Episode 1. Jim Hawker built Threepipe and ran it for twenty years. Then he crossed the table. These days he's commercial director at luxury wallpaper house Fromental, advises The Sushi Co, and coaches other agency founders, which makes him the ideal person to ask the question the whole show hangs off: what's the most important meal of the day in your business?

Jim's answer is the unglamorous stuff most brands skip. Getting the basics right before you spend a penny on paid. Backing earned and organic when, as he puts it, so much ad budget is simply wasted. And treating creativity as a substitute for paid media rather than a line item sitting next to it.

Along the way: the night he floated six glowing lottery balls the size of double-decker buses down the Thames, turning Gourmet Burger Kitchen into "Gordon Banks' Kitchen" for the World Cup, why discounting is a drug that's hard to quit, and the honest conversations he's having with founders about mental load when the real goal this year might just be not losing money.

And because it's The Egg Index, we finish on his actual breakfast order. No eggs, as it turns out. His wife makes up for it.

The Egg Index is made by Down at the Social.

The Egg Index is made by Down at the Social.

www.httpstheeggindex.co.uk/

Every food business has a most important meal of the day. Not on the menu. In the business.

The Egg Index is a podcast about how the sharpest people in fast food and casual dining actually make their decisions.

Each episode, a founder or marketing lead from a UK challenger brand sits down and answers one question: what's the most important meal of the day in your business? Where they're placing their bets, what isn't working, where they're stretched thin, and what agencies keep getting wrong about this industry.

No jargon. No highlight reel. Just honest conversations about building a food brand people actually choose, with everyone's real breakfast order thrown in at the end.

Made by Down at the Social. New episodes every two weeks.

The Egg Index is made by Down at the Social.

www.httpstheeggindex.co.uk/