Creating a Data-Driven Marketing Organisation with Ashleigh Gardiner, My Muscle Chef

Michelle Lomas: My Muscle Chef started in 2013 with two brothers working towards one dream. Being able to enjoy great tasting, healthy food without ever having to cook for themselves. The company targets time poor and health conscious individuals who want a convenient, healthy meal. That sounds like most people I know. Well, the time poor part anyway. In 2022, this renowned food company in Australia delivers over 1.6 million meals every month, across four and a half thousand Australian suburbs.

Michelle Lomas: That's impressive! With the Australian ready made meal market expected to grow to an Australian 1.6 billion dollars by 2024. My Muscle Chef is a brand that's poised to grow with the trends. But ready made meals is a pretty crowded market. So how does My Muscle Chef get an edge and continue to grow? The answer may lie in data, and that is the realm that my guest today plays in.

Michelle Lomas: Ashleigh Gardiner leads the data team at My Muscle Chef. They provide insights and analysis for multiple departments across the business, so they can always improve planning and performance based off data driven decisions and processes. And what's fascinating is how the whole business has transformed into a data-driven culture and embraced data-driven decision making.

Michelle Lomas: Let's hear from her now.

Michelle Lomas: So thank you for joining us today. Really interested to hear more about the My Muscle Chef story. I doubt there's a listener on this podcast, who hasn't heard of you guys, tried you guys maybe given it a crack or is a loyal customer. There's gonna be a lot of people interested in how you grew and how you scaled and all the unique things that you do to kind of grow that customer base. And what is quite frankly, extremely cluttered and competitive market. What's the story? How did you guys scale and what does your business look like today?

Ashleigh Gardiner: So way, way back in 2013 Tushar and Nish founded the business, they were kind of both back and tag, going to the gym and fitness being young professionals venturing out into the workforce.

Ashleigh Gardiner: Didn't really have a lot of time for meal prepping. And so they looked to find something that filled that gap and there was really nothing, you know, outside of Lite n Easy and that kind of thing, which is not really, if you have going to the gym and, and trying to get big it's not quite the right thing for you.

Ashleigh Gardiner: So, uh, yeah, really, there wasn't anything in the market. So they kind of were like, well, we could do this. And so they got started. I mean, it really started as a family affair with their dad as well as hiring a few kind of key people in the kitchen and delivery staff and stuff growing quite quickly, even sort of from the beginning, organically through like word of mouth referrals, through their gym circles and stuff.

Ashleigh Gardiner: And their initial early days really was. Lots of body builders. It was a lot of, it was chicken, broccoli and rice, and that was kind of, um, that sort of high protein macros measured out to the very smallest detail. And so that kind of started getting quite bit of like a cult following around the place.

Ashleigh Gardiner: And that actually worked really well for expanded outside of Sydney, into Victoria in Queensland. And still really organic, not a lot of actual advertising or marketing going into it. Lots of referrals, lots of samplings at gyms and just kind of people talking to each other.

Michelle Lomas: Did I read somewhere that the guys were basically going into gyms all day, every day and introducing themselves and like throwing sampling around like that real down to the bones.

Michelle Lomas: I'm a startup and I'm just gonna. You know, get amongst it and do what I can.

Ashleigh Gardiner: Yeah. So going out, they would be hitting the streets to get in front of people and get the food in front of people. Cause they knew that once people tried it they'd be hooked, but then that's obviously not just what they were doing.

Ashleigh Gardiner: They were also cooking and packing and delivering and just kind of. Taking care of everything. So a lot of, uh, a lot of hard work, uh, went in, in this sort of early days and yeah, and then, so all of the meals initially were frozen. And so that went, that, you know, it's easy to, to store easy deliver. And in 2018 we decided to make the move to fresh food.

Ashleigh Gardiner: And that was a big operational change, but then coincided with a lot of other changes that we made in the business at the same time. So around moving away from just like a really solid gym rack, kind of bodybuilder protein is life kind of aesthetic for the brand and for the target audience, we'd done some research into the brand.

Ashleigh Gardiner: And so we were kind of, you know, people had heard about us, but a lot of people were really put off by the really masculine branding. I, I think like in a lot of research that we've done and that we did in those early days, A lot of women just kind of were like, sure, it looks healthy, but I don't think it's suitable for me.

