Outlier TV Full Interview with Jacinta McCombe Nectar Cold Pressed
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Andrew McCombe:
Hi there. I’m Andrew McCombe and welcome to Outlier. In this week’s episode, I’m in beautiful Manly Australia. We’re all going to be talking to Jacinta McCombe, the co-founder of Nectar cold-pressed.
Okay, guys, I’m excited. Jacinta is also my wife. I’m looking forward to this one. Let’s go and check it out. Jacinta, welcome to Outlier. (Jacinta: Thank you) Beautiful day in Sydney, or it’s a little foggy at the moment. I’m sure it’ll get better as it always does.
Jacinta, you have one of Australia’s favourite cold press juice brands, which is No mean feat, but it didn’t always start like that. Did it?
Jacinta McCombe:
No, definitely not. Kim, my sister, we started the brand together back in 2014. It was after a long conversation about what’s next on the cards. What we’re both going to do. We both had two young children, and we both wanted to do something together that definitely helped mothers but also helped people be able to consume more raw fruit and veggies in their diet. Kim, coming from a chef background, very much looked at the market, seeing what the new trends were going to be. And cold-pressed juice was definitely one that was growing overseas and she wanted to bring it here. With my background, I had just sold a cafe back in 2013, had a little bit of time off. Then together we brought Nectar to life, working on the ingredients, working on the recipes and slowly but surely making our way into the market.
Andrew McCombe:
So how does that happen? Kim came to you with an idea, like what’s the process?
Jacinta McCombe:
It was definitely all idea first.
Andrew McCombe:
How did you feel? Like, did you feel resistant at the time or?
Jacinta McCombe:
Well, at the time after selling the cafe, I’d been in the cafe for six years, and we both had our young boys then, and we decided as a family, it was time to sell up and have a bit of a break. I guess I wasn’t really looking to go straight back into business, straightaway definitely not. I guess, starting something from scratch was another big step as well. It took a little bit of talking too, and a little bit of playing around with recipes. I actually visited an old chef that we both used to work for back in Melbourne, Curly. And he had a venue in Melbourne that actually had a little cold-pressed juice gelato bar, and he showed me his machinery. He sort of gave me a bit of a rundown on how it all works, how the flavours work, but I was sold. I’d never tried cold-pressed juice before that day. I come back to Sydney and talk all about it. We went from there.
Andrew McCombe:
Okay. So from there, how does a business begin? Is it a manufacturing business? So it’s obviously going to have a lot of outlay, and you’ll probably need space and…?
Jacinta McCombe:
I guess for a start, because we were both hospitality background, we were focused, I guess, not even on the manufacturing side, it was all about what the juices look like, what they taste like, who was going to buy them and is it going to work, are people going to spend? Back then, in 2014, our juices were selling for $7, $8 a jar. So it was a little 250-300 ml jar that people would buy in a cafe, after yoga or after the gym. And that’s how we sort of got our initial traction to just test, to see if the model would work and if there was a demand for such product. So, once we did hold a, I think it was quite funny, focus group day. We invited a big bunch of our colleagues and friends.
We hired a little room and put all of our original flavours up there for people to come around and taste and write a few notes on each flavour. And I think we blew most people’s heads off that day. It was a bit crazy! The flavours that we had and the amount of.. (Andrew: They were good or?) They were good, but everyone was like, “well, you know, the ginger and this is super strong, and this one’s a little bit, you know, the texture’s not quite right.” And it was amazing feedback because from then we had, I think, six or seven recipes and then we called it down to five.
Eventually, when we did release our first recipes, we started with three recipes. We decided that, across the board, we definitely wanted a green juice. We wanted an orange-coloured juice, and we wanted a red juice, which is beetroot based. Our direction for that time was to consume more raw fruit and veg, but mainly veg. So we really focus on three flavours, vegetable-based flavours. After several more sample days, we came up with our ‘green with envy’ juice, which is mainly green veggies, green leafy veggies. ‘Eagle Eye’ juice, which is more than 50% carrot. And also our ‘Upbeat’ juice which has carrot, beetroot, celery. And that makes up 85% of the whole bottle.
Andrew McCombe:
And I believe, is it 600 grams of vegetables per 300 mil bottle?
Jacinta McCombe:
Minimum? Yeah. With cold-press juice, the thing is, it’s a slow form of juicing. So everything is crushed. Most people know juicing as centrifugal juicing, the first blade spinning around, cutting everything out really quickly, but then when you get it in your cup, it’s quite bubbly and foamy, and that’s all due to the fastest of the blades. Actually, what it does is, as it’s cutting up the produce so quickly, it creates friction, and it starts to oxidize pretty much straight away. Those juices are still great for you as long as you consume them on the spot.
Andrew McCombe:
So they’re not as healthy as they’re made out.
Jacinta McCombe:
Look, they’re healthy, they’re still healthy, fresh juice. There’s nothing added to them. It’s just exactly what the fruit is. It’s not that it’s not healthy, but cold press juicing is a healthier way of juicing a produce because it’s slow, and it crushes the produce. It doesn’t cut it up with blades, and it just keeps all of the nutrients and enzymes together rather than being destroyed. And what they do is that transfers into your bottle or into your glass. And then you can drink that. It’s the least affected that you can get, a juice from your produce.
Andrew McCombe:
Yeah. So a cold-press process is different from centrifugal, which creates the heat that kills the nutrients over time.
Jacinta McCombe:
Another word for cold-pressed juicing is also a masticating juicer. And that means it’s just literally the drums roll together. Your produce goes through the middle, and it rolls out the bottom, very slow.
Andrew McCombe:
So there’s a machine that does that?
Jacinta McCombe:
It’s a machine, there are no blades, no fast-spinning blades, nothing that cuts anything. You just feed the produce at the top. And it crushes it through the bottom and the juice, the pop comes out one side, which is super dry. It squeezes everything out of it, and your use comes out the other part of the juicer.
