In 2012, Julie, 46, was successfully selling her artisan smoked humous on a small scale in a local Birmingham delicatessen. It was a completely unique recipe that Julie had created in her own kitchen, inspired by attempts to get her fussy then four-year-old son, James, to eat healthier food after discovering he loved anything smoked!
Following a career in corporate marketing and moving into local BBC broadcast journalism, Julie longed for a better work/life balance to spend more time with James who was 4 and her then 7 year old daughter, Anna. A ‘light bulb’ moment came when Julie happened to be researching the humous market for the Radio 4 Food Programme and found that there was a lack of flavour innovation in the market with no ‘smoked’ variant at that time.
Julie spent 4 months carefully perfecting her recipe, whilst finding creative ways to produce it locally without any previous experience in food manufacturing.
Fate then dealt a card that gave Julie no option but to take her venture the next level. In 2011, her husband Phil, then 39, had just left his successful career in the Armed Forces and started to re-train as an Osteopath. Just as Phil started working part time and studying, he received a diagnosis of epilepsy which meant that he couldn’t drive for a year and Julie suddenly had to take on the full responsibility of providing for her young family.
Tenacious and determined, Julie was on a mission to sell enough humous to support her family while Phil did his training – failure was not an option!
Using the success from her local deli as a case study, Julie wrote to the Waitrose buying team pitching her artisan Smoked Humous. They wrote back the next day and within 12 weeks Moorish Smoked Humous was stocked nationally on the shelves of Waitrose.
Fast forward nine years later and Moorish turns over £2 M, selling 25 thousand pots a week and is a Great Taste Award winner. The brand is now going from strength to strength and Julie has just launched a game-changing new healthy AND delicious Chocolate dessert dip into Sainsbury’s.
The family are living their dream life in Devon, but things could have been very different had it not been for Julie’s work ethic, quick thinking and self-belief. She firmly believes others can do it if they put their ideas into action.
Julie said: “I remember Karen Brady once saying ‘So many people have good ideas but not many get off their backsides to make it happen – there was no cushion or safety net for us, so I had to make it happen.
“If I can do it anyone can. I had no cash to invest, no experience in FMCG marketing or manufacturing – just an understanding that I had something new and better with the determination to make it work.
“I come from a hard-working, entrepreneurial foodie family. My grandfather ran a restaurant where I grew up in Northern Ireland and he became very successful from nothing – he has always been a huge inspiration to me”.
Visit us at lovemoorish.co.uk or follow us @moorishhumous.
