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- Hey, what's cracking? My name's Tom, and this is Tubby Tom's HQ, the home of the world famous hot sauce.

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Tubby Tom's was started in 2015 when I made a single batch of homemade barbecue sauce. I gave it out to some of my friends. They really loved the flavor. And they jokingly kind of said, you should make this and sell some of it. And I was like, OK, maybe. Why not? And we joked around and said, we'll call it Tubby Tom's and maybe put my face on it. And so from that first batch, I put some into our local farm shop, which is Over Farm Market, down the road from us.

It started selling really well. It started getting really, really busy all of a sudden. And I was making the sauces and seasonings in my flat at home. Our flat was just absolutely full of chillies, bottles, spices, everything. And it got to the point where my wife was like, you've got to get a unit. You've either got to do this properly or pack it in because it's too much. You walk into our flat, and it's like, whew, spice everywhere. So I made the decision, packed in my job, and thought, I've got to make it. You only get one chance to do something like this, and we had a really good feeling about it.

My wife's always been so supportive of it. She's always comes to the market stalls, and she's the harshest critic as well. So now when I make new products, I take them home and she will really will tell me if she doesn't think it's good enough to sell. It's good to have different levels of feedback. And she's always been a great supporter of Tubby Tom's, which is nice.

Soon after we set up the company, I started doing the Stroud farmer's market, which is one of the best farmer's markets in the country. When you take your stuff and you're face to face with customers, they give you their honest opinion. And luckily, all of our stuff has gone down really well, but it gives you an idea of where you should be taking the business and what works for you and how people react to it. We started making hotter sauces, as well as the barbecue sauces. We did our own seasonings and pickles and even merchandise as well.

We started supplying more and more farm shops, butchers, and even high-end places like Harvey Nichols in the high street take our stuff now, which is crazy. We even export to-- we've got a burger place in Latvia. We've got a place in France. And we're selling a lot online now. And that's largely thanks to Instagram. I put my whole life on Instagram. Since we moved into the unit we built, our kitchen, we're ready to take on new orders and more customers. It's got so busy now that I've employed my mum full-time. And she's amazing. She helped build the kitchen with me. And she helps pack the orders and even helps me cook sometimes.

At the end of 2018, we took the plunge and got ourselves a bigger unit. The kitchen now is amazing. We've had so much help with the kitchen from friends and family helping to build it from scratch, including even the mezzanine, which was ridiculously heavy. And I've got no DIY skills at all, but my mum's amazing at stuff like that. My dad helped with the plumbing. My friend Rob helped with a lot of it as well, helped with the lighting. And all of our friends really, they've all been down and supported us. And that's what Tubby Tom's has always been about. We've always had so much support from our friends and family. Yeah, I'm just really thankful for that.

In the future, I think I just want to get world domination with Tubby Tom's. We've got the place ready. We've got some sick sauces, so we just want to attack everyone and kind of push it out further. Work on our brand as well because our whole business is based around food, and we should be doing more to show people how they can use our products and pimp up their mid-week meals and, yeah, make life interesting, you know?

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