Roam

Pioneering the real food protein category in the UK — building a retail network from zero across national chains, premium hospitality, and independent health stores.

About the Brand

Roam Foods is a UK-based real food snack brand built on a single, uncompromising premise: high protein, grass-fed meat, no artificial preservatives. Founded by Matthew McEntegart and Allan Russel, the brand launched in 2022 out of genuine frustration with the UK snack market — a landscape dominated by heavily processed protein bars loaded with synthetic ingredients, sweeteners, and lab-made compounds that had no place in a genuinely healthy diet.

Roam's answer was a range of grass-fed meat bars and bites that delivered the highest protein-to-calorie ratio of any natural bar on the market. Shelf-stable, clean-label, and made from pasture-raised beef, pork, and turkey — no factory farming, no sodium nitrate, no shortcuts. Featured in GQ, The Guardian, and Women's Fitness, the brand quickly built a loyal following among athletes, biohackers, and anyone serious about what they put in their body.

What makes Roam different:

Roam occupies a category that barely existed in the UK before they arrived. Grass-fed meat snacks are well established in the US market, but in Britain they were a near-unknown proposition. Roam didn't just launch a product — they pioneered a category, and that distinction matters. Their bars and bites are the real food alternative to the synthetic protein bar, and the consumer response has been consistent: once people try them, they understand immediately why nothing else compares.

The Work

Before co-founding Creative Soil, Aves Wencel led this engagement. The work reflects the hands-on, relationship-led approach to retail development, account management and brand growth that now informs Creative Soil’s work today.

Retail Channel Development

Aves built Roam's retail network from the ground up through direct buyer outreach and relationship-led pitching across every channel relevant to the brand's target consumer. This included national health retailers, premium hospitality groups, specialist fitness distributors, and European grocery chains. Every account was opened through direct commercial relationships no brokers, no intermediaries.

Key accounts opened include Holland & Barrett, Soho House, CN Foods, Muscle Finesse, and EDEKA in Germany, alongside dozens of independent health stores and delis across London.

Healf.com Account Management

Aves managed Roam's presence on Healf.com end-to-end one of the UK's leading premium health and wellness e-commerce platforms. This included product listing and page optimisation, structuring and executing GWP (Gift With Purchase) campaigns to drive trial and basket size, demand forecasting to ensure consistent stock availability, and coordinating promotional activity aligned with Healf's editorial calendar.

Sampling & Profit Seeding

For a category-defining product, sampling is the primary conversion mechanism. Roam's bars and bites need to be tasted to be understood. Aves designed and executed a targeted sampling programme across high-value consumer environments the independent health store network. Each activation was structured as a profit-seeding exercise, tracked against reorder rates and account retention. Several independent retailers converted from sampling recipients to stocking accounts within weeks of their first product exposure.

Sales Pipeline Architecture

Aves built a fully documented, repeatable sales pipeline prospect lists, pitch materials, follow-up cadences, and account onboarding processes and handed it over to the Roam team so that commercial momentum could continue independently. The goal was never dependency; it was to give Roam the tools and relationships to keep growing on their own terms.

The Result

By the end of the engagement, Roam Foods had a functioning retail network spanning national health retail, premium hospitality, specialist fitness distribution, and the European market. The Healf.com account was actively managed and generating consistent revenue. The London independent network was seeded and converting. And the sales pipeline gave the internal team a clear, structured path to continued growth.

Roam is now a brand with real commercial foundations not just a great product, but a scalable business. This engagement remains one of the clearest examples of what hands-on, relationship-first commercial strategy can achieve for a challenger brand entering an uncharted category.