Hey {{first_name}} ,
This week we sat down with Yasmin Kira, founder of Sirop, the single forest maple syrup brand sourcing directly from small-scale farms in Quebec and how Sirop plans to take maple syrup well beyond just pancakes with listings in Ottolenghi and retail on the way.
Elsewhere, Holie's is calling on Big Cereal to ditch added sugar, CHANCE Clean Cider has landed its first retail listing with M&S, and Northern Pasta Co. just walked out of the Dragons' Den with £50k
Let's get into it 👇
📱 From the Feed
What we posted on our socials last week
🍝 Northern Pasta Co. just raised £50k on Dragons' Den: Deborah Meaden and Peter Jones backed the British spelt pasta brand for 10% of the business. Founders Matt Kenyon and Imogen Royall, a former builder and an interior designer, came up with the idea while living on an island in Croatia, then started making pasta in the evenings after moving back to the UK. Everything is made from regeneratively grown British spelt at their solar powered HQ in Cumbria with zero plastic packaging. What started on a farmers' market stall is now in Ocado, Booths, Waitrose, Whole Foods and 200+ independents, with £1m in sales in sight.
👀 Last week's issue: 5 brands that caught our eye at Lunch!: Instead of a the 5 minutes with, we shared five brands from our visit to Lunch! at ExCeL. Alter Ego Cottage Cheese for its meal deal friendly topped pots, Dot Dot Bubble Tea for a low sugar RTD that's ready to jump from on trade into major retail, Mojo Maté for bringing sparkling yerba maté closer to the mainstream after landing in Whole Foods, Drooly for proving there's still room for indulgence, and Freja Bone Broth for doubling down on ambient with its new soup.
👀 ICYMI: Brand Moves
Things you might’ve missed last week
🥣 Holie's tells Big Cereal to wake up: The Dutch challenger, #2 cereal brand in the Netherlands and Belgium, has launched Wake Up, Big Cereal, calling on the major manufacturers to remove added sugar from their entire ranges, and is even sharing its own recipe with the competition. It's rolling out across Amsterdam, Brussels and London with social collabs, activations, a taxi wrap and OOH. Co-founder Valentijn van Santvoort: "Less sugar should be the standard, not the alternative." The brand is now at a £1m UK run rate, up 300% year on year, and since its Morrisons listing is driving more than 38% of category growth.
🍏 Alcohol-free is on the rise at M&S: M&S keeps building out its low and no range, with two challengers landing on shelf. Botivo is rolling out big, with its bottles going into 549 M&S stores and its cans into 344. Meanwhile CHANCE Clean Cider, the UK's first dedicated non-alcoholic cider, has landed its first ever retail listing: 250 stores at £2.25 per bottle. Founded by John Logue (ex Lucky Saint and CROSSIP), CHANCE wants to do for cider what Lucky Saint did for beer. As Logue puts it: "Typically we have seen alcohol-free beers and spirits dominate the shelves, but cider hasn't really had its moment."
🍗 La Vie launches "Tofu that thinks it's chicken": Best known for plant-based pork, La Vie is moving into natural protein with Tofu Pan Fry Teriyaki and Tofu Nuggets, now in Tesco and Ocado. The pitch is simple: people already know what to do with chicken, so put tofu into those same occasions, ready in seven minutes. Co-founder Nicolas Schweitzer: "We want to challenge what people think tofu can be." Every pack also comes with a collectable flat-pack cardboard animal.
🧽 Seep wants to make cleaning feel good: With 44% of Brits hating cleaning, Seep is on a mission to convince the UK that cleaning up can actually feel good. The brand has had mobile billboards driving around London and a competition getting customers to dance with Seep and post it online for a chance to win three months' supply.
🧊 STOCKED lands in Sainsbury's as frozen gets a rethink: The frozen meal brand is launching four of its best sellers into 121 Sainsbury's stores from today, its biggest retail listing yet and its clearest move from subscription into mainstream grocery. Its "Block" format lets shoppers cook exactly the portion they need, cutting food waste in a category that's long been stuck on single serve ready meals. With 4 million+ meals sold, 25,000 subscribers and seven Great Taste Awards, co-founder Charlie Gilpin says they're "pleased to see our range shine in a part of the aisle that has not changed much in a long time." Frozen is quietly becoming one of the more interesting places for challengers to play.
💬 5 Minutes With:
Weekly interview series
Yasmin Kira, Founder @ Sirop
Maple syrup is a cupboard staple most of us rarely think about beyond pancake day, but that's changing. It's turning up in cookbooks, coffee, cocktails and even energy gels as UK shoppers look for alternative sugars with a real story.
Sirop is leading that wave. Its single forest syrup, sourced directly from growers in Quebec, caught Selfridges' attention on launch day, is now in Ottolenghi's delis, and heads into retail in October. All from a team of one, started alongside a full time job.
We caught up with Yasmin to talk versatility, building a brand around an ingredient, and why maple syrup is about to have its moment.
What is Sirop, and what made you go from tasting real maple syrup in Quebec to building a brand around it?
“Sirop is a single forest maple syrup, sourced directly from small-scale farms in Quebec.
