Minor Figures rejects mainstream society’s culture of hard work, aspiration and success. Instead, the UK coffee brand deliberately champions all walks of life, from the strivers to the idlers.

“We’re not that brand that’s like, ‘get up and rise and grind. You can crush it, go out and do it,’ and all these puke-ridden motivational and aspirational brands”, says Stuart Forsyth, co-founder and CEO of Minor Figures. “Our brand name and the characters on our packaging are all about celebrating humble lives rather than celebrating success… we’re, you know, the non-hero.”

The brand is what in ‘challenger-speak’ is known as an ‘Enlightened Zagger’: a brand that deliberately swims against the prevailing cultural or category tide. But it could also be challenging something else… Forsyth suggests that what Minor Figures is really challenging is the idea of aspirational brands altogether. Perhaps then Minor Figures is an entirely new challenger brand narrative? The anti-hero — a challenger brand notable for its absence of a grandiose mission or purpose and with a focus instead on enjoying life, having fun and occasionally poking fun at the very notion of brands as our heroes and saviours.

Minor Figures celebrates the simple things in life. Each product features an illustrated character on its packaging taking pleasure in the often mundane; reading a book (while sat on a lilo), tinkering on the piano, blowing bubbles. They are all expressions of life rather than expressions of “success” Stuart says. “We’re more funk than punk.”

Founded in 2014, Minor Figures is a London-based coffee company selling to 25 countries. The company sells a range of ready-to-drink products including a nitro cold brew, a chai and a mocha. In 2018, and accompanying a brand refresh, it launched an oat milk which quickly starting flying off the shelves. In 2020, its white 1L Oat M*lk cartons became its best-selling product, and Minor Figures has (quite unintentionally) become more known for its milk alternative than its cold brew coffee.

Forsyth puts the rapid growth down to the “exploding” alternative milk category but also because it came at the market from a different perspective. While other plant-based milk brands were trying to replicate milk, and naturally, at some level fit with the existing milk category’s codes and conventions, the founders of Minor Figures weren’t interested in milk at all. “We’re coffee people”, says Forsyth. “Everything we do is to create a better cup of coffee.” The brief for Minor Figures was very different. It wasn’t to replicate milk. But simply to ‘create a better cup of coffee’. Different brief. Different outcome. And the result is a differentiated brand that looks and behaves more like a quirky cold brew coffee (as is its origins) than a plant-based milk.

Despite its care-free attitude towards ‘aspiration’ from a brand perspective, Minor Figures has big and ambitious sustainability plans. Many people will know that oat milk is far better for the planet than dairy. But Minor Figures aren’t slacking here and want to make further progress in this field. In 2020 it became carbon-neutral by way of off-setting its carbon emission by investing in green projects. And it is in the process of becoming a B-Corp. This accreditation will make it legally required to consider the impact of its actions on society and the environment. Ultimately, Minor Figures’ plan is to reach carbon zero, meaning it isn’t just off-setting emissions but negating them entirely —aspirational stuff.

“It’s just going to be business-critical going forward,” says Forsyth, making clear this isn’t about positioning. But with Oatly receiving negative headlines in 2020 for receiving investment from Blackstone - a firm that in the past has supported deforestation, there’s an opportunity for Minor Figures in poaching some of the more environmentally conscientious oat milk aficionados. The original oat milk challenger could get challenged in 2021.

Jude Bliss is Research and Content Director at eatbigfish and Editor of The Challenger Project.