How the founder of Mingle continues to disrupt the FMCG industry

Jordyn Evans is the founder and brains behind Mingle, the seasoning brand that bootstrapped itself into national supermarkets Coles and Woolworths.“FMCG is not for the faint of heart, you have to be hungry for it,” Evans told Inside Retail.To compete with industry giants like MasterFoods and McCormick without the same access to resources, Evans shared that her team has to be more creative and react to trends faster before moving on to the next viral moment, because the industry heavyweights are always watching.“My vision for Mingle is to be known for real flavour, for real connection, that’s real easy – I think that sentiment applies to a range of different categories,” Evans stated.Since its founding, Mingle has enjoyed a series of magic marketing moments that have helped catapult the brand into supermarket aisles and consumer pantries. But Evans is quick to point out, it would be remiss to reduce Mingle’s success to “right place, right time”. A new product for a new customer “I always had ambitions of disrupting the pantry aisles, but knew that it would take some time, and knew that I had to build a following outside of the retail store.”In the beginning, Evans took a grassroots approach to marketing, primarily due to a lack of budget, by sending out the product to influencers that aligned with Mingle’s brand story.“I think if I had to pay for all those eyeballs from day one, I probably would not be here, and the brand probably wouldn’t have grown to where it is today,” shared Evans.“I owe a lot of this journey to organic reach, to social media and to influencers meaningfully endorsing our product,” she added.Simultaneously, Evans focussed on building an e-commerce shopfront and social media profiles that could capture prospective customers from word-of-mouth marketing.“I started an e-commerce website, direct-to-consumer, built up a lot of insights and a relationship directly with our customer – which is quite rare in the FMCG world,” elaborated Evans.Eventually, Mingle cultivated a customer base that wasn’t going down the seasoning aisle – and by 2018 Woolworths wanted in, followed by Coles in 2021. Virality is rarely an accident Mingle’s success has been well documented as the FMCG industry continues to champion an Australian underdog in a supermarket of international legacy brands.The upward trend in home cooking in 2020 during the Covid-19 lockdowns resulted in  Mingle growing by 500 per cent in a single year.“Dinner inspiration has definitely been a key pillar since inception because that’s how a lot of people are shopping the category and how they’re discovering Mingle,” said Evans.Mingle has invested in an in-house recipe developer to share meal inspiration with its prospective and returning customers – but now it’s looking to bring its online meal inspiration in stores.In November, the no-nasties seasoning brand is launching a collaboration with a brand in the fresh section and a Mingle sachet will be sold alongside 40,000 fresh products soon.“Often consumers go into the fresh or the fresh section or the meat section to look for inspiration, and we recognise that and know that the pantry aisles are less frequented,” Evans shared.“So, we’ve partnered with a fresh produce supplier so that when people are looking for this specific fresh product, they can discover Mingle that way,” she added.“I know the retailers have really had great ambitions to integrate a few more pantry products into those fresh sections – and I guess how we solved that is we went directly to the supplier to facilitate a partnership.” Mingle’s fresh produce partner will be revealed next month but the collaboration is a prime example of how the brand being in the right place at the right time is rarely luck.Most recently, Mingle seized an opportunity to enter the South Korean market after Trader Joe’s “everything but the bagel” seasoning was banned in that market due to its inclusion of poppy seeds.Now Mingle is on the trajectory to sell more than 60,000 units of its “everything bagel” seasoning, which does not contain poppy seeds, in South Korea by the end of 2024. On South Korea’s largest premium grocery delivery platform, Market Kurly, Mingle’s viral seasoning is ranked number four in the seasoning, oil and sauce category.“It was a market that I never thought Mingle would export to but since the cucumber salad has gone viral there’s been a lot of awareness,” said Evans, referring to a recipe by TikTok content creator Logan Moffitt.“We’re still a small business, but we’re not a small brand and we’re really committed to disrupting the food industry and taking some big shots,” she concluded.