From blog to brand: how Ella Mills turned her personal brand into a global success with Deliciously Ella

Summary

---

Uncensored CMO Podcast Summary

Episode Title: From Blog to Brand: How Ella Mills Turned Her Personal Brand into a Global Success with Deliciously Ella
Host: Jon Evans
Guest: Ella Mills (Deliciously Ella)
Date: September 3, 2025

---

Overview

In this episode, Jon Evans sits down with Ella Mills, the founder of the hugely successful food and wellness brand Deliciously Ella. Ella candidly shares her journey from personal health struggles and a humble blog, to building a beloved personal brand and a thriving global business. The conversation goes deep on the realities of entrepreneurship, maintaining authenticity, learning from failures, and the nuts and bolts of scaling a wellness brand in a fast-changing consumer landscape.

Tone throughout: honest, humble, insightful, and a blend of practical advice with personal anecdotes.

---

Key Themes & Discussion Points

1. Origins: Illness to Inspiration (01:11–05:16)

• Ella’s health crisis as a university student in 2011 led her to explore diet and lifestyle changes after conventional medicine failed.
  • “I hit an absolute rock bottom with both my physical health, but my mental health as well. And then that was really where things turned around.” (03:40, Ella)
• She started a blog, Deliciously Ella, as a personal diary with no expectation of an audience.
  • “No one was really ever meant to read it, which is really ironic when we sit here today.” (04:52, Ella)
• Authenticity from the start: No financial motivation or business strategy; simply a desire to share her journey and help others.

2. Building Community Before Business (05:16–06:27)

• The blog’s organic growth was rapid, driven by authenticity and personal connection.
  • “We built a brand before we built a business and…with no kind of financial motivations, with this kind of real purity.” (05:23, Ella)
• Reaching 10,000 visits in three months and validation through real feedback from strangers.
  • “It was so validating...I felt like my life had a bit of meaning back in it.” (06:27, Ella)

3. From Blog to Bestseller: Key Tipping Points (06:27–11:10)

• Blog traffic exploded to 120 million hits in two years.
• Launched an app with minimal investment, which became #1 on the App Store with no formal marketing spend.
  • “I put it out on our email list…we launched it…and it became the number one app…which I was so naive, obviously now sitting here today…” (08:15–08:50, Ella)
• Community engagement led to a bestselling cookbook, which sold out before publication and hit #1 on Amazon—outperforming all books.
  • “It was Amazon’s biggest selling book that year. I mean, again, I look at it now and know what it means and I’m like, oh, my God.” (10:53, Ella)

4. Sudden Success and Personal Struggles (11:10–14:49)

• Ella describes feeling like a “deer in headlights” at the height of her public exposure, struggling with anxiety and lack of self-esteem.

  • “I wish I’d enjoyed it more…at the time I just felt so overwhelmed, so cripplingly anxious…” (12:37, Ella)

• Key driver of success was relentless hard work and obsession:

  • “Oh, I worked on it 24/7. I was obsessed. I mean, I have been the whole time.” (13:48, Ella)

5. Books, Advice, and Launching in a Noisy World (14:49–16:12)

• Ella’s approach to writing books: focus on genuine usefulness and tangible benefit to readers.
  • “Is it actually useful? Will this genuinely be tangible to someone’s life…and benefit it in a meaningful way?” (15:20, Ella)
• Challenges of launching new content now versus earlier days, when the market was less crowded.

6. The Accidental Business Model: Compound Growth (16:12–17:04)

• Each new initiative (blog, app, book) “funded the next stage” and let them retain control without outside investors.
  • “Each thing funded the next stage…when we launched our products, we didn’t need to raise money.” (16:32, Ella)

7. Scaling Community and Wrestling with Delegation (17:17–20:09)

• Ella responded, personally, to all messages until it became unsustainable after having kids.
  • “You have to stop. Like, it’s not sustainable…and it really, really wasn’t.” (17:54, Ella)
• Personal connection is hard to scale but contributes to the “magic” of the brand.

8. Partnerships and Building a Business with Family (21:08–24:01)

• Running the business with her husband, Matt, works due to complementary skills: Ella on brand, Matt on operations/finance.
  • “You don’t succeed having a great brand in the long run if you don’t have a great business behind it.” (22:29, Ella)
• With growth they found autonomy by dividing responsibilities.

9. From Recipes to Retail: Product Launch & Distribution (24:01–31:04)

• Starbucks became the first big retailer, thanks to brand reputation and fortuitous timing.

  • “We had an email back 15 minutes later, would love to meet you guys, can you come in next week?” (27:56, Ella)
  • “It was so surreal…Starbucks…gives you a goodie bag. Like, you were like, okay, we’re not mad to quit our jobs…there’s something in it.” (30:02, Ella)

• Challenges: Refusal from manufacturers to avoid additives; persistence paid off, and an “evangelical” focus on 100% natural, no compromises.