Andrew McCombe:
So 600 grams per 300 ml. That sounds pretty impressive to me. And obviously, they’re crushing a fair bit out of that amount. You did your tasting; you had three amazing flavours. What was the feedback like originally? What was it then that kept you going?
Jacinta McCombe:
After we did get our flavours together, we started at a little cafe in Manly. We thought, “let’s find a nice little spot that didn’t already sell juice.” So it was something extra for their fridge. That had coffee. And they had little raw healthy treats. So we put some jars in there with our little handwritten labels on each one, just to see how it would go. As cold press juicing, when you do it, it only has a three to five-day shelf life maximum. So as soon as you open that jar, you need to consume it. It’s a fresh product. After four or five days, everything starts to disintegrate. So we thought, “okay, if we want to have a juice, that people are gonna be able to buy…” And our focus at that time was all cafe restaurants because that was our forte.
We knew we had been in the markets and being in that network for a long time, we thought, “if we’re going to sell this to our customers, how are they going to keep it on the shelf for five days or a week? Like they can’t get through Monday to Sunday with the same juice on the shelf.” And we were just trying to think, “okay, how are we going to make that? How are we going to do the distribution?” And Kim had also been researching about high-pressure process, and that’s what we use now on our juices. And she saw that happening in America. And we found one company here, luckily in Sydney, that would process our juice for us. And we’ve been with them since day one.
Andrew McCombe:
So you’re saying that the three-day shelf life was an issue initially.
Jacinta McCombe:
Initially, at the small scale, what we were doing for people, no. If we wanted to make juice every second day and be on the road delivering every second day, of course. It’s a business model in itself, but we wanted to grow the business bigger. So we wanted to put a long term plan on how we can grow distribution; and distribution business didn’t seem right for us to then have to be having potential wastage for our customers. And then also having someone on the road every second, third day, delivering juice. Then people having to manage. You know, cafes and restaurants are very busy places. Something can easily get missed or not rotated properly. And then you’ve got a potential off juice sitting there that gets served to a customer. So we’re just trying to mitigate all those different points to find the best way of having and structuring our business for the long term.
Andrew McCombe:
And obviously a distributor with a three-day shelf. It’s too hard, isn’t it?
Jacinta McCombe:
At that point, distributors weren’t in the conversation for us, but now obviously knowing our distributors for today, they wouldn’t even look at it. They wouldn’t look at it if it was 30 days, you know, most distributors are looking at a minimum of 90 days plus for shelf life.
Andrew McCombe:
And so what is your shelf life now?
Jacinta McCombe:
Now after testing, we’ve done a number of testing over the years, and we have a 90-day shelf life from the day it’s processed at HPP., which is plenty for our distributors, our cafes, there are no wastage issues, and people are very happy. The quality is amazing and it’s the most naturally tasting juice that you can get without it being heat-treated.
Andrew McCombe:
So I know there are other juices on shelves and that like, in a supermarket, they could be for two years or so. What’s the process. And then do you really want to be drinking a juice after two years? Like how does that work?
Jacinta McCombe:
I guess, it’s funny, when thinking about 20, 30 years ago, we all used to buy juice off the supermarket shelf, not even in the fridge. It’s still available these days, but all those juices are heat-treated, use concentrates. It’s not a hundred percent juice, which we are lucky enough that we can actually manufacture today and have people purchase. When people can purchase our juices now, they know that they’re not getting any additives, they’re getting a hundred percent fresh produce. There are no concentrates, and they know exactly what they’re putting into their body. And that’s what the market’s demanding.
Andrew McCombe:
So how are you ensuring that, what’s the process to ensure a 90-day shelf life?
Jacinta McCombe:
We do regular testing, regular shelf life testing on all of our products. And also the high-pressure process. I guess I need to touch on that a bit more because not many people may have even heard of it and understand what the difference is. The majority of juices are heat pasteurized or flash pasteurized. The temperature is raised up to a point where it kills any bacteria, and it doesn’t allow any bacteria to grow in the juice. And then it’s brought back down to refrigeration.
Andrew McCombe:
What does it do to the nutrients of the juice?
Jacinta McCombe:
Exactly. It literally cooks the juice; it stops any bacteria form. So the juice is sitting in that fridge to buy; it has been flashed pasteurized. Actually, a lot of the nutrients are gone because they’ve been cooked out.
Andrew McCombe:
So just for my sake, the people have cold-pressed the juice and then pasteurized it. So it kind of negates it. Is that right?
Jacinta McCombe:
Yeah. There’s not as many doing that. I think people have learned, “okay, if we’re going to flash pasteurize, there’s no point marketing it as cold-pressed.” People are starting to become more savvy and learn. Cold-pressed; usually, you would think it is not heat pasteurized. You would assume. But for us, for example, a high-pressure process is a process where all of our juices come into the high-pressure process factory, and they go into a cylinder, and they are processed at super high pressure and cold water. So it’s the equivalent of taking a whole batch of our juices to the deepest part of the ocean, and the pressure that is down there then stops any bacteria from forming in the juice. And everything’s done at the cold chain. Everything stays at refrigeration temperature, from the time we manufacture in our factory, to the time it gets processed, to then cold chain distribution.
Andrew McCombe:
Fantastic. So that’s obviously a point of difference in itself, would you say?
Jacinta McCombe:
Yeah. And I mean, you can tell with the taste. You can line it up against pasteurized juices, juices from concentrate, and you can just tell that the natural flavors are still there because the juice has not at any time been heated or cooked or used by a centrifugal juicer. All of those things play a part in the way that juice tastes.
Andrew McCombe:
Yeah. So obviously you’ve learned all of this along the way through. Obviously, starting with a three-day shelf life. But I heard it all started on the kitchen bench. So what sort of machinery do you use on the kitchen bench?
