I'm thrilled to be interviewing fellow Irish person, Phil Martin, founder of Blanco Niño, to explore how an obsession with quality turned a burrito bar frustration into a multi-million-euro tortilla brand.... (cont'd below)
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The Brand Growth Heroes Mini MBA 2026 is back.
Built for founders, marketers and brand leaders who want to grow brands the right way — with practical frameworks, real case studies and honest insight.
Applications open: Monday 5th January 2026
Applications close: Midnight Sunday, 25th January 2026
Limited places available
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(Cont'd)
Phil shares the unlikely path that took him from Ireland to Mexico in search of real corn tortillas and why learning how things fail allowed him to build something better. This is a conversation about how to turn craft into something that scales and choosing the long road when shortcuts would have been easier.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode
- Why Phil flew to Mexico with no contacts and asked to learn how to grow corn
- How discovering real tortillas completely reset his understanding of quality
- Why it takes three days to make a Blanco Niño tortilla chip and why that matters
- The brutal realities of building a food factory from scratch (and nearly importing a “blowtorch attached to a tractor”)
- How Blanco Niño scaled from foodservice to retail and towards €10M in revenue
- Why knowing every way something can fail allows you to push quality to the edge
- The personal cost of trying to do everything yourself and how founders avoid burnout
- What it really means to build a challenger brand without shortcuts
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If you're a founder, you already know how much of your energy goes into building the perfect product, creating standout branding and connecting with your consumers.
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If you'd like to get in touch to find out more, why don't you drop them a line at hello@joelsonlaw.com ==============================================.
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