Sir Richard Branson gets Not Dogged with the Ultimate #SausageSelfie & Happy Birthday to Us!

Last week we were invited by the lovely team at Virgin StartUp to watch the live finale of Pitch to Rich – a campaign by Virgin Media to award three businesses an amazing package of business support. Nine finalists pitched live to Sir Richard Branson and his judging panel which this year consisted of the inspirational; Jo Malone MBE, Supermodel turned business investor; David Gandy, Vegetarian CEO of the hugely successful Shutterstock; Jon Oringer and founder of Mumsnet; Justine Roberts.

Last year Not Dogs made the live final of Virgin’s Foodpreneur competition which saw us cook live in front of the judges, including Richard Branson so we really felt the nerves of the final few! Last year as the judging panel took Q&As and as we sat furiously scribbling notes on the front row, Richard gave the valuable advice that you should never be afraid to make a fool of yourself to get your brand noticed. Following that, he directed a question at me (Katie) and asked outright what we’d been doing to make fools of ourselves for Not Dogs in the past year. 

By September 2014, just three months since our first event, there was a growing list of things I could mention! We’d named vegetarian hotdogs after ourselves, decorated a food truck in bright purple zig zags and driven it into Middleton Hall (as in physically into the wall of the hall!), only narrowly missing the lake. We had been so busy organising the delivery of 1,500 hotdogs to Coventry, that we’d forgotten where we were going to store them – a shout out here to Bob the freezer man who kindly let us borrow all the freezers in his shop last summer! We’d even bought (wait for this) purple and orange slippers each as a crazy IKEA purchase (this should not have been a priority) and, this one is Jane's favourite - I once pushed the trailer so hard I fell down face first in chicken poo. It was safe to say we left our pride at the door of our little food truck as we embarked on our Not Dogs journey!

Apart from these happenings, we hadn’t actually chosen to go out of our comfort zone to truly make a fool of ourselves and at the prospect of bumping into Sir Richard himself again at another Virgin event, we thought maybe we’d take him up on his advice. We decided we were going to make a fool of ourselves to get our brand noticed with the aim of getting the ultimate #sausageselfie to celebrate our 1st Birthday!

Yep... it took every piece of confidence we had but we dressed up as walking Not Dogs making people laugh all the way from Euston Station to the event in Shoreditch and taking lots of Sausage Selfies with all kinds of people! Our first was Paul O'Grady after Jane spotted him at the station!

The Pitch to Rich event was fantastic and we heard from some great businesses and entrepreneurs. We, as ever, were inspired by Jo Malone who spoke very poignantly about being relentless as an entrepreneur, every single time you want to quit, keep going, because tomorrow the whole landscape can change in just a day – so very true. 

We really enjoyed speaking to vegetarian Jon Oringer who's creation Shutterstock has been going from strength-to-strength since 2003. More standout advice came from stylish investor David Gandy who said when pitching, many investors want to know about the people behind the business and the human elements of the brand rather than simply the figures - something Jane and I have been building within the Not Dogs brand.

Of course Richard wasn’t going anywhere until we’d captured the ultimate #sausageselfie – a lifetime goal for both of us!

This week marked the 1st birthday of Not Dogs… wow what a year. We've grown quicker than we could have ever dreamed of, met some very inspirational people and are building a brand we are so proud of. We can’t tell you how exciting the journey has been so far and how thankful we are to our customers who support us from all over the UK. We couldn’t and wouldn’t be doing this without you all!

We've very excited to be continuing our second summer tour this weekend with our return to Godiva Festival in Coventry, followed by Lovebox and Citadel in London. We hope to meet many more of you over the summer - you can view the full line up at www.notdogs.co.uk

Keep up to date with us on Twitter, Instagram & Facebook too!

Here's to a successful year two with tonnes more #sausageselfie photos... Wonder who

can beat the ultimate one with Sir Branson!?

Eat. Sleep. Not Dogs

Katie & Jane x

Not Dogs is… London bound!

After a fantastic time at the DEFRA Food Stars event at Downing Street last week we are beyond excited to announce that we will be opening our very first pop-up shop in London SE1 from Tuesday 10 March!

