How Humble Crumble turned nostalgia into growth
Founder Kim Innes shares how customer feedback, viral moments and a simple love of crumble helped turn it into a profitable London success story
Kim Innes, the founder of the dessert brand Humble Crumble, recounts her extraordinary business journey to Sir Richard Harpin. It begins with tough shifts at a vendor's stall in Spitalfields Market in east London and ends with a chain of successful shops devoted to her product, the fruit crumble pudding.
She didn't get it right at first in the market stall, she explains. She was too fixated on exotic flavours and hadn't yet started to cook live on site, creating those appetising aromas. She also had to learn, as a small brand, how to leverage social media through a series of posts that went viral.
These cooked up huge demand and people began to seek her out, including the Royal Family. Though looking back, she thinks she could have approached it in a smarter way. She also shares with Harpin her plans for the future, which include a possible move into retail environments like supermarkets.
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