Episode 59: Founder of Eat My Lunch & Free AF, Lisa King

In Leaders Getting Coffee episode 59, our guest is Lisa King, the inspirational founder of Eat My Lunch and more recently alcohol free cocktail brand, Free AF.

She was born in Hong Kong and moved to New Zealand at the age of two. Her hardworking parents instilled a passion for education and an enthusiasm for entrepreneurial flair.

Lisa King didn’t waste that business oriented zest for life. A couple of university degrees provided her ticket to her dream jobs, in big corporate organisations that could show her the world.

The New Zealand Daily Board sent her to the Philippines, Unilever took her to the UK and the arrival of her first child brought her home. Roles in the heart of FMCG business followed at Bluebird, Cadbury and eventually back to the newly named Fonterra.

But a need to do something with purpose was stirring and, inspired by an advertisement for shoes – buy one get one free – she set up a school lunch programme that followed that same model. If sponsors would pay for a school lunch, her team would deliver that and another to students in need. It was called “Eat My Lunch” and it arrived at a time when some schools had 50 kids going without a midday meal.

They prepared the lunches in her lounge at first, and at its peak her team were delivering 2,600 free lunches and the same number of paid ones, across 45 schools, every day. 

With the arrival of the Government’s school lunch programme, her work there was done and another purpose was waiting.

Lisa had decided to give up drinking alcohol, and was astounded by the social pressures and the awkward questions. She’d decided that the conversation around not drinking was broken.

And so, in 2020, despite Covid and lockdowns and plenty of reasons not to, she assembled a team and created a brand, developed recipes, and launched Free AF, an alcohol free cocktail brand with a goal to reduce the alcohol in people’s lives without sacrificing the experience.

On the Leaders Getting Coffee podcast Lisa King speaks to Bruce Cotterill about, not one, but two entrepreneurial journeys, the lessons she’s learned and the opportunities ahead. Free AF now features in more than 4,000 stores across the USA, including Whole Foods, Target and Walmart and she is very open about the hard work involved in getting established in a massive market, including the importance of keeping her team small and action orientated, jumping time zones and the funding challenges associated with order sizes you don’t expect.

This is a case study in purpose from someone who is in the process of building a global brand. It’s a must listen for every aspiring entrepreneur. Spoiler alert… it’s a lot of hard work!

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