Jacinta McCombe:
Kim and I looked up a number of juices, and we had talked to a couple of people. The restaurant that we saw originally, in Melbourne, had the gelato and the cold-pressed juice bar, they had a little angel. And the angel, we decided we’re going to buy it, exactly that machine. This is what they use in their juice bar. And if we can get this flavor taste for our juice, that’s what we’re going to use. So we’ll use that.
We bought one, and honestly, that juicer was our saving grace. It was amazing. The way it juices every single produce, like the greens, you know, we’re using mint, we’re using kale, or the beetroot, carrot, everything would come out so pure and rich and dense. We invested in one of those. Because we started to do this little trial in the cafe in Manly, it was getting busy. And so then we had a bit of a break. We did some analysis over how it had gone for three weeks, how much we sold, and how we would increase the volume? What’s the next step? Because people were already asking us to do some functions. Can you do our CrossFit function and make all this juice? We need a hundred litres. And I’m like, “How do I make a hundred litres?”
Andrew McCombe:
Well, how many was it making it at the time?
Jacinta McCombe:
I don’t know. One night we made a hundred litres, and it took us 10, 11, and 12 hours. Like we were juicing all night. we had no idea, you know, we’re just like, “yeah, we’ll do it.” And it took us forever. So on the kitchen bench, as best as we could to try and get it all sorted for the next day. But it was great. The function was awesome. They were super happy. Everyone loved the juices. So it just sort of reinforced, okay, “we’ve come to another hurdle here. How are we going to make this?” We started selling to three cafes, ten cafes.
Andrew McCombe:
And you mentioned, you’ve got two kids each at this point, and you’re up till middle of the night or whatever, making a hundred litres, is that sustainable?
Jacinta McCombe:
When we started, we’re like, “okay, we can work one or two days each week, we can build it up.” But as time went on, it grew and grew. And we were both sort of, “okay, extra days of day care, and how are we going to do this? And who’s going to do deliveries today?” It was great for us and great for us to be able to work together, to then bring Nectar to life. I guess both of us look back and are really proud of how it’s turned out.
Andrew McCombe:
So obviously it’s pretty exciting for you guys. Did you have a vision at the time of millions of bottles being picked up by a brand somewhere else to like a Coke or someone. What was the vision, or did you not have one?
Jacinta McCombe:
Initially, of course, we had a five-year plan. As many cafes on board and hopefully Coke would also want to buy obviously that was the plan initially. But five years has already gone past and we’re now making our next five-year plan. There was a point though; after buying our angels, we were like, “alright, another big step was buying our big machine.” that we got from America. And that was a big step. It was $35,000 to get this machine over to Australia. And once that machine landed, it was funny, because we had trusted that it was going to work, we bought the machine, and from then, it just started rolling. I was out, visiting all the cafes and all the people that I had met in my network, going to restaurants. Kim was making recipes, making adjustments, trying to get all the labels sorted. The big machine arrived in January 2014. And by March, late March, I think it was Easter weekend, we had our first customers.
Andrew McCombe:
Wow, so you took the risk. You did the big machine first before you had any long term customers?
Jacinta McCombe:
We did. And I guess after knowing how well it went at our trial cafe, we knew that instantly a handful of cafes in that area were going to take it. I just had to keep knocking on doors, right? It was cold calling. No one knew what cold-pressed juice was in 2014, no one knew what high-pressure process was, and part of my conversation with every single person was, “why does it cost so much? Why is it so much more than Charlie’s?”
And so there was a big education process, a lot of conversations, a lot of phone calls, a lot of following people up and being the pest. We started on the Northern beaches and got a pretty good spread of customers. At one point, we would deliver maybe, or we would produce 200 bottles in a week. So 200 for one production week, like, “wow, it’s a lot of bottles.” And over the time, we said, “okay, let’s try and make it to a thousand a week.” So a thousand a week was a pretty good milestone for us. And then we got to 2000 a week. And now, when you wind the clock forward six years, we’re upwards, we don’t even count in bottles anymore. We count in litres, and we’re between 10 and 15,000 litres a week.
Andrew McCombe:
So that’s about 50,000 bottles.
Jacinta McCombe:
Yeah. If you look at it equivalent to bottles, but a lot of the stuff we make these days is bulk juice for cafes or restaurants or other contract packing customers. So people who are a little bit like maybe our competitors, but we make the juice for them, and then they sell it to their channel.
Andrew McCombe:
Wow. So it’s quite a significant change. So other than a five-year plan, there wasn’t really a vision, but it almost sounds like it’s worked in reverse for you guys. So like you mentioned with the machine, you bought the big machine, things started to grow, like what other steps have happened along the way that have really helped you get to where you are now?
Jacinta McCombe:
We were very lucky and had a lot of really nice people help us along the way. People that I have met over the years and also Kim, people from restaurants or people that I knew from when I had the cafe that just had lots of great business suggestions for us, and people who are in the label industry. So I had an old colleague, he did our first labels and one of my friends from volleyball, she designed our first label. So it was a real community effort at the start. People were just willing to help, see us get off the ground. We had the usual struggles, we got our first print of labels, and the labels weren’t right. You put it on the bottle, and because it’s a cold product, the label started to deteriorate because it didn’t have the right lamination finished.
All these things you learn after the fact. So we’ve got another round of labels so that. We’ve got our bottles. At one stage, the caps weren’t quite right, because they didn’t withstand the pressure of the HPP, so that all had to be redone. And then I guess going into actual logistics and distribution has been a massive learning curve as well, like dealing with, for example, with our suppliers, our produce supplier. We order like hundreds of thousands of dollars of produce every year; I would say even it’s close to three-quarters of a million dollars worth of produce a year minimum. We have a really good relationship with our supplier. They’re our bottle supplier. And then the HPP guys. We’ve seen a lot of people go through HPP, and we’re still standing there as one of their first customers. So it’s really nice to have that long-standing relationship with them.