On a windy day in Oxford last year we were approached by the team at The Moveable Feast and invited to join their new veggie food emporium located in London SE1. Fearlessly, we said Yes!

We can’t wait to welcome festival-going Not Dog regulars as well as new customers to our first pop-up venture and serve up our tasty NotDog creations as well as try out some exciting new ideas too!

Our bestsellers will take pride of place in the window and the menu will include our favourite ‘Meaty Dogs without the Meat’ including the Plain Jane, Kickin’ Katie Nacho Dog, The Original Frank, Cha-Cha Chilli Dog & many more tantalising delights that will amaze and excite our customers every day!

Initially we'll be open from Monday-Saturday at:

The Moveable Feast

2, 21/27 St Thomas Street

London

SE1 9RY

Check out our social media channels for all the details and opening times and we’ll see you there very soon for a #SausageSelfie!

We’ll be recruiting for people to join our Not Dogs team in London soon, to register your interest send us an email at smile@katieandjane.com

We have lots of festivals to embark on in our little purple food truck this year too, so don’t worry if London is too far a stretch for a Not Dog, we’ll hopefully catch you in a sunny festival field from June onwards.

We do want to say a huge thank you to the Secretary of State for DEFRA Elizabeth Truss & her team for the Government's 'Food Stars' initiative and reception at Downing Street last week. We had a truly brilliant day and met and heard from a host of inspirational, motivational and well-connected influencers and press within the food industry. With their feedback on Not Dogs and DEFRA’S support for 2015 we are confident in embracing our next phase of growth…watch this space! (eek!)

Eat. Sleep. Not Dogs

Katie x

Not Dogs Receives a Very Exciting Invitation from the Government!

We are thrilled that we have been invited by the Secretary of State for DEFRA (Department of Environment, Food & Rural Affairs) Elizabeth Truss to be named as a UK Food Star in recognition that Not Dogs is an 'exceptional, innovative break-through business that is forging an exciting future in food and drink'!

We couldn't be more shocked or excited at the thought of how well-received Not Dogs has been since we took our 'Meaty Dogs Without the Meat' to our first event at the end of June 2014... so much has happened since then!

We will first attend a prestigious event in London where we will be able to showcase a few of our favourites such as The Original Frank, Kickin’ Katie Nacho Dog and of course the Plain Jane to lots of inspirational industry insiders before collaborating on lots of exciting projects with DEFRA in 2015 which are yet to be announced!

We’d like to say a huge thank you to every single person who has helped us to get this far, it’s been a huge learning curve and we couldn’t have done it without the amazing support from people we know, people we were yet to meet and of course our growing community of customers and social media fans!

Keep in touch with us on Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest and we’ll be updating everyone very soon on the events and projects we have lined up for Not Dogs for the rest of the year.

Eat. Sleep. Not Dogs

Katie & Jane

Not Dogs at Oxford Christmas Market

We're very excited to be embarking on our very first Christmas adventure with Not Dogs in December... the Oxford Christmas Market, where we will recreate our little purple truck within a traditional German chalet adorned with purple and orange decorations of course!

We'll be there between the 11th and the 21st of December staying open for the duration of Oxford's magical market. Our Christmas recipes are now perfected with three new additions; the Cha-Cha Chili Dog, Santa’s Stilton Surprise and Beau the Banana Brioche Dog, along with our usual tasty favourites; The Plain Jane and The Original Frank. Eating so many Not Dogs can leave you a little thirsty so we’ve also added a special 'Cranberry and Apple Christmas Concoction' to our Winter menu; a very tasty alcohol-free tipple!

To celebrate us being at our first Christmas market we wanted to give our social media fans an early Christmas present with the opportunity to win free Not Dogs for life! Find out all the details here or on our Twitter and Instagram channels.

Read our full Winter menu here - we'd love to hear what you think!

A Stylist Celebration!

We're very proud to be featured not once but twice in this week's edition of the fantastic Stylist magazine.

