008: Upgrading your overnight oats with Ben Da Costa from Oat Cult

What if making a healthy breakfast didn’t require ten ingredients, a messy kitchen, or a cupboard full of stale chia seeds?That’s the headache Ben Da Costa set out to fix when he and a group of fellow creatives launched Oat Cult — overnight oats made simple, delicious, and good for your gut.Born out of Ben’s own mission to lower his cholesterol (and avoid cupboards overflowing with forgotten flaxseed), Oat Cult takes all the faff out of making overnight oats at home. No more bulk-buying ingredients you use once and abandon. Just a 60g sachet you stir into milk, leave overnight, and wake up to in the morning.Built by a crew of creatives, operators and product people, Oat Cult is as much about brand and storytelling as it is about breakfast. It’s proof you don’t need an MBA or a background in FMCG to build something people genuinely want to eat—you just need a great product, a strong point of view, and a willingness to get a bit scrappy.In this episode, Georgie Brown and Ben talk about:How a creative director ended up building a breakfast brandWhy overnight oats is such an underdeveloped (but fast-growing) categoryThe reality of product development when you don’t know food manufacturingHow Oat Cult landed on its three core flavoursThe gut health story behind that billion-strong live cultureWhy the team obsessed over efficacy—not wellness buzzwordsBuilding a brand-first food startup as a crew of creativesMaking weird, thumb-stopping social content on a tiny budgetWhat it’s really like to bootstrap, find a factory, and now start fundraisingWhether you’re an overnight oats obsessive, a “breakfast is just coffee” person, or a creative dreaming of launching your own food brand, this episode will give you a very real look at building something from scratch—one sachet at a time.Key Takeaways:Category with space to play: Overnight oats are huge on TikTok and search, but barely exist as a proper category in UK retail—leaving a big gap for smart brands.Product first, always: Oat Cult’s team refused to hide behind good branding. They spent months testing recipes with friends, family and market-goers until the product genuinely tasted great.Gut health with substance: The “cult” part is real—each sachet includes a carefully chosen, rigorously tested live culture strain that survives packing, storage, chilling and heating.Convenience without compromise: Pre-portioned sachets make it easier to eat well daily, without having to bulk-buy half a health food aisle or batch cook oats that lose nutritional value after a couple of days.Creative founders ≠ bad at numbers: Ben brought in an FD, an ops pro and a killer designer—leaning into his strengths while plugging the gaps elsewhere.Brand is a differentiator, not decoration: In a space where people can DIY, brand, ritual and storytelling are what make someone pick your oats over doing it themselves.Bootstrapped and bold: From blagging a factory meeting to posting surreal oat content online, Oat Cult is a lesson in being resourceful when you don’t have big-budget backing (yet).Chapters / Timestamps00:00 — From cholesterol worries to a breakfast brand03:45 — Why oats (and not another food idea)?07:30 — Product development: from “we’ll make it ourselves” to factory reality14:20 — How they chose the live culture strain (and keep testing it)16:30 — Convenience vs DIY: who Oat Cult is really for21:30 — What creative founders bring to food & why brand matters27:20 — The story behind the name “Oat Cult”31:30 — Manufacturing, margins and making it work without UK production32:50 — What’s next: new SKUs, retailers & fundraising33:35 — Startup shoutout: Stocked and the power of founder communityLinks & Resources:Oat Cult — Website | InstagramDiscover Startups — TikTok | YouTube | Instagram | Newsletter

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