  • “We are building a genuinely 100% natural brand and we will never compromise on that.” (32:28, Ella)

10. Failure, Resilience, and Learning in Public (34:43–39:59)

• Early product failures—oat bars flopped in Tesco, but after reformulation became their #1 seller.
  • “We made 25 million of them last year.” (34:43, Ella)
• Closing their cafes was strategically essential—media painted it as failure.
  • “It was a really conscious decision to choose one side of the business…and the press had this field day with it…” (38:17–38:57, Ella)
  • “It felt like people were taking in a failure that wasn’t really a failure, and it put us on the back foot.” (39:56, Ella)

11. Funding, Frugality, and Marketing Lessons (41:27–44:13)

• No outside capital kept growth disciplined and forced focus on profitability.
  • “We had to live within our means…if it’s not profitable, we can’t do it.” (41:27, Ella)
• On marketing spend:
  • “I think there can be a bit of fluff in it…some of those things pay off but I think a huge amount of them don’t.” (43:55, Ella)
• Building a loyal audience through direct channels, not just paid ads.

12. Retail Reality and Consumer Behavior Insights (44:13–48:52)

• The moment of truth is rate of sale—success or failure is clear fast.
  • “What we've done incredibly well is you've built your own media channel.” (44:13, Jon)
• Most successful products are classic flavors, with innovation around ingredients, not wild new concepts.
  • Referencing a “80% familiar, 20% new” innovation model (48:05, Jon)

13. Staying On Brand & Avoiding Trends (49:34–54:27)

• Brand longevity came from sticking to core values despite pressure to chase fads (e.g., meat mimics in plant-based foods).
  • “We were right time, right place and we threw everything at it.” (49:34, Ella)

14. Expansion, Exit, and Future Plans (49:56–54:41)

• Recently sold Deliciously Ella, spun out a new brand, and acquired “All Plants.”
  • “You’re not going to take some time off and sit on a beach somewhere?” (50:10, Jon)
  • “Not yet. Not at the moment.” (50:13, Ella)
• Committed to making natural, healthy food easy and accessible—anti-fad, pro-simplicity.

15. The Wellness Information Abyss & The Deliciously Ella Podcast (56:41–end)

• Frustration at the gap between wellness industry trends and real, sustainable habit change.
  • “99 plus percent of the UK population know they should eat their five a day…the most recent research…shows 1 in 5 manage it.” (56:41, Ella)
• Podcast aims to cut through misinformation and provide nuanced, practical advice with nutritionist Rhiannon Lambert.
  • “Almost 98% of the information, nutritional information on social media…is either misleading or wrong.” (58:30, Ella)
  • “Nuance doesn’t have virality…eat a few more vegetables, but don’t worry if you eat a Mars bar—it doesn’t have virality.” (59:02, Ella)
• Podcasts as an antidote to clickbait, offering space for complexity and authentic discussion.

---

Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• “We built a brand before we built a business and…with no kind of financial motivations, with this kind of real purity.” (05:23, Ella)
• “I was so kind of desperate to spread the word, to help people, to have this positive impact on the, on the food landscape…I so wanted it.” (13:48, Ella)
• “Is it actually useful? Will this genuinely be tangible to someone’s life…and benefit it in a meaningful way?” (15:20, Ella)
• “You don’t succeed having a great brand in the long run if you don’t have a great business behind it.” (22:29, Ella)
• “We are building a genuinely 100% natural brand and we will never compromise on that.” (32:28, Ella)
• “It felt like people were taking in a failure that wasn’t really a failure, and it put us on the back foot.” (39:56, Ella)
• “Nuance doesn’t have virality…eat a few more vegetables, but don’t worry if you eat a Mars bar—it doesn’t have virality.” (59:02, Ella)

---

Guiding Takeaways for Entrepreneurs & Marketers

• Authenticity and mission are powerful foundation stones—start with genuine value, not a business plan.
• Audience first, product second: Build community, then extend into products and services organically.
• Relentless personal engagement is magical but unsustainable; learn where to let go.
• Failures are inevitable, and not always as public as the press makes them—pivot quickly and strategically.
• Control your brand and funding for agility and focus.
• Ignoring fads and doubling down on core values builds longevity.
• Real success in FMCG is driven on the shelf, not just in the marketing plan—if it doesn’t sell, nothing else matters.
• Resist the noise; practical, helpful content wins loyalty over flashy short-term viral trends.

---

Key Moments (Timestamps)

• Personal illness and blog origin: 01:11–05:16
• First viral blog/app moments: 06:27–11:10
• Book launch & mainstream breakthrough: 08:40–11:10
• Early product failures and resilience: 34:43–39:59
• Media backlash and closing cafes: 38:17–39:56
• Starbucks win and manufacturing challenges: 24:55–32:49
• Approach to innovation and flavor: 46:11–48:52
• The reality of plant-based trends: 52:53–54:27
• On the wellness information gap: 56:41–59:27

---

Final Note

Ella Mills’ story is a rare blend of courage, authenticity, relentless hard work, and cool-headed pragmatism. Her journey from writing a blog for her mum to heading a global wellness brand is proof that brand trust and loyal communities are the strongest fuel for business success—and that the truest brands often come from a place of personal need and a desire to help. Ella doesn’t hold back on failures, self-doubt, or the awkward reality behind the headlines, making this conversation a masterclass for founders, marketers, and anyone who wants to build something both meaningful and long-lasting.

