CRISP. caught up with Gracie and Sophie Tyrrell, two halves of the successful healthy snack brand, Squirrel Sisters.
So for our readers who are unaware of Squirrel Sisters, please tell us more about who you are?
We are two sisters Gracie & Sophie Tyrrell that started our brand in our family kitchen.
Squirrel Sisters is a health and wellness company with a range of multi award-winning snacks that can be found across the nation in over 2000 stores including Waitrose, Holland and Barrett, Selfridges, Whole Foods, BP (petrol stations), Ocado, Amazon, Harvey Nichols and many more.
We launched as a blog in 2014. Our blog gained a following quickly; People connected with our mission and the fact that we are two normal girls with a busy lifestyles that want to enjoy life while feeling great.
With a growing following we saw an opportunity to turn our blog into a business so after much planning and preparation launched our snack bars in November 2015, which we already had the recipes for.
The recipes were developed by Gracie when we lived together after university in Balham. Gracie used to make them for Sophie because she has a gluten-intolerance and at the time there wasn’t really anything available that was gluten-free, refined sugar free and delicious. Anything gluten-free that did taste good tended to be full of sugar and additives. So Gracie made the bars for Sophie so she could enjoy a delicious snack that tasted like an indulgent treat with the bonus of health benefits.
We wanted our products to be healthy but most importantly tasty! Taste was key to everything we created. We wanted to help people treat their health; we didn’t want people to feel restricted by being healthy or feel like they were missing out, we wanted them to love what they were eating and enjoy the experience. We wanted to make healthy eating convenient, fun and most importantly delicious.
We are one of the only snacking brands in the UK that does not add any syrups, sugars or sugar alternatives to their products which is why we have been certified by Sugarwise, an international certification authority for sugar claims on food and drink. Our products are also naturally plant-based, gluten-free and a source of protein and fibre.
We are also published authors. We published a recipe book Naturally Delicious Snacks and Treats, which was named the Independents best healthy cookbooks in 2019 and 2020.
How did you come up with that name?
It was our childhood nickname because our surname is Tyrrell and it rhymes with Squirrel. Both our friendship groups always called us Squirrel (and Sisters because we are sisters!) so when we were coming up with a brand name we thought it was perfect because squirrels love nuts and snacking.
What did you both do before and how did you get into the snack bar game?
Before Squirrel Sisters Sophie was working as a business development director in a Singapore-based agency. Gaining experience in market research, branding and design agencies across Europe and Asia.
Gracie is a professionally trained actress and has worked in the UK and America with experience across adverts, film and theatre. Gracie also worked on the production side of TV both in Europe and the US
What is your mission?
Our mission is to revolutionise the snacking and confectionary category with our multi award-winning snacks. For far too long snack bars and confectionary products have been filled with sugars, syrups and artificial sweeteners but we believe it’s possible to have great tasting snacks, which do not contain any of these things. We believe you can have great tasting healthy snacks that use only natural ingredients. This is our commitment to our consumer.
What differentiates you from similar snacks in the market today?
We are the only snacking brand which does not add any sugars, syrups or sugar alternatives to any of our products.
We have won multiple awards for our range including great taste awards, free from awards and the Women’s Health food award best snack.
We are two young women who turned a passion into a business without any help or funding.
We have a genuine story and have always stayed true to our values, which means we can be trusted by the consumer.
How has the health and wellness market changed since you began?
When we started our blog the word ‘health’ still had a bit of a stigma attached to it. It wasn’t ‘cool’ to eat well and the healthy snack options were pretty awful and tasteless. That’s why we started SS, because we wanted to get rid of the stigma attached to health and prove that healthy could be fun and taste delicious.
Now the health and wellness market is huge, there are so many products available and it’s one of the biggest growth categories. However, there are a lot of brands that have jumped on this and they are marketing their products as ‘healthy’ when really they aren’t.
Always check the ingredients, you will be shocked at how many brands ‘healthy’ products are full of terrible ingredients.
Describe a typical day at Squirrel HQ and the culture of your company?
We both work from home now. Sophie recently had a baby, Lola so we decided to give up our office as it was such a huge outgoing.
It was great having an office but we also love working from home and find it helps with productivity. It has also made us incredibly lean as a business. Every day is different for us because we are still a team of just 2 so we do everything ourselves (and we mean everything).
Some days will be spent on our laptops from 7am-10pm just replying to emails and other days will be spent working on NPD (new product development), having meetings with suppliers, visiting our retailers, hours spent going through the cash flow…
What’s the most important lesson you’ve learnt about starting your own business?
Running a business is hard and there will always be ups and downs but if it was easy then everyone would do it. One of the biggest lessons we’ve learnt would be to trust our gut.
Early on there were times when we didn’t listen to our gut feeling and that ended up putting us in a tricky situation so now when we have a bad gut feeling we always listen and trust our instinct.
You’re in over 2000 stores in the UK, describe your experience of getting into the first one?
It took a lot of persistence. The first retailer we approached was Whole Foods, we emailed several times, reached out on Linkedin and never heard back, understandably as they get about 100 emails a day from new brands. We had to do something to stand out so we found our buyers personal account on social media (probably wouldn’t advise this as not all buyers would appreciate it) but we reached out and sent lots of funny squirrel photos and he replied.
What are your best selling products and what ones are your personal favourites?
Our best selling flavour is our Cacao Brownie but we recently launched a new flavour Peanut Caramel and it’s doing amazingly well. People love the fact our snacks taste like a treat but are genuinely good for you too.
What’s next for Squirrel Sisters?
We are already available in over 2000 stores across the UK including Waitrose, Holland & Barrett, Whole Foods, Ocado, Selfridges, Harvey Nichols, BP (Petrol stations) and hundreds of independents deli’s, cafes and supermarkets. We have done everything ourselves as a team of just 2 women and we are very proud of our achievements. However, we want Squirrel Sisters to be known globally for it’s delicious and nutritious snacks and to do this without investment and help is almost impossible so we will soon be announcing something very exciting about how we will be expanding.
And finally, would you be interested in making a limited edition run of CRISP. Bars? We’ll help you do all of the tasting we promise!
Yes haha, we could definitely look at making a limited snack bar for you 🙂
