From kitchen remedy to retail shelves: what scaling really looks like

Scaling is often spoken about as a milestone—something businesses reach once they’ve proven demand. In reality, it’s less of a moment and more of a test. It reveals whether a business has been built with the foundations to grow, or whether it was only ever set up to get started.

When we created what would become The Turmeric Co., it wasn’t with scale in mind. It was a solution—something my father and I developed during a period when I was recovering from injury and facing the possibility that my football career might not return to where it once was. There was no supply chain, no commercial model, and no real sense of how it might translate into a product. There was simply something that worked.

The question of scaling only came later, and like many founders, our first instinct was to look for a manufacturing partner. On paper, it seemed like the logical next step. In practice, it quickly became clear that the product didn’t fit neatly into existing systems. We were told it was too fresh, too difficult to process, and ultimately too complex to scale.

That experience highlighted something that doesn’t get discussed enough: most systems are built for efficiency and convenience, not for preserving quality. When a product falls outside of those parameters, the default response is not to adapt the system, but to change the product.

And that’s where many businesses make their first real compromise.

It’s rarely framed that way, of course. Adjustments are positioned as necessary for growth—small changes to make manufacturing viable or to meet commercial realities. But over time, those changes can distance a product from what made it valuable in the first place.

We were faced with that exact decision early on. Either reshape the product to fit existing infrastructure, or build the capability to support it properly. We chose the latter, even though it was the more complex and capital-intensive route.

What became clear very quickly is that scaling is not driven by demand alone—it is driven by capability. Interest from customers, or even from retailers, means very little if you cannot consistently deliver at the required standard and volume. Without that operational foundation, growth doesn’t create momentum; it creates pressure.

Building our own manufacturing capability meant solving problems that didn’t come with ready-made answers. We had to learn how to handle raw turmeric at scale, how to preserve its nutritional integrity, and how to ensure consistency across batches—all while meeting stringent food safety standards. At the same time, we were building a commercial business, which meant balancing long-term investment with short-term viability.

It wasn’t the most efficient path, particularly in the early stages. It required committing resources before there was full certainty of return, and it meant moving more deliberately in a market that often rewards speed. But it also gave us something that would prove critical later on: control.

Owning the manufacturing process has allowed us to protect the quality of the product, while also giving us the flexibility to innovate and respond to demand as the business has grown. That control is ultimately what enabled us to move into major retail, including Sainsbury’s, without fundamentally changing what we had built.

From the outside, entering retail can appear to be the defining moment in a company’s growth. In reality, it is more of a validation of everything that comes before it. Retail doesn’t reward potential—it rewards consistency. Buyers need to know that you can deliver reliably, at scale, without compromising on quality. Without that, even the strongest initial launch is difficult to sustain.

Looking back, one of the biggest misconceptions about scaling is that it’s about doing more, faster. In practice, it’s about becoming capable of more, often before it feels comfortable to do so. That can mean investing earlier than expected, building infrastructure that doesn’t yet exist, and solving challenges that others might choose to work around.

For us, the defining decision was choosing not to adapt the product to fit the system, but to build a system that could support the product. It wasn’t the simplest route, but it was the one that allowed us to scale without losing what made the business valuable in the first place.

And ultimately, that’s what sustainable growth demands.

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