The Graduate: Tess Reed

Diploma graduate Tess Reed has transformed her homemade dressings into a brand beloved by major food retailers like Ocado, All Dressed Up. We spoke to the chef about her career rollercoaster so far, being a female founder and life at Leiths.

When Tess Reed graduated with a culinary arts Diploma from Leiths in 2021, launching a premium all-natural salad dressing brand with retailers like Ocado and Whole Foods wasn’t the plan.

‘All Dressed Up happened completely by accident. I’d made a tahini dressing and we had it with roast chicken. Then the next evening we had the dressing again but with a leftover salad with sweet potatoes and lentils.

‘Patrick, my boyfriend, messaged me when I was at work like “I’ve got a great business idea. There’s a real gap in the market for premium, delicious and all-natural salad dressings”.’ But Tess was not convinced.

‘Then he suggested the name All Dressed Up,’ she pauses thoughtfully, ‘and there was something about it that really stuck with me.

‘At the time, the category was all quite boring, dated and dusty. It needed a shakeup in terms of different branding, different flavours and different packaging formats.

‘Then I had this aha moment to put it in a squeezy bottle because of my chef background.’

While the product is now stocked at several major food retailers, the originals were created 18 months ago in the Leiths graduate’s home kitchen as Christmas stocking fillers she posted about on Instagram.

‘We sold 400 bottles in the first two weeks.’

During this time, Tess realised there was a genuine demand for her product and approached Bayley & Sage and Whole Foods.

‘They both came back pretty much straight away (which never happens) and,’ she says with incredulity, ‘said “we’d love to list them” … pretty much from tomorrow.’

After some complications, she found a manufacturer with the same vision for flavour-first, quality-led products.

‘The whole thing has been a people fit but there’s no textbook of how to start a business from scratch with no investment.’

The female founder has sought advice from her industry heroes. Pip Murray, of nut butter brand Pip & Nut, encouraged Tess to ‘stay consistent to your brand, your values and your quality’ and ‘not to work on weekends’. Although, Tess admits, she doesn’t always manage the latter (unsurprising as she also works part-time as a recipe developer for meal kit company Simply Cook).

The entrepreneur has also received support from Amelia Christie-Miller, founder of Bold Bean Co, who helped by sending Tess’s investment deck to her own investors.

But the entrepreneur’s story has not always been straightforward. After university, Tess was on a successful trajectory as an account executive at Coconut Collaborative working with James Averdieck, the man behind Gü Desserts.

‘I progressed quite quickly because the team was small so by the time I was leaving, I helped manage accounts like Waitrose and Sainsbury’s.’

But after moving on, she was made redundant twice in two years, spent a brief stint working in tech and then took a job in restaurant PR that she lost just as Covid hit.

‘I was basically a bit screwed,’ she admits.

Moving home to her parents’ farm, she spent lockdown cooking for her family and blogging about it.

‘My boyfriend’s mum was like “Why don’t you go to Leiths?”

‘I was like “It’s so expensive and I don’t want to be a restaurant chef.” But as soon as I started reading about it, I was like “wow, this could be amazing.”

‘Leiths was just the start of the process of having a really ingrained food knowledge so I could work out which direction I wanted to go in.’

Looking back, it’s clear Tess has been fine-tuning her recipe for success through challenging lows and remarkable highs.

‘I would say to anyone who is thinking of setting something up, people are so generous with their time so speak to as many as possible.

‘Immerse yourself in gaining as much knowledge in your category as possible and home in on what makes you different. If you have a point of difference, then you’ll stand out.’

You can find all four flavours of All Dressed Up available to order on Ocado or direct at www.alldressedupdressings.com.