In this episode of Bear in Mind, Dave sits down with Max Rees, co-founder of The Curators, to discuss the brand’s journey from launching beef jerky in 2018 to building a high-protein crisp business with ambitions to scale much further.

Max shares the story behind the brand, the lessons learned from evolving their product range, and how a recent brand refresh has helped unlock growth.

The idea for The Curators started back in 2016 when Max and his co-founder Ed travelled to the US to explore emerging food trends. “We actually flew out to the US… looking at lots of trends, of which meat snacking and protein snacking was one of them,” Max explains.

At the time, they saw a gap in the UK market. While healthier snacks were gaining popularity, most focused on being lower calorie rather than offering real nutritional benefits. “We were trying to bring added nutritional benefits to the category. Consumers were starting to look for added value and better function.” Their answer was protein-packed savoury snacks made from real food, with flavour at the centre of the proposition.

From the beginning, taste was non-negotiable. “We are all about protein packed super snacks, but it’s always been about flavour first and then function.”

The brand launched in 2018 with four flavours of beef jerky. The goal was to take a category that often felt overly functional and make it more appealing through bold flavour and better product design. Many existing protein products simply didn’t excite them as consumers. “I was never eating biltong or jerky or really staying away from a lot of stuff with protein on it because the taste just wasn’t good,” Max says.

By focusing on flavour profiles like teriyaki, sweet sriracha and coffee barbecue, the founders aimed to create something that felt more like real food than sports nutrition. “Taste is everything… why would you snack on something that doesn’t taste good?”

Shortly after launching jerky and biltong, the team began expanding the range. A key moment came with the launch of pork puffs in 2019. Inspired by US products and traditional UK pork snacks, the team created a lighter, protein-rich alternative to pork scratchings. “You can still have your flavour and experience but now with a lot less guilt,” Max explains.

The product quickly became a standout success. Unlike beef snacks, which were relatively expensive and less familiar to many consumers, pork puffs delivered the same crunch and convenience as crisps. “It eats like a packet of Quavers with 20 grams of protein per pack,” Max says. That insight helped shape the long-term direction of the brand. “Puffs has become really what we’ve been known for… but it’s also led us into our longer-term clarity around being a high-protein crisp brand.”

As the product range expanded, the founders realised the brand identity hadn’t evolved at the same pace. Over time, the packaging had become inconsistent and the positioning unclear. “We could see loads of inconsistency. We were very clear we were a high protein crisp company… but the brand didn’t always show that.” To address this, the team undertook their first major brand refresh in 2024, supported by consumer research and insight.

One surprising discovery came from their audience demographics. “We probably thought we might be 70/30 male to female… but what surprised us was that we were over 65% female.” This insight reinforced the idea that The Curators were closer to the mainstream crisp category than the traditional meat snack market.

The research also highlighted a key tension in the brand’s communication: the balance between flavour, personality and function. “I remembered seeing a Venn diagram of function, flavour and brand personality. We had maybe skewed too far towards function.”

The refresh aimed to reintroduce energy and flavour into the brand while still clearly communicating its nutritional benefits. “It is the most agonising balance to strike for a founder. If you don’t tell consumers we stand for protein, why would they pay more? But if you go too far the other way, you miss the mainstream snacker.”

The results were visible quickly once the new packaging hit shelves. “We saw 40–50% rate of sale improvements pretty quickly after we went through the refresh.”

Beyond the numbers, the change also shifted perceptions of the brand. One piece of feedback from a friend of the business summed it up perfectly: “I used to think about you guys as the cool kids wearing your dad’s clothes… now it feels like the brand finally fits.”

Looking ahead, Max believes the biggest opportunity lies in bringing function into the crisp category at scale. While functional products have become common in drinks, bars and dairy, savoury snacks have been slower to evolve. “If crisps got their right share of functionality, it’s a multi-hundred million pound opportunity.”

The Curators are already seeing signs of that potential. Their products are highly incremental to the category, attracting consumers who may have previously stopped buying crisps altogether. “We’re appealing to consumers who might have exited crisps because there’s nothing nutritionally good for them.”

With a refreshed brand, new product formats and a clearer strategy, the focus now is on building awareness and scaling the business. “We’ve never done a big brand awareness campaign. Now we’ve built the foundation, we can really push that.” Despite the competitive nature of the savoury snack market, Max sees that as part of the opportunity. “Savoury snacks is a five billion category… so let’s go. Let’s make it hard. If we win, we can win big.”

Reflecting on the past eight years, Max believes one thing could have helped earlier. “I probably would have done more consumer research first,” he says, explaining that deeper insight into how mainstream the product could become might have shaped some early decisions differently.

That said, he is quick to recognise how challenging the last few years have been for food brands. “Survival is not to be underestimated. Now it’s about how we accelerate and scale because we’ve got something that’s really working.”