Friends Ella Harland and Sophie McGregor launched Griddle, their frozen bakery startup, in 2019. Its waffles are now sold in Tesco, Asda and Amazon. Here they discuss how they built a heavyweight board.

“Given 99.3% of UK households purchase frozen food, it’s no surprise that it’s the fastest growing sector in retail. Our frozen bakery products are freshly baked, using only kitchen cupboard ingredients.  

But when we launched, our first instinct wasn’t to build out a board. To be honest, I don’t think we knew what a board was. We were in the kitchen juggling waffle batter, logistics, and a whole lot of supermarket meetings. But as we started scaling and especially after securing major listings in Tesco, Asda, Ocado and Amazon Fresh, we realised that we needed the right people around us to help us scale.

As two founders still in the trenches, we didn’t want a passive board who we spoke to once a month to review performance. We wanted people who had been there, done it, but still had the appetite to roll up their sleeves. 

Off the back of our most recent £500,000 fundraise, we did just that, welcoming industry heavyweights into the Griddle team. David Wagstaff, former CEO of St Pierre Bakery (acquired in 2022 by Grupo Bimbo), and Megan Harrison, a brand-savvy marketer with experience at Warburtons and Roberts Bakery.

They’ve challenged us, championed us, and helped us think bigger about what Griddle could be. How did we convince them to join us? We laid out our ambition, showed them the traction we’d built with a lean team and a lot of grit, and were transparent about the experience and skillsets we have between us as founders – but also where we were lacking and needed some help and guidance. 

We committed that Griddle was going to change the way people see frozen bakery and asked them to help us bring this category into the mainstream.”

Read more about Griddle via their website and read more of our scaleup stories here.

Ella Harland and Sophie McGregor, founder of Griddle