Meet the Farm491 member – Grown Grub

Read our five-minute Q&A with Farm491 member Joe Osborne, founder of Grown Grub, to find out more about his business and his experience as a Farm491 virtual member. 

Tell us about Grown Grub.

Grown Grub is a clean, wholefood nutrition brand producing oat pots – a premium breakfast designed for busy working professionals. Each 90g pot contains 22g of protein, 10g of collagen and 5g of fibre. Every ingredient is purposeful with no artificial additives.

We also donate 5p from every pot sold to independent food banks across the UK, which is close to my heart both personally and through the 3,000-mile run I am undertaking, visiting every county in the UK to raise money and awareness of Food Banks and food insecurity.

Tell us about yourself.

I am an 18-year-old entrepreneur who started my first business at 17. My passion for clean, functional food comes from a very personal place. My father was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes, but by making significant changes to his diet he successfully reversed the condition. That experience showed me first-hand how powerful food can be as medicine, and it became the driving force behind Grown Grub.

I am going to be studying Agribusiness at the Royal Agricultural University, which means I am fortunate enough to be building a food business whilst gaining the academic knowledge to underpin it.

I am also undertaking a 3,000-mile run visiting every county in the UK to raise money for independent food banks, a challenge that directly inspired Grown Grub’s charity model.

What were your biggest achievements of the last year?

Starting and running my first business from scratch at the age of 17 was my biggest achievement. Although that business taught me more through its challenges than its successes, I learned invaluable lessons about customer acquisition, marketing, pricing and product-market fit that have directly shaped how I am building Grown Grub. Pivoting from that experience into a completely new, more focused and better-positioned product is something I am genuinely proud of.

What were your biggest challenges of the last year?

The biggest challenge was learning the hard way that influencer marketing and paid social advertising do not deliver the return on investment they promise for an early-stage food brand. We invested time and money into those channels with the previous business model and the customer acquisition costs were simply too high to be viable. That was a painful but important lesson. It forced me to rethink the entire go-to-market approach and ultimately led me to the new strategy that Grown Grub is now built around a model that is more capital-efficient, predictable and better suited.

What does working with Farm491 as a virtual member bring to Grown Grub?

Farm491 has been transformational for Grown Grub in a very short space of time. The access to world-class mentorship has given me direct insight into exactly the kind of business I am trying to build. The Farm491 network also provides credibility that would otherwise take years to earn independently. As an 18-year-old founder, being able to say that Grown Grub is part of the Farm491 community and the Royal Agricultural University ecosystem opens doors that would otherwise be closed. The programme has helped me sharpen my strategy, stress-test my assumptions and approach investors and corporate clients with genuine confidence.

To get in touch with Joe, visit the Grown Grub Instagram profile here.