The Data Chief | Episode 60

The Modern Milkman’s Chief Strategy Officer, John Hughes on Using Data to Save Our Oceans from Plastic

John Hughes

Chief Strategy Officer

The Modern Milkman

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Current EpisodeEP60: The Modern Milkman’s Chief Strategy Officer, John Hughes on Using Data to Save Our Oceans from Plastic
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Episode Overview

Each year, around 8 million tons of plastic waste enter the ocean, killing wildlife and damaging the environment for future generations. Much of this pollution originates from the wasteful packaging used for everyday grocery products. But a greener grocery alternative is making waves from across the pond. Joining us today is John Hughes, Chief Strategy Officer at The Modern Milkman, a UK-based grocery delivery company that brings locally sourced goods directly to customers without any single-use plastics. From the startup’s early days, John sought to invest heavily in data modernization. Hear how his data-driven approach has helped the company cultivate a shared mission with customers to make the world a cleaner, safer, and better place for all of its creatures.

Key Moments:

  • Episode Start (00:00)
  • What is The Modern Milkman? (04:46)
  • How did John bring a data-driven approach to The Modern Milkman? (08:38)
  • How has data helped lead to the company’s growth? (11:35)
  • What is unique about the company’s business model? (21:45)
  • Data literacy among the leaders at The Modern Milkman (27:33)
  • The Modern Milkman’s data stack (30:00)
  • The benefits of working with startups (35:41)
  • How does The Modern Milkman proactively manage cloud costs? (37:59)
  • Data stack modernization advice for larger companies (41:45)
  • Lightning Round (45:42)
 

Mentions:

 

Key Takeaways:

How is The Modern Milkman revolutionizing plastic consumption in the UK? (04:53)

“We deliver groceries to people's doorsteps overnight so that when people wake up in the morning, their things are there for them to use… It all started with my co-founders watching David Attenborough’s ‘The Blue Planet,’ seeing the plastic continents that were being created in the oceans and asking themselves, ‘How has this been allowed to happen?’... It's happened because supermarkets used milk as a lost leader in the late ‘80s, and early ‘90s and started to basically get people into supermarkets, break the habits of people shopping little and often in their local communities with local green grocers, local butchers, et cetera, bringing it all into one place, and then managing that by changing the packaging. So, using these plastics that basically don't degrade… they get spat out into the ocean and they stay there.”

The Modern Milkman works closely with local suppliers to bring fresh groceries to customers. But their mission goes beyond merely providing a convenient experience. The company offers an environmentally friendly alternative to supermarkets by not using any single-use plastics whatsoever.

How important is data to The Modern Milkman’s business? (19:32)

“We are very much a data business. We are a technology-enabled data business. And we try and push that back to our customers as well in the way that we interact with a lot of our third-party platforms these days. But we've always wanted to be that as well. We've taken what is a relatively simple concept and turned it into a product fit for the modern day. I would hope, dearly hope, that if you went into a retailer and looked at their analytics stack, it was light years behind ours.”

The company took a risk when it devoted nearly a quarter of its original funding to modernizing its data platform. But after seeing his share of inefficient legacy technology at larger operations, John was determined to ensure that this startup was equipped with the most effective modern data tools for the job. Thanks to this investment, the company is now able to market more intelligently to customers, forecast operational gaps, and quantify environmental impact.

How is data used to inform The Modern Milkman customer experience? (23:36)

“Perhaps the thing that I'm proudest of isn't anything to do with the commercial journey. It's much more about communicating the impact that the customer has… We spent a lot of time trying to work out how much plastic customers had saved… We'd always published on the website that this is how many plastic bottles we save from landfill — and currently, we're at 55 million… But we were like, ‘Let's individualize that as well.’... So, having that data in our stack, we were able to push it into Braze and then be able to communicate it to customers every time we felt necessary.”

The environmental insights gathered from The Modern Milkman’s substantial data set are a powerful way for the company to engage customers and inspire continued action. This symbiotic relationship between customer, company, and planet is only made possible by the availability of helpful, reliable data.

 

Key Quotes:

We deliver groceries to people's doorsteps overnight so that when people wake up in the morning, their things are there for them to use… It all started with my co-founders watching David Attenborough’s ‘The Blue Planet,’ seeing the plastic continents that were being created in the oceans and asking themselves, ‘How has this been allowed to happen?’... It's happened because supermarkets used milk as a lost leader in the late ‘80s, and early ‘90s and started to basically get people into supermarkets, break the habits of people shopping little and often in their local communities with local green grocers, local butchers, et cetera, bringing it all into one place, and then managing that by changing the packaging. So, using these plastics that basically don't degrade. So, they get spat out into the ocean and they stay there.

e are very much a data business. We are a technology-enabled data business. And we try and push that back to our customers as well in the way that we interact with a lot of our third-party platforms these days. But we've always wanted to be that as well. We've taken what is a relatively simple concept and turned it into a product fit for the modern day. I would hope, dearly hope, that if you went into a retailer and looked at their analytics stack, it was light years behind ours.

Perhaps the thing that I'm proudest of isn't anything to do with the commercial journey. It's much more about communicating the impact that the customer has… We spent a lot of time trying to work out how much plastic customers had saved… We'd always published on the website that this is how many plastic bottles we save from landfill — and currently, we're at 55 million… But we were like, ‘Let's individualize that as well.’... So, having that data in our stack, we were able to push it into Braze and then be able to communicate it to customers every time we felt necessary.

Bio:

John is the Chief Strategy Officer at The Modern Milkman (TMM), which he co-founded in 2019 in Colne, Lancashire. Prior to founding TMM, John had worked in data all of his career from the lightning quick analysis of Investment Banking through to the data pioneering at small Yorkshire startups. Having witnessed such a varied size of company working with the likes of Volkswagen, Capita, HSBC and helping startups such as i-pools, Farmison and Synergy Car Leasing, John realized that they all had the same problem: none of them were data first. So in 2018, armed with a lorry-load of Google App Scripts, John set off to create a company data-first.