Andrew McCombe:
Just interesting, from a supplier perspective to see like, what are they thinking about your growth? They must be pretty happy.
Jacinta McCombe:
Yeah. I guess they’ve watched us along the way, especially the guys at HPP, doing one cycle first few months. And then, we went to two cycles, and other people were doing 15 cycles. They’re like, “Oh, we’d love to do 15 cycles.” And they’re starting to really see our growth as well. Our growth is good for them too because it’s more cycles through their machine every week. It’s great to be able to grow. They were quite a new company at the time. So they’ve also grown a lot over the time, and they’ve always supported us along the way. It’s been really nice to have long, good loyal relationships with all of our suppliers.
Andrew McCombe:
Do you think they’d ever thought that you’d be where you are now?
Jacinta McCombe:
No, maybe not. You’re a startup, right? Their rule of thumb is five years. And if you can survive the first five years, then you’ve obviously built a good enough foundation and sometimes over those five years, we obviously have had looking at each other going, “Is this actually gonna work or are we growing fast enough or are we doing enough?” Because you always feel like, I guess you should be doing more, or there’s more you can do. You can have a never-ending to-do list. My to-do list has not ended in six years, seems to keep growing rather than getting shorter. Maybe that’s why we keep growing because my list keeps growing. But it’s nice to look back and see where we are today and look towards the future as well. See what it holds.
Andrew McCombe:
You’re mentioning 200 bottles a week, 50,000 now, that’s like a 2500%. I think that’s, if my math is correct, an increase over five years, that’s pretty significant growth for any business. You mentioned before about education. So clearly people are getting the message about the difference with a cold-press juice versus a pasteurized juice or even a fresh juice. But what is that education like? What is different about this? What is different about the price point? Why should I pay more for this than I would for some other juice?
Jacinta McCombe:
We have a clean label, right? Our label says exactly what’s in the juice. It says exactly how much of each product, each ingredient is in each bottle. So you can see exactly what you’re putting in your body. There are no hidden ingredients. It’s unfortunate, I guess because I think some companies tend to sell products, and they don’t necessarily list everything that’s on the label or what process it’s been through to get to where it is now. And that’s something we could also do in the future, on our actual bottle. Educate people, say, “well, this is a high-pressure process. And what is that?” now we have the nectar promise, and it’s all about how we source our fruit and veg and the process it goes through. And that there’s no additives and nothing, just what’s in the bottle. In a nutshell, we really tried to put that on there so people can know, “okay, this is what I’m getting.” It’s authentic. It’s honest because that’s how we are, and that’s how we want it to be for our customers.
Andrew McCombe:
So are you saying that’s enough to educate a consumer though, or that’s more of a personal values process? So why would I have cold-pressed juice over another juice?
Jacinta McCombe:
I think cold-pressed juice is becoming a lot more well known now for its health benefits and because it’s a better and more natural way to make juice. People realize now, after six years of it being in the market, and slowly growing. You have your mainstream cold-pressed juices now in Coles and Woolies. It helps to have some cold-pressed things on the shelf there to market, to the general consumer who shops there. When you go to your more specialty IGS and grocers like Harris farm, they generally have products that are a little bit higher in price, but there’s a reason why they’re a little bit higher price because they have a uniqueness about them or they’re smaller manufacturers who actually do different processes to bring you a less processed and more natural product.
And I guess it just takes time, right? At the moment, we can’t physically produce our juice to put it on a Coles and Woolies shelf. Maybe in the future, that’s possible, as long as the people purchase it. So it’s gotta be at the right price point, the real general public to go, “okay, well, I’m going to buy your cold-pressed juice that has 51% carrot in it versus maybe a Nudie juice.” I think Nudie juice is probably one of the biggest sells in Coles and Woolies, but you know, they have a carrot blend, but a smaller amount of percentage of carrot. You know, it depends. I know customers are definitely reading labels more these days. So probably now is our time to start that process to really get it in front of everybody.
Andrew McCombe:
Yeah. So it sounds to me it’s more real.
Jacinta McCombe:
It’s a 100% real. The main supermarkets are full of packaged processed food. So this is as close as we can get to a natural product in a bottle, ready for you to consume, at its most natural flavor, natural taste.
Andrew McCombe:
So being a real product obviously is a reflection of yourself, your sister, and all of your team. Is it really important from a value system? What are your values?
Jacinta McCombe:
It’s about honesty, authenticity. Our appeal is really that we work on; we want to provide health, taste, value, and convenience. We’ve got the health and the taste, and we see it as great value right now, but obviously, to get it out to mass people, they want it cheaper, but we need to, obviously, scale. We scaled over the six years, but there’s another big step to get it to that level. But right now, there’s a big market in cafes, restaurants, hotels, and premium grocers, that all the people who are health conscious and want real products shop there. And that’s our focus right now.
Andrew McCombe:
So you now have a distributor, I believe.
Jacinta McCombe:
Yeah, we have a distributor looking after us in ACT, New South Wales ,and also Victoria, and working on Queensland as we speak. If we can saturate the Eastern seaboard and then look into the future of taking it over to Western Australia, South Australia, it would be great to have national distribution. That’s the focus for us this year to work on that plan. I’ve had conversations with people that are exporting as well, especially to Asian countries. So that’s also in the pipeline. And new Zealand’s always on the list as well. It’s just finding someone over there and making sure the market’s ready for it. Everything’s going to turn over in volume. Distribution is all about volume. You’ve got to really hit the mark of who’s selling your product. Are they aligned with you, which our distributed are very well at the moment, we’re very lucky to have found them. We worked really well together, and then if they can sell it into the right places, the volume is there.
Andrew McCombe:
How’d you feel when you got the distributor based on the kitchen bench, when you first started? Like that’s a massive step, isn’t it?