Ashleigh Gardiner: And so it's hard to scale to the degree that we, you know, that a small company wants to alienating 50% of potential audience.

Michelle Lomas: So there wasn't much of the trend as there is now for women to be fit and strong and healthy. And back then it was still kind of like the way thin. So there was that fear of like, I don't wanna get bulked up like those guys, if I eat that sort of food I'm gonna get, so I'm sure you are fighting a little bit of that as well.

Ashleigh Gardiner: So yeah, so that kind of, we, we like, okay, we need to sort of soften the brand a bit while making that change to, to fresh food and kind of focusing on like, actually it's lots of people want to be fit and fuel themselves in a healthy way without spending hours meal prepping every Sunday beyond just that cult body building kind of community. So, um, it started to expand our reaches.

Michelle Lomas: I have a quote here from your founder, Tushar Menon. It's an article from smart company in 2019. And I think he says it really well. First five years, we made a lot of mistakes. We were presuming our customer was some bodybuilder type. But as the company grew, it became increasingly clear that My Muscle Chef customer was much more aspirational, health conscious professionals looking for meals good enough for athletes. We did a lot of research and changed our focus to become a more data driven company. We had to understand exactly who our customer is. They just want those meals that are healthy and have a lot of protein. It sounds like 2018 was a very pivotal moment for you in the business.

Michelle Lomas: You know, when you realized and some hard truths that maybe you were building quite a niche, that wasn't gonna help you scale in the way that you wanted to. So lots of changes in the business. Not only by the sounds of it from the product and the packaging and the branding, but also really transforming yourself into this data driven business.

Ashleigh Gardiner: Yeah. So, uh, so lots of, lots of changes, obviously operationally changing from a frozen product for fresh product was a huge change. Um, a huge risk as well, because obviously that's how our customers had always sort of known us. So immediately we were sort of changing everything that they knew and liked about us to, to then kind of meet that sort of broader needs for wider sort of audience, but then yeah.

Ashleigh Gardiner: Also kind of refining the brand and making it less, much less masculine, really padding ourselves into a corner with a lot of the sort of heavy bodybuilder focus. But I think the success of that, uh, has sort of shown within the business that using data and insights to sort of make decisions generally pays off.

Ashleigh Gardiner: And so there's a lot that it's actually really strong data culture within, within the company, which is great. Lots of, uh, people are not afraid to make mistakes as long as you are learning from them. I think

Michelle Lomas: so. How are you using data in your business today?

Ashleigh Gardiner: I mean, we use data for basically everything. So whether it's from a logistics and operations, forecasting demand, so they can get the raw ingredients or roster for staff to work factory and what meals we need to produce and what quantities all the way through to our marketing is all data driven.

Ashleigh Gardiner: And so looking at what's working, what combinations things working that sort of culture of curiosity and questioning is really encourage. And so everyone's got access to relevant data so they can kind of explore and see what's happening. There's lot of everyone's always asking questions, which is fantastic. As, you know, leading the data team, the number of inquiries we get from just random people across the business, going, Hey, I was thinking about this, do we have any data on this?

Ashleigh Gardiner: What would this look like? What's this sort of mean? And so it's actually fantastic, people are thinking about it. It's not a get in, do your job get out. It's kind of like thinking outside those bounds as well to kind of look at where, where else we can improve. What's the ways that we can find those efficiencies.

Michelle Lomas: Oh, I love that. You've built this culture of curiosity. Now, the companies that you talk to the data side of things is always kind of separated from the day to day in a way, or they kind of come in last minute, but it sounds like it's very much ingrained in your business and everybody in the business has access to that data to be able to sort of inform of those decisions. And I guess when you think about data, you never think about actually the logistics of your business. And especially now we're going through so much inflation, the cost of things are increasing. So I'm sure even today you are sort of looking at that data a lot more closely in terms of the cost to create and distribute and what that looks like from a price point perspective.

Ashleigh Gardiner: And I think one of the best things is we've been establishing a lot of the foundational data infrastructure and requirements, so that we've now in a place where we don't have to kind of scramble to find this data or use proxies in a lot of places because we've been collecting, I've been looking at it.