My partner is French Canadian and I've spent the past couple of years travelling to Quebec. I was fascinated by this liquid that people seemed to be pouring on top of everything: scrambled eggs in the morning, salad dressings, sauces, meat glazes, while coffee shops didn't have any other sweeteners available. Driving through the region too, so much of the landscape is dominated by sugar maple trees, and this terroir bleeds into every part of the culture - in the same way you'd drive through Greece or Puglia and notice the rows of olive trees and understand why olive oil's meaning goes beyond just a culinary one, but a cultural one too.
So it became a subject of fascination for me; not only the usage in cooking, but also its cultural meaning. Many Quebecois have a connection to a cabane à sucre; they go and eat there during the harvest season (many have cafes), they live on land with sugar maples and can personally make syrup for their family.
Back in the UK, I noticed more and more the inclusion of maple syrup in modern cookbooks - from people like Helen Graham, Ixta Belfrage and Yotam Ottolenghi - alongside a growing demand for alternative sugars in cooking, hot drinks and cocktails. Yet every bottle of maple syrup seemed to fall short: the flavour was artificial and flat, due to over processing. The rich, complex syrup I had come to love was nowhere to be found.
Sirop was born from a desire to bridge that gap; to bring real, single-forest maple syrup to the UK, with all the nuance, craft and authenticity that make it a cornerstone of Québec's culinary culture.”
Maple syrup is more versatile than people think, with brands like SAP now using it in energy gels, so where else do you see it being used in the UK beyond pancakes?
“Maple syrup hasn't had its moment yet, and that's an exciting thing. Sirop's mission is to get maple syrup beyond the breakfast table. This is not only a culinary education piece - convincing people that it has a place in everyday cooking - but also a product education piece as people in the UK aren;t familiar with the differences between maple syrup and golden syrup.
As much as we see the potential for it in realms far beyond pancakes - salad dressings, sauces, on ice cream, coffee, cocktails - talking to our customers is a great way to shape how we talk about everyday uses. The vast majority of people put it on yoghurt or porridge in the morning.
We love how Citizens of Soil have done this - they've really changed the way that olive oil is seen as something to dip bread into, and talk about a world far beyond that.”
Maple syrup is known as an ingredient, so how do you build a brand people remember when it's often just one part of what they're making?
“Graza did it, why can't we!
It's all about building buzz and building noise. We're able to do that via organic content absolutely - but partnerships are massive for us. Joining forces with loved brands like Jones Crumpets, SPILL tea, Two Fields olive oil. But also building community through in person events and activations is unmatched. Last Autumn we worked with Layla bakery in Notting Hill on a maple syrup tart for Thanksgiving - the whole batch sold out within hours. We've got quite a few events lined up over the next few months and we love doing markets especially around Christmas - they're a great way to connect with our customers. We're a very new brand, we're still finding out who our customer is - but we know what sort of brands and communities we want to be joining.
It's also about who backs it: being stocked at a place like Ottolenghi gives us a credibility that goes far beyond what a barker or an ad could do. We're lucky that chefs and home cooks have immediately been hooked by the product - people like Ben Lippett, Helen Graham - and that puts it in a different league for customers.
Being memorable is a massive part of our mission. We know that we have to cut through the noise and the plethora of challenger start ups.”
Why is sourcing from a single forest so important to Sirop, and what does your supply chain look like from Quebec to the UK? (200 words)
“Sourcing is absolutely a point of distinction for us. We are vehemently single origin - the words single forest are the most important on the front of our tins - and this is super important to the product.
We work directly with growers themselves in Quebec and completely cut out the middle men. The syrup comes direct to us from the groves.
Our ethos is something we won’t ever compromise on. Every tin is from one harvest year and one forest/érablière (maple grove). The syrup is not kept in fridges in big barrels for several years, and not mixing between sources allows you to retain that complexity of flavour. We’ve imported the language of wine and olive oil to talk about maple syrup - and we think it deserves a seat at this table.
Before Sirop, I worked at Natoora, on regenerative farms and for brands that followed a similar ethos - so I have to champion this with Sirop.”
How do you convince shoppers used to supermarket staples to trade up, and what does the future look like for Sirop?
“Education is a massive part: telling people how to cook with it. So is the cultural story; understanding maple syrup's place in Quebec. The story of its production is a huge knowledge gap - I still get asked by some people if I make it at home - and
It's about building the story for shoppers. That's how you prove the value and convert them. Recipe content, showing its place in everyday cooking - it's about building ritual. If people are used to adding hazelnut syrup to their matcha every morning, we show them how easy the switch is - so that habit is never a blocker. Beyond that, there is so much richness in talking to people about the cultural history, maple syrup's place in Quebec, and the sourcing story also justifies the price and brings value as people more and more want direct knowledge of where their food comes from. Being traceable and transparent has a premium and we are able to provide that.
I've been completely overwhelmed by the response. I'm a team of one and I started Sirop alongside a full time job never with the expectation that the demand would be so great so early on. We got approached by Selfridges on day one of launching the brand, and secured a listing a few months later. We were approached by Ottolenghi earlier this year to be part of the cookbook hamper for Simple Too, and we'll be stocked in all their delis in September. We're now gearing up for a retail launch in October. Alongside this, we have an incredible list of local delis, bakeries and cafés we're stocked in around the UK, as well as on our own website (sirop.co.uk). It's been an incredible journey so far and I feel very lucky to have an incredible set of people to constantly badger for advice. Maple syrup is about to have its moment and we are absolutely at the forefront of that wave.”
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‘Til next week