Jacinta McCombe:
Yeah. Like over the years, probably three years ago, we sort of started toying with getting a distributor, but we weren’t at the right price. We couldn’t manufacture for the right price. We couldn’t bring it to them. So everyone needs their cut, right? The distributor needs their margin. The retailer needs their margin to be able to sell it. And then we’d still need it on the shelf at a reasonable price. So I think my first dabbling distribution, I was selling it to the distributor, and they were selling it to the retailer, and the retailer had to sell it for $8. Back then, it was quite a unique product. There were a lot less cold-pressed juices around, but they still needed a push, even a push for I guess, wealthy areas in Sydney where we started thinking, “okay, this is where we need to start.” Because people are willing to spend the money, but now over improving our manufacturing, buying more machinery, scaling, we’ve been able to bring the price down. So now, it can sit on the shelves anywhere between 4, 4.50 and sometimes in the cafe, 5.56 dollars.
Andrew McCombe:
You’ve got this distributor they’ve said, “yes,” in multiple states that all of a sudden, your leverage is a lot higher. You’re going to have to make more juice. But before you had the distributor, what did you use to do? Like, cause you have to make the juice, get all the fruit and veg. You’ve got to organize your team. You’ve got to then go out and sell. How does that work? Do you and Kim start growing, or like when did you bring on your first staff member, and how does it all work from there?
Jacinta McCombe:
Look, we used to do everything together. We’d make the juice together. we had a few little separate roles at the start. I would do the cold calling to the cafes. Kim would do the HPP side and the delivery side. We were very lucky. We had a good friend offer up his son’s services to help us out for the first nearly two months. He came and worked one day a week with us in the factory. He was 16, 17. He would help us juice and bottle and put labels on bottles because everything was hand-labeled.
Andrew McCombe:
So were you in the kitchen at this point at home, or?
Jacinta McCombe:
No, after we got the big machine, we organized to share a space with a pizza shop, and because the pizza shop was only open at night time, we could use that shop from 6:00 AM until 4:00 PM. So we’ve got our big machine delivered there. This big carton box got delivered. Kim and I rock up to unpack it. One hammer, two girls, to unpack this box at the back of the shop.
Andrew McCombe:
I heard you were wearing some interesting uniform at the time, too.
Jacinta McCombe:
wearing shorts and thongs on. We were very lucky that a tradie walked past and offered us a hand to undo the box and help us with the machine. I guess we just didn’t foresee the size or the weight, and we weren’t very prepared. That’s when we started. We started renting one day a week, in the back of this pizza shop, making the juice all in one day, getting into HPP the next morning. Then we’d box it. Kim would make deliveries. I’d hit the road again, doing sales, trying to get more customers. As we started growing, we brought on one more person. Then we bought on one more person, and I guess it was all about, and it has been since day one, getting the juice made and getting it into the bottle and getting it out to customers.
Like that’s going to be the priority. The quality is there; the consistency is there. We don’t want people coming back saying, “well, this is not right. Or this doesn’t taste the same.” even though we’re using natural products, yes, the color does vary slightly depending on the season and the taste also because it’s natural taste. So in some of our blends, if we’re using pineapple under-ripe in some periods, if we can’t get nice ripe pineapples, or if they’re overripe, you know, it’s just a slightly different taste profile sometimes. There was slow, steady growth. We had two kids each, so there’s only so much we could do every week.
Andrew McCombe:
Sounds quite synergistic, though. Like even the tradie walking past with a hammer to help, and every step of the way. So you’re in this pizza shop. I mean, how do you even find a pizza shop that has enough room?
Jacinta McCombe:
We were just lucky. An old acquaintance from the cafe, her husband; it was their shop. So I said, “look, is there any chance we could use the back of the shop? Just the kitchen part one day a week.” He’s like, “yeah, yeah.” That turns into two days a week, turned into three days a week. And we were like, “okay, I think we need to move out of here.” And we were lucky enough, there was another start-up company on the Northern beaches which were in a factory, and they needed to sublet some space. They built us a little production area. So we had our first refrigerated production room, cool room in their space. And we were there for maybe 18 months. And then we moved out to the market. We get all our produce from the markets. So it made sense to move out that way, even though we had to drive out there and drive back, do all their manufacturing out there, the HPP machine was out in Homebush. So everything then was five minutes from each other. Logistics was easy. It was just more of our time to and from, but we didn’t have to go there every day.
Andrew McCombe:
So how do you manage cash flow through this process? Because you’d obviously have to have the transport. Now you’ve got machinery. You’re now in your own factory?
Jacinta McCombe:
Now we’re in our own factory, but thinking back, I don’t even know how he managed it. Kim and I didn’t even pay ourselves for at least nearly close to a year. We were just working for the love, paying our staff, paying rent, paying for the produce, collecting money off customers. I don’t know how we did it. There were some really hard times, I remember at one point when we looked at each other, “okay, how about we start paying yourselves now?” It was a big step, and we started paying ourselves a little bit, then a little bit more. We’ve grown the whole way very organically. We’ve never pushed it too far and tried to pay ourselves big salaries at the detriment of cash flow or hiring staff. Our whole focus has always been to grow the business, make the business sustainable, and think about how much money we give ourselves in scale with how the business is growing. And even today we have many part-time staff or casual staff. Then we have two full-time staff. And then we have the two directors that get paid, and you know, we’re not collecting massive salaries, but we just take what we can, what’s good for the business. And what’s good for us.
Andrew McCombe:
How many staff have you got now?
Jacinta McCombe:
Now we have 21 staff that work in the factory. We have a full-time manager. A number of years ago, Kim’s husband, Adrian, took over her role. She had a third baby. So Adrian came into the business, and he manages the factory. He manages all the staff and the manufacturing side of the business. He and I work full time, and we have an operation manager and then all of the other 21 casual staff.
