Fractional Head of Sales
I used to breed seahorses.
Now I get brands
onto shelves.
Launch! is a fractional Head of Sales for founder-led food and drink brands. I get you listed, and then I keep you selling once you are. One fixed monthly fee from £750, no counting days, and you get me rather than an account team.
Book a 30-minute callWorking now with One Planet Pizza, Gold Standard Nutrition, Praveen Kumar and six other founder-led brands.
Some of the shelves you'll find my brands on
Where are you right now?
Two ways in. Pick the one that sounds like your week.
Launch
Not on the shelf yet.
You have a product you believe in, a sell sheet you're not sure about, and no idea which buyer to talk to first. I get you buyer ready, pick the three or four doors that actually fit what you've built, and sit in the meetings with you.
From £750 a month
How Launch worksOrbit
Listed, and it's not moving.
You've got the listing you wanted, and now the rate of sale, the promo forms and the buyer's emails are eating your week. I run the account as your Head of Sales, from the joint business plan to the phone call the buyer makes when something's gone wrong, and you get to be the founder again.
Priced on the call
How Orbit worksNot sure which? Book the call and we'll work it out in ten minutes.
Selected work
Good products. Landed properly.
One Planet Pizza
Plant-based frozen pizza that does not ask you to lower your expectations.
- Retail readiness
- Buyer targeting
- Pitch and pack
Gold Standard Nutrition
Frozen free-from ready meals. High protein, low sugar, ready in minutes.
Praveen Kumar
Authentic Indian cuisine, built for a fixture that had stopped taking risks.
SNACK'd
Gut-friendly oat bars taken from a good idea to a judged, awarded product.
Girl Gone Wild
The UK's first wild game ready meals. Venison and pheasant, serves two, no skill required.
East Pizzas
Sourdough bases and pre-topped pizza, built for retail and wholesale at the same time.
- Retail readiness
- Wholesale channel
- Buyer meetings
The route to shelf
Five stages. I work across all five.
Most founders meet me somewhere in the middle. But I can pick you up at a sketch on the kitchen table and stay until a supermarket buyer has my number saved.
How it worksFoundations
Branding, labelling, sourcing. Everything an aspiring business needs before it has something a buyer will take seriously. This is where Native Roots started.
I do thisBuyer ready
Pricing that survives contact with a buyer. Margin that works both ways. A sell sheet that says one thing, clearly.
I do thisThe right doors
Not every door. The three or four that fit what you have actually built, opened by someone who has already sat on the other side of the desk.
I do thisListed
A listing is a start, not a finish. Launch plans, first orders, and the awkward conversations that follow.
I do thisSelling
Rate of sale and data analysis, key account management, and being the person a major supermarket actually picks up the phone to.
I do this tooNot sure which stage you're at? That's usually the first thing we work out on the call.
Book a 30-minute call
Who you actually get
You get me. Not an account team.
I'm Andy, a qualified Marine Biologist with 25 years getting my hands wet across Europe, breeding Seahorses, Jellyfish and Sharks.
I ran a hugely successful retail store near Manchester, and from there I hit the world of Field Sales and Sales Management, leading National and European Sales Teams for several brands in the Aquatics industry. I've done TV and Radio, written for Magazines, Tabloids and even BoredPanda (my beef over a Sunfish became the stuff of legends).
Post-Covid, I decided to switch track. I ran a CPD register for 35,000 professionals, then leapt into food and joined the incredible Membership team at the British Frozen Food Federation.
This led me into my role with Praveen Kumar, which is where most people probably know me from. I took a small frozen ready meal brand and made it a household name. Now I'm here, running Launch! and giving you all the help and advice I wish I'd known 20 years ago, and picked up along the way.
It is a strange route into food and drink. It also turns out that keeping a shark alive and getting a founder through a buyer meeting are the same job. Preparation, patience, and knowing exactly when to avoid sharp teeth.
More about me
If the product is good,
let's talk about the shelf.
No pitch deck, no discovery framework. Tell me what you have made and where you are stuck.