Ashleigh Gardiner: And so we can kind of identify efficiencies and find places that we can improve things across the business to, to help with those sorts of external factors, cuz there's things you can control and things you can't control. And um, unfortunately all of the, um, those external things, it's just sort of a take them as they come.

Michelle Lomas: So in 2019, you decided to bring data into the business in a very different way. And that required a tremendous amount of infrastructure. I am sure that didn't happen overnight or did it?

Ashleigh Gardiner: Yeah, it was quite a big process.

Ashleigh Gardiner: I think we started the data function 2019 and that was literally just me putting things together and kind of connecting the dots as of early last year in a place where there's a first phase, the goal was. Did not wanna hear people saying anymore. Oh, we just don't have data on that. We just don't know.

Ashleigh Gardiner: And so January last year was kind of where we really stopped hearing that from people across the business, because it became really clear. We do have data on everything and people have access to it and they know what's available and they're actively seeking that out and having conversations and wanting to, to use that for making decisions.

Ashleigh Gardiner: So that was brilliant. And now what we've kind of been working on the last year or so, is that next stage obviously. Insights and reporting is fantastic, but then we want to do more than that. How do we deliver better customer experiences? Whether it's through recommendations or customized content on the site and, and all these sorts of things, playing with machine learning to enhance our segmentation of customers, to better be able to tailor how we talk to them.

Michelle Lomas: From this kind of key moment in 2018.

Michelle Lomas: Where you had a hard look at what you were doing and made a big pivot, started your data infrastructure, and building that out to sort of stretch across your entire business. What's happened since then, growth wise.

Ashleigh Gardiner: I think that the business has continued to take off we're now, uh, available in retail stores across the country, annual revenue run rate is about seven times what it was, the 2018, 2019 financial year. So just kind of growing hugely. The other piece that we've seen a lot of stride in as well, which is I think really indicative of the fact that we're making the right decisions is, is increases in customer loyalty. So in terms of how frequently people will order from us and how often they sort of come back, that again, continues to increase, repeat customer orders increasing nearly 50% year on year, which is insane.

Ashleigh Gardiner: Like it, it really validates the direction we're moving in and the decisions that we're making are the right ones.

Michelle Lomas: You've done something so phenomenal. It's not just like a unit that looks at marketing, but it's data across your entire business. And really affecting culture of your company as well with everybody now looking to data, to validate some ideas or innovation that they wanna try.

Michelle Lomas: What's your advice? What would you give people listening and maybe some warning points as well, because I'm sure it's not smooth sailing.

Ashleigh Gardiner: I think the biggest factor that's contributed to the success of building a data culture has been, no one is afraid to admit if they're wrong, which is, I think. So important.

Ashleigh Gardiner: Maybe you've got a gut feel about something and then you kind of look into it and the data says, actually, mm-hmm, , it's you it's confirmation bias. You're looking at a really small thing. This is not actually indicative of a broader trend. And so actually just being okay with being wrong, which it's gotta be a top down piece.

Ashleigh Gardiner: And, and so within our business, it's super humble. There's no egos in that kind of nonsense kind of getting in the way.

Michelle Lomas: That's such a great point. How many people in our industry, we look at the data. And it doesn't affirm what we wanted to believe. So we spin the data or we find additional sources of data that reaffirm what we're trying to do.

Michelle Lomas: And I guess that's also a case for the importance of having this separate, almost independent team. That's validating a lot of this stuff because it's too easy to go in with your own bias. And look at data the way that you want it to.

Ashleigh Gardiner: Absolutely. And I think that that's a huge thing. Being able to look at it objectively, it is really easy to kind of go, okay, actually, well, this doesn't say what I want it to, so maybe if I present it like this, or, uh, let's just change the scale here.

Ashleigh Gardiner: And then this graph is exactly

Michelle Lomas: the scaling on the graph, the oh, that old nugget. My God.

Ashleigh Gardiner: Yikes. Um, so in terms of like watch outs, the, the main thing is, is just, it's not a quick fix. I think a lot of the underlying work when it comes to getting all your data sources together, doing all the cleaning and modeling and even getting it into a place where you're able to start analyzing it and having these broadly accessible reports that answer any questions that you want. It's actually quite a long process. If you want accuracy and reliability, there's, you know, it takes time. And so it's not expecting, oh, well, we, we implemented a data team three months ago. Why aren't we. Why haven't we solved this yet?