Andrew McCombe:
And you mentioned the factory. So you’ve got your own factory now?
Jacinta McCombe:
The first time, October of 2019, six years of building up a business, we finally moved into our own space. So it was very scary, massive expense, huge move because we’ve grown, moving from over Homebush back to Brookvale. We had truckloads of machinery and produce and packaging, and just so much stuff we had accumulated over the time. But it took us a good three to four weeks to settle in. Every single bit of machinery that we moved had an issue. There was always something that had to be fixed. We had an electrician or plumber or engineer fixing the machine pretty much every day. For the first two, three weeks, someone was there, working on something. I can now say that everything is sorted and it’s been nice to get in there. We’ve had all of our certifications done, our food authority, and everything.
Andrew McCombe:
Well, again, I’ll just keep going back to synergy, and everything seemed to grow organically, but if you were to educate, say someone starting out in any business, it could be manufacturing could be anything. You can’t plan for that, can you?
Jacinta McCombe:
I’m not much of a planner. I like to be organized, but I don’t look too far ahead. Kim was always saying to me, “what’s our next five-year goal?” I’m more the day to day, week to week, maybe month to month, but you’ve just gotta be patient. And I guess we always set goals. I always felt that we were not achieving things fast enough. We could be doing more. We could be achieving the numbers faster or getting more sales or getting our prices done. But in the end, we’ve just had to stand the test of time. If you have hundreds of thousands of dollars behind you, thrown at you to say, “here, go make this business work.” It might be a different story. But it’s been a good process and a fun, growth curve, I guess, the steep growth curve, dealing with a lot of new industries, logistics, distribution.
Andrew McCombe:
Well, that’s another thing in itself. So you’ve learned from scratch, other than having a hospitality background, about a whole new game. And would you say now you are one of the leaders in the cold-pressed game?
Jacinta McCombe:
Essentially. I never sort of think of myself in that regard. Bur often people would come, other people that have brands, with just general questions. I often find myself doing new product development for people, whether it’s different types of juices or nut milks or little shots. We actually cut fruit for a retailer in Sydney now. So there’s a lot of different things that we’ve taken on. Obviously, cold-pressed juice and making the cold-pressed is our specialty, but having the skills from, I guess, hospitality background, as well as, has allowed us to develop and bring on new products and do other things that other people have requested.
Andrew McCombe:
So again, growing organically, things happening synergistically, like you can’t teach that, right? So is it a case more of that, the values that you actually instill, as people and as the business of helping that process, do you think? Or like, it just fascinates me how you have a plan, but you’re not trying. I mean, you’re trying every day, obviously you make it work, but the magic is happening around you, isn’t it?
Jacinta McCombe:
Yeah, we’ve been very lucky. I look back and think, “Oh yeah, we were lucky that happened.” Or we met this person. And it’s funny, I’ve learned that when you meet people, and they take the time to have a conversation with you because they’re interested in what you’re doing. A lot of the people that gave me their time over the years, they were educating me. They were letting me know, “Oh, I should try this or watch out for this. Or maybe you should talk to this person.” And I tried after a few times; I really tried to then make sure I acted on when people were giving me suggestions. Especially people who I’d met that have been in the industry for a long, long time. And I met a lot of people, had a lot of connections. I guess, because I was asking questions as well, they wanted to help.
Andrew McCombe:
You just can’t ask enough questions, and if you know people that can help you, don’t be afraid to ask for help because people love to help. A few times I’ve tried to do things and being stubborn, you know, “I can do it, I can do it by myself.” But it takes so much longer. Potentially you don’t meet the right people, and you don’t get the outcome that you are looking for. But you could just ask someone for help to get there faster and maybe even less trial and error.
Andrew McCombe:
So what are your values?
Jacinta McCombe:
Personally?
Andrew McCombe:
Well, I guess, well, personally and professionally?
Jacinta McCombe:
Both, they’re very similar. I’m very honest. Can’t tell a lie. Anyone would know that, and it’s not very good when you have to negotiate. I’m not a very good negotiator at all, but I’m honest, trustworthy, and always want to deliver on our promise. Whether it’s hiring our staff, the way people are performing in our factory, it all has to be the way it’s meant to be. You can’t do shortcuts. You just can’t risk doing things not the right way, because the consequences dire, it’s the reputation of your brand. It’s people who are purchasing your product and just your general reputation in the market.
Andrew McCombe:
And obviously, relationships are one of your highest values as well.
Jacinta McCombe:
Definitely. Since day one. We still have many of our initial relationships with everyone that helped us at the start. I had an old business acquaintance helped with storing. When we started to get pallets of bottles, we had nowhere to put pallets of bottles boxes. He helped me, he put them in his warehouse for me, and I used to pay him a weekly fee for that. I had our label printer; we were with him for a long time. And he looked after us for our first, maybe two or three years, doing our labels, really teaching me about the market, teach me about the labels and just how important the whole look and feel is and what you need on your bottles. We have our bottle supplier now. It’s the same guy that we started with from our first original bottle.
We’ve had many bottles over time. We’ve changed from square to round two now milk bottle shape. But we still use the same guy, and he always comes up with suggestions or feedback or if there are issues. It’s been really nice. And I think that’s what I’m like as a person. I know Adrian’s very similar as well, we’re both very loyal people ourselves. I guess that just flows over to the people that we deal with. We’ve had some great people help us along the way and some long-standing customers. So our first customers that we found in Manley are still our customers today. Some have even tried other brands, and then they would come back to us. We’re focused on relationships, customer service, and keeping our customers happy and our suppliers happy.
Andrew McCombe:
And so you mentioned Adrian, at some point, Kim stepped out of the business when she had her third child, and then Adrian stepped in. How important is the family in the process as well?