Firstly Not Dogs is featured in the article '23 Courses to Make You Rich' in the magazine's 'In the Money' section where they focus on the next big industries and the skills to learn to help you launch a new business. Looks like we're onto a winner with Not Dogs as Stylist's research with Mintel show that 'the rising demand for healthy fast-food will spur the growth of gourmet food trucks' although we wouldn't call us 'gourmet' by any means - our food is just something we, and thankfully many other people, enjoy!

Secondly, I get to gush about my amazing co-founder Katie as she's made it through to the final 25 of the 'top ambitious, strong and adventurous women' in Stylist and Nivea's #bringiton30 competition. As it states these inspirational 25 women are forging their own paths in life and business from creating charities to travelling the world they are all very worthy candidates but, being biased, I'm voting for Katie of course and would love you to do the same!

Katie's piece talks about how Not Dogs was created, the passion we have for our business and how we want to disrupt the world of vegetarian food in a positive way. But, as an extra encouragement for you to vote, Katie is not only a fantastic business women but a supportive, funny and amazing individual too and I'm very happy to be able to call her my friend and co-founder!

Vote for Katie here: http://www.stylist.co.uk/home/microsite2/nivea

And you can pick up a free copy of Stylist magazine featuring us this week.

Thanks!

Jane x

As The Not Dogs Summer Tour ends... A Look to the Future!

As our Not Dogs Summer tour comes to an end, we thought we'd put together a round up of our journey so far! To give you an idea of just how much of a whirlwind adventure we've had... by the turn of this year, 'veggie hot dog truck' was just an idea on a list of other crazy ideas, by March we had secured Quorn as a supplier and by June we were on the road embarking on a summer of fun taking Not Dogs to the masses at festivals all over the UK!

After visiting five festivals, we ended our summer of festival fun at Festival No 6 in the beautiful setting of Portmeirion in Wales. The people, place and music made it one of our best festivals so far - again with so much amazing and exciting feedback from festival-goers, both veggie and meat-eaters! We spent nearly every moment we were there in our little purple home, so we didn't see any of the acts - but we were very close to the main stage so we could hear them and had a great view when we could look up from the sausages!

Thank you to all our new found fans who queued and waiting patiently for a Not Dog - and we are sorry we sold out on Sunday, we couldn't believe it either! Sunday was also my birthday - and thinking back to what I was doing a year ago, it was very strange to think I was spending this birthday running my own business & serving up veggie hot dogs with Jane, it was definitely a birthday I will never forget!

From Festival No 6 we headed straight to Stokesley in Middlesborough where we had been invited by Quorn to park up our truck and serve all the staff Not Dogs for lunch. We had a great day presenting to the sales and marketing team about our summer and going behind the scenes to see some top-secret products being made! We are looking forward to going back very soon!

As we left Wales to embark up North, we received the news that we'd made it to the final two in the Virgin Food Fest competition - a search to find the most exciting food entrepreneurs. In less than a week we were filming a 45 second elevator pitch in Virgin HQ's Battleship Building and creating an event stand for the finale that would mimic our food truck! The final took place earlier this week where we met Paul Lindley, founder of Ella's Kitchen, Hemsley & Hemsley, Sir Richard Branson and the judge of our category 'Tastiest Start up', Acting Editor of Guardian Food magazine; Mina Holland. 

We met so many amazing people and lots of new fans of Not Dogs, and even took a great #sausageselfie with Paul Lindley! The event was great fun, and the Q&A with the judges on stage was inspiring and insightful. We were busy writing down every word Sir Richard Branson said about making a fool of yourself to get your brand noticed when he directed a question straight at us asking us how we had made fools of ourselves so far! Of course after the summer we've had it wasn't hard to reply!

Unfortunately we lost out to a great finalist Killer Tomato - a Mexican street food chef in London chosen as the winner by Mina Holland. Despite not being crowned the winners, we honestly had the best day out meeting some very inspirational people, and most importantly people who were routing for us throughout the day and after the event. The support from so many people who had us as their winner was absolutely overwhelming - thank you to everyone we met!

So where to next? It looks like this journey isn't going to end anytime soon! We are now embarking on an Autumn tour kicking off with University Freshers Weeks. Tomorrow we will be at Leeds University for the day, followed by Bournemouth and ending in London over the next couple of weeks - we're so excited to take Not Dogs to students and see what they think!