Ashleigh Gardiner: It's kind of an ongoing sort of piece. It does take time, but it's worth it in the end.

Michelle Lomas: And are you constantly tinkering? Because it seems like with data, you have to continue to tinker with the model, with the method. Things evolve and it does take time to sort of see those patterns come through. So how long does it take from the time you set something up and feel like it's running to actually be able to make decisions off the back of that data?

Michelle Lomas: And then is that a constant iteration?

Ashleigh Gardiner: Yeah, so, I mean, it depends on what our data source is right? So your core business data over there, it's your transactions understanding what orders are coming in, what products people are buying that doesn't change very often. So once you've got that all together, put it in an analytics database or, or warehouse, then that's pretty set and ready to go.

Ashleigh Gardiner: That's an easy place to start. I think that the iteration really comes from different ways of slicing those sort of data sets with other data sets, whether it's combining our online sales data with our retail sales data, to kind of understand the interplay between the two of those in various places, or if it's, uh, you know, we implemented a behavioral tracking across our website and at the beginning of last year. And so that's like a huge amount of brand new data that sort of came in. And, uh, and so the scale of it and the sheer number of rows and potential, each of those rows could be this massive pasted model and get into a place where you're really comfortable with using it for reporting. I think that took us maybe four to six months before we were kind of really happy with it. We were also always adding new events to track or new context as we'd wanna drill down a bit deeper for us digital product and UX sort of decisions. It really depends on what it is you're looking to do, but your core data sets, once you've got those locked down, you shouldn't be.

Ashleigh Gardiner: Huge amount of changes to that structure too frequently.

Michelle Lomas: From an actionable perspective, you are relying on other people. So there's only so far you can do from a data perspective. Uh, like you said, you know, if you're looking at behavioral insights on the website and the website experience, that's great.

Michelle Lomas: You can report on that and you can give it to the UX team, but if you don't have that culture of being a data driven company. It's probably far less likely that that is gonna get actioned at a fast rate. But I imagine given your culture is, is so data focused that it happens a lot quicker.

Ashleigh Gardiner: So the product team in data team, are super intertwined actually, which is brilliant.

Ashleigh Gardiner: I mean, I think in order to make the best product decisions. It really does need to be based in data. And so that kind of made sense for us step structure, the teams that way. And then we also obviously work really closely with marketing as well. And so there's always a data representative when it comes to key strategic decisions around these sorts of things to kind of go, actually, I think we could pull some data on this or do we wanna validate this?

Ashleigh Gardiner: And I think we could actually look, let's just check that. And so it means that we're able to just when people need that data, or when they've got those questions, we can just make sure it's there for them. And that they're able to do everything they need to do.

Michelle Lomas: From a marketing perspective, you kind of use all the traditional channels, social, you know, search, et cetera.

Michelle Lomas: And of course you do, but I know affiliate and influencer marketing is a really big part of your marketing practice. Can you tell me a little bit about what you do in that space.

Ashleigh Gardiner: We started using affiliates late 2020, and it was kind of a bit of an experiment. It was something that had sort of been knocked about even back then.

Ashleigh Gardiner: I mean, now there's sort of inflation on Facebook and Google cost is out of control, where even back then, you kind of start to see the signs and you realize that it's quite risky to just have all of your digital spend in the two platforms you're looking at ways to diversify and the affiliates piece, I think it's not something that a lot of people have experience with.

Ashleigh Gardiner: It's still kind of a bit outside of people's sphere of knowledge, there was a bit of trepidation internally, or just going to be discounting everything and just kind of training people. It's gonna be the Groupon effect and it's gonna be terrible. And so, uh, I've sort of overcoming those objections to just go, let's give it a shot.

Ashleigh Gardiner: Let's just see how it goes. We'll stick to our normal kind of approach of we're not competing on price. We're competing on quality and it's sort of taken off since then. So using Commission Factory since October, 2020. And so success from affiliates from an acquisition perspective, it's been really phenomenal for us.