Jacinta McCombe:
With both families fully involved, I guess there’s always been two of us working in the business, but now the business is coming to a point where all four of us can work in the business together, which is going to be great. Everyone has their own roles. Having family support as well, you can lean on each other; you can push each other. Many people say, “don’t do business and family; it doesn’t work.” But we’ve made it work, and it’s getting bigger and better. As long as we can all keep growing together, and with the businesses growing, and then we’re all reaching our end goal. What more can you ask for?
Andrew McCombe:
Do you find as many challenges from a business perspective?
Jacinta McCombe:
there are always challenges. It’s just a matter of communication and setting expectations as well. And keeping each other accountable. We don’t always keep each other accountable, I guess, as much as we should. But we seem to always get to where we need to go, and that’s our focus. We just focus on the goal or the outcome that we want, and we make it happen. People often come to us with little projects, and we look at each other, like, “I don’t know how we’re going to make this happen. Let’s just say yes.” And we would find a way to make it happen. And that’s how we’ve rolled for a while now.
Andrew McCombe:
Yeah. I guess now for the potential outliers that are out there, other entrepreneurs, et cetera, who may be inspired by the story or want to start their own story, what are some of the challenges you’ve had to overcome? And how did you overcome them?
Jacinta McCombe:
A big challenge is balancing family life and business life. And as the business grows, it tends to take more of a hit on family life. The kids get extra days in daycare, or you have nights where you’re not at home with the family. But in the end, we’ve always made sure that we take holidays. You have to have some time off. Business can swallow you up in no time, and you have no perspective, but you have to try and set yourself a schedule, be organized really, and then make sure you have some balance with family time, work-life balance. It’s like any corporate job entrepreneur. Whatever you’re doing, if you don’t have balance And if you’re not happy outside of work, you’re not going to be happy at work.
Andrew McCombe:
So you’ve now got three kids as well.
Jacinta McCombe:
I do, yes. We had our third in July last year. That was another challenge. It’s actually lovely. It’s been seven and a half year break between my second and third. It’s been amazing having another little baby, and baby cuddles and going through all those phases again. We’ve got two older boys, so it helps. They’ve been amazing. We’re back to daycare and back to all that juggle again on another level. With both of our families, you just make it work. You talk to each other and help each other out. We’re lucky to live close by as well. Now we work close where we live. It made that whole transition of having a new baby and a new factory, a lot smoother, I think.
Andrew McCombe:
So again, an inspiration, you’re an inspiration for a lot of mothers out there. I’m sure. And you mentioned work-life balance. So obviously there’s a balance between business and family, but you obviously got to have some personal time as well. What are you doing your personal time?
Jacinta McCombe:
Personal time for me is to go and play sport really, or go to the gym or play beach volleyball. But outside of that, I still class personal time as just downtime as well, even if it’s with one or two of the kids or all the family together. Personal time for me individually doesn’t have to be time by myself. Some people just love and re-energize from time by themselves, but I think it’s just time where I can relax, and you can just sit and watch a movie, or you can go for a walk or go for a bike ride. We live in a great place. We can go for a surf or just having some flexibility to be able to do something fun.
Andrew McCombe:
And where do you find the time?
Jacinta McCombe:
I didn’t have a lot of time, honestly. Kids’ sport is on the weekends, obviously, I want to do my gym or whatever on the weekends. There’s not a lot of personal time, but we’re just going to make the most of it.
Andrew McCombe:
And other challenges you’ve had, I believe, at one point you even managed to deliver juice in a cyclone. Is that the truth?
Jacinta McCombe:
This is back in February 2015; we had an issue at HPP. It had a breakdown or had a massive reconstruction happening for three weeks. And it just happened to coincide when we were releasing our new shape bottle and our brand, new branding and label. And Kim and I decided, look, “there’s no way, we’ve got this new bottle new label.” So I contacted a company up in Bundaberg, Queensland. And they had an HPP machine. They were happy to drive our stock up there. Our juice had to be made. We have to make all of our juice for one day. We made it all day, put it all in the truck, and then drove straight away to get to Bundaberg.
Cause it took us overnight. That night we drove as far as we could. We slept in the truck, and we were so nervous that we didn’t want to turn the truck off. Cause we didn’t want the juice to lose temperature. So we slept in the front of the truck with the noise of the fridge all night. Then we drove up to Bundaberg the next day. It took us the whole day. Finally got there on time. We stayed at a motel that night, dropped all that stock off, and then it got HPPed first thing the next morning. But, yes, we drove into the middle of a massive cyclone, and we had to then take back roads home. it was such a mission, and people were like, “you guys are crazy.” But that was a part of; we didn’t want our customers then to have this brand new look and feel of our juice, and then not have it for three weeks. So that’s what we did.
Andrew McCombe:
So it’s really interesting to me listening to that, you driving though a cyclone to help deliver to a customer, but it speaks volumes for yourself, for Kim, for Adrian, for the business as a whole, that you literally will go to whatever lengths to deliver your product on time, in the condition that we’ve stated.
Jacinta McCombe:
You’ve got to do whatever you can. If you haven’t done whatever you can, then you haven’t done the best you could. That’s the way we work.
Andrew McCombe:
So how do you teach that?
Jacinta McCombe:
Well, if you want the result, really, if you want the result with anything, you have to do whatever it takes to get there. And I guess that’s all it comes down to. Are you willing to do whatever it takes to reach your goal or reach your dream?
Andrew McCombe:
Is that an outlier trait or is that a trait that can be taught to anyone. Cause there’s a lot of people who pull the pin on a lot of stuff really early. Right. But the successful people to me are the ones who persevere under whatever conditions to get the outcome thereafter. What is it that drives you in that regard?
