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Meet the entrepreneur on a mission to end plastic waste in London | Behind the Business
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Oct 7, 2024
Ride along with City A.M.'s Jennifer Sieg for our next episode of “Behind the Scenes” as she speaks with Ella Shone about Top Up Truck’s mission to end plastic waste. 🌐 www.cityam.com X(formerly Twitter): http://twitter.com/CityAM Facebook: www.facebook.com/cityam Instagram: www.instagram.com/city_am LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/cityam
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0:00
So I started top-up truck because I was finding that I wasn't making the time to get to the zero-way shop
0:10
If I'm somebody who thinks that way and who is sort of like this falling a little bit short of that gap between intention and action
0:18
then there must be other people like that. So there must be a way of making it easier for people to go package free or to kind of cut down on their packaging
0:27
So I started it when I was on furlough leave. I had been doing some volunteering for an organisation called Made in Hackney
0:33
And I had been delivering meals to people who were shielding and who couldn't get access to affordable food easily
0:42
That was a really interesting thing to do. And it was really like a bit of a lifeline for me as well to be able to socialise
0:49
and interact with people in that time where it was very, very isolated
0:57
So this is our usual route for the top of the route
1:05
And we have a mixture of as you saw their door stops there as well
1:10
And so sometimes dropping off an order that's been done online, sometimes picking up containers
1:15
and doing it at the door. But then we have four main stops where people will come to us from the surrounding area as well
1:22
Originally just in the behind the scenes that the suppliers end and then took on the Monday
1:27
driving as well. Oh somebody in my usual space If you were looking back at Ella Shone of 2021
1:48
what would you have said to her to keep going? I think if you've got an idea and you're passionate about changing the world
1:55
then you should harness that passion and that energy and do something with it
2:01
It does feel when you're doing something like this that you're kind of fighting against the current
2:05
because there's so many reasons that make it economically and operationally challenging to do something
2:16
that is genuinely having a positive impact. Don't let that put you off
2:21
We need people who are passionate getting ideas off the ground. That's one of the biggest, like, common themes that I've been hearing from a lot of entrepreneurs
2:29
is, you know, getting that confidence rolling. Anything can happen. Anything can be something sitting there thinking about making change in a community
2:38
I thought the community was the most important aspect and that's what people loved about it the most
2:41
And what we found was that people were not interested in the community aspects of it at all
2:48
Didn't really want to interact with their neighbours either. So, um... people want convenience to kind of pour up their stuff and refill without plastic
3:03
But what does that demographic look like? Is it 23-year-olds? Is it 25-year-olds
3:08
No, it's quite mixed. Generally clustered around the sort of 35 to 55 in terms of age Parents tend to be in a routine whereas people in their kind of like 20s and an early 30s
3:23
a lot of people have unpredictable patterns and find it harder to kind of get into the rhythm
3:29
The thing about top of trucker is it's about having like a routine
3:34
and I suppose sort of sticking to it for the most part because it's only going to be near you every week or every fortnight
3:40
It's about planning around that. A lot of our customers are parents because parents cook from home a lot
3:45
Well, also are worried about their children's future. There's a little bit of, I think, maybe a bit of eco anxiety amongst parents
3:57
When you think of like a day in the life of an entrepreneur, there's so many different things that kind of come up that you're not expecting
4:05
And it's only you that gets to tackle that. It's only you that has to kind of think through it and what next
4:09
and then how has that now affected the rest of my day's schedule and how am I going to fix that
4:14
And it's kind of impressive to say the least. Yeah, you definitely get used to doing all sorts of varied things for like raising money or kind of doing marketing or driving the truck or whatever
4:27
But yeah, it's that go, go, go feeling that you get addicted to. Like you can't sit still
4:31
What I've learned from doing this as well is it's almost like you've got like a kicking, screaming baby that you've got that's now alive and there's, there's customers
4:39
that are expecting you and you've got people who are dependent on you
4:43
Did all of that, I suppose, before having a business plan. One of my key learnings and what I would advise other people to do is is actually like spend that time to actually have a plan and work out like what kind of resource you need in order to be able to do that Because it very very hard I suppose once you
5:02
like launch into something to be able to take, to find those pockets of time to be able to do
5:07
that reflecting. And I guess that's been one of my key learnings. Well, if you think about it
5:11
you don't have a nine to five anymore. You have a 24-7. Like, it's always going. And I think a lot of
5:16
people maybe a bit smarter, they'll sort of have a plan, raise funding in order to resource
5:23
that plan, and then it makes their life a little bit easier than sort of like this hecticness
5:29
of bootstrapping and figuring things out as you go along. Yeah, I guess that happens too sometimes
5:34
when it comes organically from some passion that you've had or yeah, like the idea from the living
5:40
room of your own house, like you just go into it and it doesn't always, yeah, you don't, not everybody
5:44
gets that planning state. And you my brother, he's. started so many businesses in the past five years. We always talk about it like it's like adult
5:50
Legos. Like you're building towards one thing and then if it all comes crashing down like you still
5:54
have that like regular build that you're used to doing it and sometimes you'll step on it and it'll
5:58
hurt but you keep building up. When you're building a business, honing a skill set of like how to build a
6:03
business, how to grow a business, how to market a business. For the last three years I've just like really
6:09
had a crash course in like how to start and run a business. Do you know what I mean? And so then it's
6:16
you know, if for whatever reason I went to do something else, I feel like that skill set would be best geared towards starting another business
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