixed Mates – Tasty Mates

Let m e be transparent — we still have a long way to go. But, seeing light before the start of the next tunnel, here are 5 things we’ve learnt over the last 2 years. We've mixed together our bespoke peach and cream flavouring to make sure there's an explosion of flavours when you bite in! One of my friends was winding me up and I dubbed her “The Salty One”, so other friends started asking, “Which flavour am I?”. It all started from there. Each of our flavours portrays a personality trait in a friendship group. Eventually we’d like to come up with hundreds of personality traits and associated flavours.’ The start-up nature of Tasty Mates means the team are constantly thinking of new ideas to keep a competitive edge. We saw this when we took part in their business meetings, helping them to develop new initiative projects and strategic planning. While we avidly munch on our Juicy Peach Tasty Mates (Oh so juicy!), our eye is caught by a detail: the candy we’re eating is vegan! But why vegan candy?, we ask Joe.Big time. There’s nothing better than having a co-founder with whom to share both miseries and joys. If not a co-founder, it would be good to at least have a mentor or someone to go through that emotional journey with you.’ says Joe. The Perfect Pear: Whether they're taking a stroll in the park, enjoying a night in or jetting off for a holiday romance, the Perfect Pear are simply #couplegoals...and while their PDA often causes a stir, we know you secretly want to be them! After investing as much money as they could, Woolf and Sunshine realised they would need more resources, so did a Dragon’s Den style pitch to their parents whose investment enabled them to send samples to potential investors. Joe’s journey through hell and high water must have given him lots of wisdom, and we ask him to share some of it with other entrepreneurs. The pair decided to develop their brand in the summer of 2019, and spent the next 18 months working with developers to perfect their gelatine-free recipe, while also working on their branding.