And so ends our first Summer tour, we've got a huge thank you list to get working on, it's been the toughest work we've ever done, but we've had so much fun, met so many characters - and we're so excited to have created a brand and product that so many others love just as much as us. Here's to the future!

You can keep up to date with where Not Dogs will be next over on our website, Twitter & Instagram channels.

Katie x

Exciting News... Not Dogs Announced as Finalists in the #VirginFoodFest

We're very proud to share the news that our vegetarian food brand Not Dogs has been chosen as one of two finalists in the 'Tastiest Startup' category at the Virgin Foodpreneur Fest! We found out while travelling with our little purple truck to Quorn HQ in Middlesborough this week and had to pull over we were so excited!

On Wednesday we'll be heading to the live finale in Battersea in London where we'll hear the judges; Sir Richard Branson, acting Editor of the Guardian Cook magazine Mina Holland, founder of Ella's Kitchen Paul Lindley and bloggers Jasmine and Melissa Hemsley, announce the winning brand!

This is what Virgin Startup said about Not Dogs:

Created when founders Katie and Jane found themselves frustrated at the lack of satisfying veggie fast food options at festivals, Not Dogs proves that you don’t need meat to create a hot dog that ticks all the boxes – and with imaginative toppings that include fried eggs, beer-caramelised onions and crushed nachos, they’re way ahead of their traditional counterparts.

On Wednesday there will be a 'people's choice' competition where competitors are encouraged to create a buzz around a particular hashtag given out on the day (along with #VirginFoodFest) so it would be amazing if you could show your support and look out for our tweets, retweeting and tweeting where you can, on @notdogsUK.

We're so pleased that in just nine months Not Dogs has gone from a little idea on our 'Mental List' to us spending the summer travelling up and down the UK  in our lively truck and now being finalists in a Virgin competition. Thanks to everyone who has supported us on our journey so far... we can't wait for 2015!

Kickin' Katie & Plain Jane x 

But First... Let Me Take a Sausage Selfie!

We have just returned from the beautiful Watergate Bay in Newquay after being at Boardmasters festival for the weekend - a sunny, but windy experience made extra special by all the positive feedback we got for our Not Dogs! Meat-eaters and veggies alike loved our flavoursome combinations, with The Original Frank being the most popular choice at the festival. We also nicknamed our dogs 'Not Doggs' in celebration of the legendary Snoop Dogg performance on Saturday night! 

Our next stop is Festival No 6 in the gorgeous setting of Portmeirion, where we are hoping to woo the Welsh with our meaty dogs without the meat! To keep up with all our news find us on Twitter & Instagram.

We love to take photos or 'Sausage Selfies' (although they're not quite selfies!) of our lovely customers when we can and enjoy sharing them across Twitter and Instagram and as we are nearly at the end of our first summer tour we thought it was only fitting to post a few of our favourite #SausageSelfies so far...enjoy!

A lot of Summer Love for Lovebox 2014!

We’ve just about recovered from what was an amazing weekend in London for Lovebox 2014! The sweltering heat, the gorgeous back drop of Victoria park and our lovely new customers made for a fast, foodie and fun-filled festival.

Our first customer was legendary London event planner Sara Blonstein who opted for the Kickin’ Katie Nacho Dog and got us off to a great start on Friday! We were also visited by Elle Magazine, Stylist magazine and we had a lovely chat with Women’s Health who were on the lookout for festival food with a healthier spin.

The line-up was incredible, and we loved hearing from Katy B, Chase & Status, ASAP Rocky, Breach and enjoyed an escape from our lovely veggie van to have a final dance to M.I.A which brought Lovebox 2014 to a close – we can’t wait to see you next year already!

As usual we loved taking #sausageselfies of our customers – we can’t wait to share them with you all on social media in the next few weeks.

Our favourite moment this week has to be some of our favourite customers from Wakestock having a go at recreating The Original Frank in the sunshine – well done guys!

Thank you to everyone who tried a Not Dog last weekend, the feedback has been so exciting! Next stop for Not Dogs? Boardmasters 2014 – sun, sea, surf and veggie hot dogs :)

Katie x