Fresh dips maker Holy Moly is aiming for a top pot spot on tables during the King’s Coronation celebrations before it goes for growth with new snack packs and market expansion.
“More dips on lips,” is how founders Tom Walker and Gaz Booth like to spread awareness about their plant-based, gluten-free brand where “convenience shop-bought tastes homemade, full of natural flavours, freshness and no nasties,” say the pair.
Six years on from start up, Holy Moly has B Corps accreditation for its social and environmental performance with a £8.5 million turnover forecast for 2024/25 and the products now stocked in 13 large retailers including Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Waitrose and most recently a new milestone, Co-Op stores.
Avocado, sourced from small, sustainable farms with perfect growing conditions in Mexico and Columbia, is their jewel in the crown and the heart of the company’s best-selling pots of popping guacamole and the fruit’s smashed flesh.
Salsa, aioli and tzatziki dips made in the UK and Europe have also joined the range where freshness, fostered by applying ground-breaking, cold press technology of quality produce, is central to the intense flavours achieved.
It all began when the long-time friends had a foodies’ debate about whether to add coriander to guacamole and the blandness of bought dips generally.
From that an entrepreneurial opportunity was born with Booth, a BT strategist and Walker, a marketing expert for utilities, travelling across Mexico and Columbia to find local growers with the finest avocados who remain with them today.
“There had been no innovation in this category for decades, just factory formulas, there was a gap for ‘better’, so we worked with the farmers to produce the recipe, and we make our dips there,” explains Walker.
“There’s no excess that comes from transporting skins and stones.”
The flavour dividend comes from high pressure processing (HPP) equipment provided by its partners which does not use heat, but does preserve taste, texture and nutrients.
“This triples the shelf-life of our dips without the need for additives and preservatives,” says Booth. “This means less waste on shop shelves and at home.
“All our products have recyclable packaging and were the first to include that for dips’ lids, in all saving thousands of tonnes of unnecessary plastic from entering the food supply chain.
“Lockdown and all its challenges made us rethink our processes and by changing how we used our pallet space we have increased our transport efficiency by 16 per cent.”
The company also works with the City Harvest charity distributing surplus to communities in need and on the inflation front it’s absorbing packaging cost rises.
The King’s Coronation, like its Jubilee predecessor, is expected to boost sales for Holy Moly which employs 10 and hundreds more indirectly, especially in Latin America.
After £2 million of investment since launch, Booth and Walker are eyeing a venture capital funding raise over the next couple of years.
Its latest innovation is into one of the most competitive of categories – hummus. Holy Moly’s punchy recipe includes garlic oil, pesto and chilli harissa.
New snacking and meal-deal packs combining a dip and crackers or toasts are set to make their debut shortly, marking a move for the company into the increasingly popular on-the-go category, while food service and international expansion are high on the agenda too.
With a broad range of customers from singletons to empty nesters, a group where eco concerns, health awareness and flavour standards all coalesce, “we’re heading for sales of £30 million by 2028,” declare the dip masters.