Jacinta McCombe:
I guess it’s something that’s always been in me. But I haven’t really noticed it until having businesses. When I had the cafe, you’d do whatever it took. If you had to be there at 7:00 AM or if you had something break down or if you have to bake a hundred lentil burgers by this time, you just do whatever it takes to make it happen and reach the deadline. And I guess I’m deadline-driven. So if there’s a deadline, I work better under pressure as well. If there’s a deadline, but the deadline is three weeks away, generally I leave till the last week, and then I start doing the work. A lot of it for me is innate, and for a lot of people, I guess it’s innate as well. You probably could be taught, but you gotta have the willingness and the drive to then see it through.
Andrew McCombe:
So obviously perseverance, grit, resilience, everything is a massive part of Nectar, not obviously the juice itself, but getting the juice out to the world in its ideal state. You mentioned earlier that you also manufacture for other brands, you do other slightly different things in relation to fruit. Cutting, I think, you mentioned. If I gave you this opportunity to put a bit of a pitch out to the, to the market, if someone’s looking to have their juice produced by you or someone to take Nectar as a brand and for their, you know, their cafe or restaurant or hotel or specialty store. The floor is yours. What would you say?
Jacinta McCombe:
Well, I guess we do pride ourselves on making cold-pressed juice, and we have many customers, well known in the market, that we make their cold-pressed juice for them. So essentially, we’re a contract manufacturer as well. If people are looking for a juice to be made, whether it’s bulk juice, retail size juice, definitely reach out. We’ve devised a second company, called ‘Synergy food group’. It’s still Adrian and I that hit up that company, but we just separate it from Nectar to the brand. Cause Nectar to the brand we want to keep for Nectar customers, people who want our brand. And then eventually, one day, it’d be great for someone down the track who wants to take our brand and run with it. But right now, we’re just focusing on cafes, restaurants, independent grocers, retail, independent grocers, and premium retail. It’s really where Nectar has solidified its place. And I would say, we just want to grow that market and get it out to as many people as possible. But anything juice, nut milk related, we’re always happy to do new product development, and we just love creating new products.
Andrew McCombe:
Well, again, it’s interesting, isn’t it? So you are essentially helping people who maybe are at the start of their journey or middle of their journey and they’re realizing they can’t do everything. They can’t necessarily produce, then go and sell and then do customer service, et cetera. Somehow you guys have managed to work that out, and that’s fantastic. And you’ve now got multiple customers who already do that with you, but you’re now calling out for more. So that in itself is an outlier trait, right? You’re literally saying, “let me take care of this, and I’ll get Nectar out first. Now I’ll help you guys as well.” And you’ve got, as I said, multiple customers. So that’s a very admirable trait in its own. Again, talk us through that. You’re literally helping others in the process, don’t you?
Jacinta McCombe:
It was quite phenomenal how that happened. It’s like people started asking us to make juice for them, and we didn’t realize, at the time, that actually helped us scale, because they needed some, which added to our volume, then created another level of efficiency. Now Produce buying, what machinery we could purchase, the size press we have for our cold-pressed juice side. And as we scaled up, we could make more juice and then we could just service more people. In one respect, we’ve got to harness the brand. And really our messaging for Nectar is all about taste, health, value, and convenience, and getting that out to as many people as we can. And then the people that come to us through synergy, we give them a finished product, and then they go and sell it to their customers. They market their brand to their customers.
Andrew McCombe:
Well, it makes it easier, doesn’t it? You’ve done all the production. All they gotta do is have it delivered, and then they go and do all the marketing, and it just seems easier, more leveraged for everyone. So just on the leverage, is there any mentors or courses or resources that you’ve engaged in that you felt have helped in the process? Like what do you do for your self-learning?
Jacinta McCombe:
Adrian and I both attended a course a couple of years ago that really helped us indirectly. We went there to learn about ourselves and how we treat money and how we work with money, but in the end, it does teach you a lot about leverage and how to do more for less. How do you really make the most out of everything you do? Don’t overcapitalize, don’t spend when not necessary. I think, at the time, when we did it, it was a lot of good learning for us, but it has helped us subconsciously over the past two years. We’ve always gone back to little principles that they brought up in that course. And it’s reflected well for us.
Andrew McCombe:
So is it important to continuously learn as you’re growing in your journey?
Jacinta McCombe:
I think so, but I think part of my learning as an individual, I learn a lot from others. I learned a lot by speaking to others, watching others, and then applying that in our business. So it might not be official, attending certain courses all the time, or doing online training. Still, the more I talk to people, and the more I ask questions, the more I learn and then pass that on to our staff and the way we do business.
Andrew McCombe:
And that’s another question, I guess, from a management perspective. 21 staff plus you guys, is that a strength of how does it work now? As far as flow and strength go in the business.
Jacinta McCombe:
I guess both Adrian and I are very people-focused, in our natural abilities. He looks after the staff in the factory; he looks after our operations manager. And I look after our relationships, our suppliers, our customers, our Nectar customers, our distributors. So we’ve split it so that I’m not necessarily in the factory all the time, I’m out networking and just generally making sure everyone’s happy, “What can we do more? What can we change? How can we grow together?” And also helping distributors find new business. He sort of focuses his management skills on our staff.
Andrew McCombe:
Jacinta if you had to share, say one or two, three key things to a potential outlier that’s out there. Who’s wanting to do something like yourself or even for their own business or life. What would it be?
Jacinta McCombe:
I think the things that come to mind for me are: you have to be patient, ask as many people as you can, and talk as much as you can to people who do what you do or have done or are where you want to be, learn from them because they’ve already done it. It would be the path of least resistance, and really that’s what you want. You have to be truthful and honest, honest with yourself and honest with people you’re dealing with because there’s too many people and too many things these days that if we burn bridges, there’s no going back. So yeah, you just got to stick to your values, stick to the way you operate, and you’ll get to where you want to go.
Andrew McCombe:
Well, thanks for coming on the show. You and Nectar cold-pressed are officially outliers. Cheers. Cheers. Well, there it is, guys. I hope you enjoyed this inspiring Outlier episode with Jacinta McCombe.
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