From print to peanut butter: How 99th Monkey became a million-dollar brand

Nick Sheridan, a former journalist with The Age in Melbourne and the Sun in the UK, began experimenting with nut butters in 2012 when he was training for the Vienna Marathon, and soon after 99th Monkey peanut butter was born. Over the past 18 months, the premium product has seen a big spike in sales, with sales for July-Aug 21 of $225,000 up 62 per cent on the same period last year. Now, a million-dollar business, sold across 800 Coles supermarkets and 700 independent retailers, Sheridan has unveiled plans for global expansion and new products, and has launched an equity crowdfunding raise on Birchal.Here, Sheridan shares how he runs a climate-positive business, why he refuses to use palm oil in his products, and how a lack of experience in FMCG worked in his favour. Inside FMCG: Was it daunting for you to transition to a completely different career path and did you struggle to get to grips with the workings of the FMCG business world?Nick Sheridan: In the beginning, it wasn’t so daunting because I went into this with no expectation of what it might become – I was happy just to try things and see what worked. But as the business grew, and I started to get an idea of the possibilities ahead of me and the challenges I might face, that was scary. I have had to learn so much along this journey. I am still learning new things every day. And I have learned many of my lessons the hard way over the past eight years. But failure is a great teacher, and I’ve been fortunate that my failures have been outweighed by the successes. I put that down to the amazing support our brand has had from our customers and fellow businesses over this time. This business is the embodiment of the values I hold dear – a respect for our customers, which is expressed through our efforts to always create delicious products of the highest quality.  At the same time being good for peoples’ health and being kind to our planet – and I think people appreciate that and have repaid that respect with their loyalty to the brand.Did you have any experience in food production? How big of a challenge was it to create a healthy and tasty alternative to the peanut butters already on the market?I had absolutely no experience! To this day I have still not seen the inside of any other nut butter production facility than my own. But I do believe that lack of experience was one of our strengths. I wanted to do things simply and naturally, because those were the type of products I wanted to make for people, but that was also the only way I knew how. And it turns out that’s what people want. Natural nut butters are, by definition, a very simple product. But what matters is the attention you pay to quality – to things like the texture and freshness. We make all of our products in small batches and this allows us to constantly monitor that quality and make our nut butters in a way that slows down the natural separation of oil and solids that impacts the quality of products like ours. It also means that the jars get from our factory to the supermarket shelf and onto our customers’ toast much quicker than most of our competitors, and nothing beats fresh product!Were you adamant not to use palm oil from the beginning and was that a challenge in the production of 99th Monkey?Building a business that was always as much an expression of my values as it was a food brand, there was never any question about the fact that we wouldn’t be using palm oil in our products. It’s true, palm oil is a great emulsifier, and it’s cheap. But its production is also the main driver for the destruction of rainforests in Borneo. There is no way I could ever be comfortable supporting that or profiting off it. We face so many challenges to try to do the right thing for our environment today that we need to be prepared to make hard choices in order to do the right thing. Fortunately for me, not using palm oil was a very easy choice to make, but it’s just one of the many things we all need to do to make sure this world is one we’re all going to be able to live in 100 years from now.What’s involved in running a climate-positive business? How have you achieved that and why was it important to you?Making 99th Monkey climate positive was more of a personal decision than a business one. Tackling climate change is probably the greatest challenge and largest threat humans have ever faced. And we’re not going to achieve anything by just talking about it. We need to do something, and we need to do it now. 99th Monkey is, and always will be, a plant-based brand, which is primarily driven by a consideration of the environmental implications of meat production, but I wanted to do more than that.I’m not pretending that our little business offsetting a couple of hundred tonnes of CO2 each year is going to save the world, but if every business in the world did it, then we might be able to. So I’ve put my money where my mouth is, and I hope that in doing so, other businesses will be compelled to follow suit, and that consumers will come to expect that of the businesses they support. If our commitment can help catalyse that change in some small way, then it will be worth it.In terms of the mechanics, we work with a consultant who does an annual audit of our business activities – everything from the carbon cost of producing our raw ingredients and packaging, to the transport of goods to and from our factory, even down to our employees’ daily commute to and room work – and then gives me that number, which I then offset through Gold Standard organisations such as With One Seed, who run tree planting programs in East Timor. That makes us carbon neutral. Then to ensure we are offsetting more than we produce, I calculate the volume of nut butter we sell each quarter and offset that as well, which is what makes us climate positive as opposed to just being carbon neutral.What has been your biggest learning with the business?I am learning new things every day – some of them big, some of them small, all of them useful! Probably the biggest thing I have learned is that the only way to achieve anything is just to get out there and do it. Try, be prepared to fail, learn from those failures and then just keep on trying to get better and learn more. A bit like life really!What is your goal with the crowdfunding campaign? What will these funds allow you to do?We see an opportunity for a purpose-led, plant-based brand like ours to expand into new categories, such as snacking, ready-to-drink beverages and protein supplements. We have a slate of really exciting NPD that takes what we do best – making the world’s most delicious nut butters – and translates that into new formats for those new categories. That is what we will be using the capital for and we are really excited about how this can help us achieve our goal of changing the way people eat for the better.What does 2022 look like for 99th Monkey?Next year is going to be an incredibly exciting year for 99th Monkey! We have some amazing NPD for the nut butter space that we can’t wait to share with the world, and, assuming we hit our target for the capital raise, we intend to have our products for those three new categories launched by the end of the year as well. We can’t wait to share these awesome products with the world and begin our transition from a pure-play nut butter brand to Australia’s leading clean energy company for humans!