Ashleigh Gardiner: So the cost per acquisition from the affiliate channel is about 70% lower than it is from Google or Facebook advertising channels, which is just it's, that's ridiculous. Um, and, uh, it said with the kind of increasing costs constantly across those platforms. It makes it a really efficient way for us to scale and get new people on board in terms of being able to control your costs from that perspective, there's low risk, because you literally pay for conversions that come through.

Ashleigh Gardiner: There's no wastage. Like there is, you know, you give Facebook half a million dollars and they'll go, let's see. Yeah. If we can find anything for you.

Michelle Lomas: Yeah, or they'll just balance stuff. Well, we drove all these people to your website and it's like, well, they weren't qualified audiences and therefore they didn't convert.

Michelle Lomas: So there's no value in that for me. And it baffles me why everybody isn't doing affiliate marketing, because you do literally only pay for the conversion. It's such a great way to scale your business without a lot of the upfront risk. And certainly what we're seeing is that conversion rates are not as good as what they used to be cost per conversion is so much higher.

Michelle Lomas: So yeah, it's really important to find those other ways to drive sales. And it actually reminds me. Um, you did mention to me that you know, in a category that's so built on price promotion. Get your first box free or get your first box 50% off, or your first three for like a hundred dollars. You guys don't do that ever, do you?

Ashleigh Gardiner: No. No. And that was a conscious decision that we've made since the very beginning is that it seems to be quite the norm in the category to discount really heavily, but then you kind of just giving, giving your food away for free. I think it really does train people to, they won't buy from you unless there is a sale on like you look at reviews for some of our competitors and a lot of, yeah, the food's okay, but it's not worth buying unless there's a sale, but there's a sale every other week.

Ashleigh Gardiner: We don't wanna train people into that mindset from us because our food is worth paying for. We're very confident in who we are and the value that we have as a brand and kind of what we have to offer that we never really felt pressure to go down that path as well. The data piece really comes into that. So relying really heavily on data for informing decisions that we are making for new products that we're launching whether that's new meals or new product ranges.

Ashleigh Gardiner: As an example, we just launched a new range of plus meals, which are the few of our most popular or menu items, but they are just giant servings because some people

Michelle Lomas: you gotta cater to the original audience

Ashleigh Gardiner: and, you know, it's kind of something that people have been wanting when we've launched new meals that are in, that are sort of higher calorie ranges.

Ashleigh Gardiner: They tend to do really, really well. And so we're just like, well, let's make these same meals that are heaps bigger and yeah. And so that's kind of been phenomenal results so far.

Michelle Lomas: It's so obvious and so smart yet I don't think brands think about this often enough. It's, it's all about getting the customer in, but you're so much more focused on that lifetime value and it's so true, yeah sure get the customer in they'll try it. But if the quality isn't there, they won't come back, you know, cuz they've tried it. Just curious. I'd I'd love to hear from you. If there are marketers thinking about getting into the affiliate space, what advice would you give them? Obviously, you've seen some great success.

Michelle Lomas: You still use influencer marketing though, right? So it's, it's not like you use one or the other you use a combination, but what advice would you give? Them.

Ashleigh Gardiner: Yes. So definitely still using influencers ambassadors and the success of affiliates has really redefined the way that we approach influencers and using them sort of a bit more like the affiliates network to actually maximize the value you get from that sort of channel.

Ashleigh Gardiner: But I think from a advice perspective, for anyone thinking about affiliates, it's not, this was the, the hurdle we sort of internally had to overcome before we, everyone really got on board was it's not just one thing. It doesn't have to be all offer driven. It doesn't have to be just heavy discounting. It doesn't have to be spammy ads that are following people around the internet.

Ashleigh Gardiner: It can kind of fit in with your brand and the way that you want to be perceived while still being super effective. And again, the whole thing is just testing things out, trying things and seeing what happens and learning from that and building and scaling from there.

Michelle Lomas: Yeah. So true. All right. So last question.

Michelle Lomas: I'm gonna ask you, tell me some of the things that you've tried that didn't quite work out the, the failures .

Ashleigh Gardiner: Yeah. Um, I think one of the biggest disappointments, I think from, I mean, and this was something that I'd sort of put together, uh, and I was like very disappointed, um, when this did not work, but, um, it was Twitter.

