Vivien Wong: The 10 year journey that made Little Moons an overnight sensation

Chances are you had no idea what a mochi was five years ago. If you still don’t know, it’s a Japanese delicacy which has gone global on social media. These days, it's best known in a modern twist: frozen mochi, which wraps ice cream inside that signature chewy shell.

Brands like Little Moons deserve much of the credit for this surge in snacking popularity. Vivien Wong built the Little Moons brand around the phenomenon. But it hasn’t all been plain sailing, as she reveals to Sir Richard Harpin on the Business Leader podcast.

It was a single TikTok video that sent shoppers queuing outside Tesco at 7 am, Wong recalls. But it actually took ten years of groundwork for Little Moons to be in a position to capitalise on it, rather than be consumed by the sudden demand. In our interview, you will learn about:

• Why owning your manufacturing is a key advantage in the FMCG world
• What happened when Little Moons scaled headcount by 300% in two months
• When and how to bring in a professional CEO
• The difference between a coach and a mentor – and why you may need both

How Little Moons went from bakery to brand

Vivien Wong and her brother, Howard, grew up working in their parents' bakery, where the family made traditional mochi filled with red bean paste. It was only when the pair noticed Japanese food exploding in popularity across the UK that they spotted an opportunity to wrap the same dough around ice cream instead, a product they had first tried on their travels through Japan and America.

After qualifying as a chartered accountant and working in investment banking, Wong launched Little Moons. Two years later, Howard joined. "There was no point in us both ruining our careers”, she jokes.

Working on everything together at first was “a disaster”, so a non-executive director, Mark Escolme, who was formerly chief executive of dessert brand Gü, told them to split roles cleanly: Wong on finance and operations, Howard on marketing and sales. Escolme became a long-standing mentor, helping with practical calls like what to pay a first head of marketing.

Little Moons spent five years supplying Japanese restaurants across the UK, Europe and the Middle East through distributors, using its long frozen shelf life to keep logistics simple. Founded in 2010, it launched into retail in 2015, starting with Whole Foods after a buyer replied within 20 minutes: “You had me at mochi.” Ocado and Waitrose followed.

Little Moons was self-funded for 12 years. “We had the luxury of growing slowly,” Wong says, reinvesting everything and doing every job herself, from the accounts to emptying bins. “If you understand every process in the factory, no one can pull the wool over your eyes.”

It's never too late to do the right thing

Little Moons moved into a new, much larger factory in January 2020 but had to shut it two months later when Covid hit and half its trade (the restaurant side of the business) vanished overnight. Manufacturing had only just resumed in January 2021 when the TikTok video appeared and demand exploded.

The business could not keep up. Wong cites a line from James Clear's Atomic Habits: “You don't rise to the level of your ambition, you fall to the level of your systems.” Little Moons was running at £27m in sales with the systems of a £7m business, with no standard procedures and no HR infrastructure for the hiring that followed. Headcount grew from around 100 to 400 in a couple of months. “We couldn't let the product slip,” she says. “That's what got us through the madness.”

As growth accelerated, the business took on private equity, choosing L Catterton, a specialist consumer brands investor, after a process run by Houlihan Lokey. Part of the plan involved a second, larger factory in Kettering, which took a year to build before the business decided it was the wrong call and closed it. “We underestimated how expensive it would be to open,” Wong says.

It was chief executive Joanna Allen who made the case to stop: “She said, ‘It's never too late to do the right thing.’” Wong describes the resistance to closing Kettering as a textbook sunk cost fallacy and Little Moons instead expanded its existing factory, which now has capacity to grow for years to come.

How Vivien Wong learned to let Little Moons go

Bringing in a chief executive came down to self-awareness. “My brother and I didn't feel that we had the skills to grow a business from wherever our ambitions were, like £50m to £100m.” Many founder-led businesses end up with a chief executive who behaves more like a chief operating officer, with founders still calling the shots.

At Little Moons, Joanna Allen makes the final calls. Wong's advice to other founders is to be honest about how much control they'll give up and to check that a hire's values align with their own first. Stepping back has given Wong more time for family and a small side project, though she would never build something the way she built Little Moons again.

Vivien Wong's four lessons for leaders

Build the foundations before you build the brand. Five years supplying restaurants before approaching a grocery buyer protected margin and built supply chain knowledge that a faster launch would not have delivered.

Solve every problem once, not every day. Wong's car park story shows that fixing something properly, so it never recurs, beats quietly patching it each time.

Know your limitations and hire around them. Wong and Howard did not have the skills to take Little Moons past £100m. Founders need self-awareness about what they're good at and the humility to bring in someone better suited to the next stage.

It's never too late to do the right thing. Closing the newly built Kettering factory, after a year of construction, could have felt like admitting failure. Wong credits Joanna Allen with cutting through the sunk-cost thinking and making the call anyway.

Listen to the full conversation with Vivien Wong on the Business Leader podcast.