Tell us about your role and career so far in retail – any highlights to share?

I’m Udhi, Co-Founder of The Snaffling Pig. We took the humble pork scratching  the snack nobody admitted to loving and turned it into a multi-million-pound brand with bold flavours, cheeky marketing, and products like the world’s first pork crackling advent calendar.

Highlights? Winning investment on Dragon’s Den, landing national listings in supermarkets, and seeing our products gift-wrapped in Selfridges — proof that with the right brand story, even pork can look premium.

This is our first time introducing an advisory board for RetailJam and we are so excited about the impact you are going to have on the experience…What are you personally most looking forward to at RetailJam 2026?

RetailJam puts real operators in a room together with loads of real life experiences. I am in awe of some of the big brands and how they operate and the parrallesl some of us smaller operaters can use. Selfishly stealing one brilliant idea from someone smarter than me and pretending it was mine all along!!!

In your business today, what is your top focus for driving growth and staying competitive?

Owning and understanding our data so we can drive DTC and retail growth. We want to make customers superfans of the business. The data tells us whats working but in our business we use out gut to tell us what products and innovation is worth betting on, being in a challenger environment this is why we launched the footlong sausage roll, chilled chorizo bites and flavoured gammon! Dont get me wrong not all of this worked but was useful to make us stand out against the competiton in those categories.

How are you evolving your team or organisation to meet changing customer expectations?

At Snaffling Pig, our secret weapon isn’t pork it’s people.

We believe great brands aren’t built in boardrooms; they’re built by the people on the shop floor, packing the orders, speaking to buyers, or answering DMs at 9:30pm because a customer wants to know if crackling is keto-friendly.

When customers buy from us its more about the feeling than the actual product. We need our team to deliver that feeling not just to the consumer but how we engage through our comms, the way we deal with buyers, merchandisers etc. We love a piggy pun but we are a professional business behind the scenes. Training is limited being a small brand so we get on the shop floor, speak to customers, do surverys and use our social channels to gather feedback to the teams on whats good, whats not and how we can improve.

What innovation, technology, or approach are you most excited about implementing in the next 12–24 months?

AI i think?! I use it, but how can we streamline the tedious tasks and just focus on sales and creativity, thats the part I am intrigued to learn more about.

How do you ensure your customers feel truly connected to your brand across channels and touchpoints?

We give people more than a product  we give them a smile.

• Tone of voice is cheeky and consistent — from the packaging to the invoice email
• Rapid customer service, zero scripts.
• Surprise-and-delight moments (we’ve literally put handwritten notes in orders or an extra packet of porky goodness).

If a customer feels like they’re part of the joke, they feel part of the brand. We were one of the largest food brands to crowdfund on crowdcube and have 1800 investors we call our swine diners. We use this army of ambassadors to get into store to test product, range review help merchandise.