Ashleigh Gardiner: So obviously Australians don't really use Twitter as a day to day kind of thing, unless you're a journalist, which is, uh, kind of, you know, I'm from New Zealand and there's actually quite an active Twitter community. So sort of coming over here, I was just like, there must be it's

Michelle Lomas: very strange.

Ashleigh Gardiner: Yeah.

Michelle Lomas: We must be the only market that don't obsess over Twitter.

Ashleigh Gardiner: Yeah. But sort of looking in the, you know, looking at the trends. And so for me, sort of actually just being on Twitter and kind of noticing things and, and digging a bit deeper into the data around it was, there is sort of, there are key situations where Australians will use Twitter. And so that is reality TV shows.

Ashleigh Gardiner: So. If you've, uh, ever watched MAFS then, oh gosh, the live tweeting along with that is

Michelle Lomas: the memes are spectacular. This is where this is where Australia's humor comes out during a MAFS episode, jump onto Twitter. You'll see. Funny the funniest people in Australia.

Ashleigh Gardiner: That's a, and so, and like, so that's sort of a big thing.

Ashleigh Gardiner: That's like probably the most engagement, like actual engagement that twitter gets from Australians. Um, and then the other time that people are on Twitter, but are not necessarily tweeting things is for, uh, sports events. So for things like MMA or yeah, Formula One, so, uh, people, uh, will be following, uh, people on Twitter.

Ashleigh Gardiner: They'll be, they'll be following along with those topics and those conversations, but they're not necessarily doing anything. They'll not take, there's not hot takes or anything from them it's just kind of, they're wanting to see what other people are saying, and it's kind of more of a observational kind of piece.

Ashleigh Gardiner: Um, and so it was kind of like, well, both of these groups of people are definitely, My Muscle Chef kind of consumers sort of different sides of it. So the reality show, like you're just wanting to kind of get in, you get home from work, you're wanting just kind of settle down with the glass of wine and some food that you don't have to cook or clean up.

Ashleigh Gardiner: You can just pay attention to the show. Great. Or, you know, the people watching sports and stuff. It's kind of. Again, it's that sort of typically younger male demographic, um, especially from like the MMA sort of perspective. So, um, again, really strong representation in our audiences. So we were like, let's give it a go.

Ashleigh Gardiner: We'll find times where there's, these audiences are likely to be online. We'll kind of target, uh, ads sort of at that time to these sorts of these sorts of topics and, and, and people and followers to, um, and sort of see what sort of traction we get. And it just, yeah, flopped miserably. There were just like, you know, we'd get a bit of a bit of traffic, not huge amount, very minimal conversions.

Ashleigh Gardiner: Um, and more than any other platform there was just people getting really mad at seeing ads. Um, and so it was just kind of a little bit disheartening. It was just like....

Ashleigh Gardiner: got a bit cranky at you. Did they?

Ashleigh Gardiner: Yeah,

Ashleigh Gardiner: yeah. Yeah. Beg mad. So we were just like, okay, well, We tried it and it, uh, failed. And so, you know, even if you've got the, the insights, sometimes it just, doesn't always, you know, there's other things that you can't always know, like, but, um, but yeah, so Twitter is, are not something don't, don't love the ads.

Ashleigh Gardiner: Uh, so yeah.

Michelle Lomas: It's a great learning to be honest. And it does, it does baffle me. The, the Twitter audience here in Australia is, is quite unique compared to the rest of the world. So yeah. Maybe that'll change in the future. I don't know. yeah. Who knows what Elon's gonna do with Twitter? So we'll find out. Yeah.

Ashleigh Gardiner: Yeah. I mean, I've have said for age people, living Australians love getting mad at things and love shortening words. So I always thought that Twitter would be ideal for them.

Michelle Lomas: Totally.

Ashleigh Gardiner: And it's just, yeah. Bonkers that it's just is not, it's just not a fit. So...

Michelle Lomas: No love. No love. It's very strange. Well, Ashleigh, thank you so much.

Michelle Lomas: Thanks for joining the podcast today.

Ashleigh Gardiner: Thank you for having me.

Michelle Lomas: Really great conversation. Really interesting what you guys have done and how brave you were to just take that moment and pivot your entire business and, and see where it went. So thank you for sharing that with us today.

Michelle Lomas: Thanks to Ashleigh Gardiner from My Muscle Chef for joining us on Flex your Hustle.