---

Transcript

[John Evans]

Foreign Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the uncensored cmo. Now, in this episode, we're going to be talking to an incredible founder, Ella Mills, who is the co founder of Deliciously Ella. She has built an astonishing successful brand over the last few years and recently exited the brand. She is the brand herself. She's created best selling cookbooks, she's got her own blog, she's even got her own podcast. And she's also created an amazing business of healthy products that have been very, very successful. So I wanted to find out from Ella how did she go about building the brand and how did she turn that brand into such a successful business? Ella's a wonderful person who tells the most authentic and real stories about her experience and I know there's a lot in this that you'll absolutely love. So here it is. Welcome to the show, Ella.

[Ella Mills]

Thank you so much for having me.

[John Evans]

It's great to have you. I'm really excited to have this conversation because I love, love, love hearing about founders and how they built their businesses and what goes into making the kind of success that you've made of your brand. But maybe for anyone that doesn't know your story because it started, your journey, started in a relatively painful place, I think, for you, didn't it? And yeah, tell us a bit about where it all began.

[Ella Mills]

Yeah, of course. And I'm so excited to be here because I think I've talked about my personal story a lot, but not always so much about the building of the brand and the business and our decision making around that. So I'm excited to get into that. But yes, if we fast forward to the very, very beginning. So this is all the way back to 2011. I was a student, finishing my second year at university, living my best life. And really out of nowhere, I got very, very ill. I spent most of 2011 into 2012 in that hospital seeing an endocrinologist, gastroenterologist, neurologists, had MRIs, ultrasounds, endoscopies, like, you name it, I tried it, Swallowed cameras. I think the longest I spent in hospital any one time was 10 days. I just. No one could get to the bottom of what was going wrong. And eventually I was diagnosed with a condition that affected the functioning of my autonomic nervous system. And speaking very colloquially, it looks quite a lot like long Covid in the sense of nothing's really working, no one's really sure exactly why or what to do about it. And. And it's quite invisible. And so I couldn't control my heart rate properly. So I would sit down and, fine, stand up. My heart rate's 180, 190. Immediately you feel like you're going to pass out if you. You don't pass out. I had very extreme chronic fatigue. I was sleeping like 16, 18 hours a day. I had awful. I looked more pregnant then than I did when I was about seven months pregnant with my daughter. Just awful. Stomach problems and digestive issues, chronic pain, brain fog, these allergic reactions to just about everything, like, you name it, had it, basically. And I was prescribed this whole cocktail of different things to see if it would work. I think at the peak, I was on about 25 different medications a day, and none of them worked. They're all repurposed, so no one promised that they would work. But I had definitely held onto the assumption that someone else could fix my problem for me, essentially, and it'd be like having tonsillitis and taking antibiotics and you'd feel much better. And it wasn't the case. And I hit an absolute rock bottom with both my physical health, but my mental health as well. And then that was really where things turned around. I think from that place I became started to ask questions like, well, is there anything else I could be doing? Surely there have been other people in sickness, similar positions. Something must have helped them. And I turned to Google, as you should not recommend in times of medical emergency. But I just started reading stories of people all over the world, different ages, sexes, some acute conditions, some chronic. Just a whole mixed bag. But there was this common thread of people using facets of diet, of lifestyle to improve their health. And I'm super conscious. We're sitting here today in 2025, and if you open Netflix or the newspapers or your podcast app, you're going to see all sorts of conversations on the link between our diet and our health. It's everywhere. It's such a mainstream conversation, but it's only 13 years ago and no one was talking about it. And it felt very left field, actually, which is very odd when you think about it, if you just be very reductive to say, like, what you put in your body would affect your body. Saying that felt like telling some people the world was flat. Which, again, is kind of really shocking when you think about it like that. But I was really inspired, but I couldn't cook and I didn't like vegetables. Two kind of pretty obvious obstacles. Yeah. So I'm a very all or nothing person and I like, if I'm going to do something, I need to commit to it and I have to hold myself accountable and I'll kind of go in 100% and the rest. And so I started a blog and this was really the moment where blogs had kind of taken off and my friend said, oh, there's this great site, you can use WordPress, it's really easy, it's free. Why don't you, why don't you do it as like a diary on there as you try and change the way you eat. So I did and my maiden name was Woodward and it's not got a great ring to it. And the aim was to make things delicious. So delicious. Yella was born and no one was really ever meant to read it, which is really ironic when we sit here today.

[John Evans]

That is very ironic, isn't it? However many hundreds of millions later.

[Ella Mills]

It's so odd. And I think that's the thing that always kind of gets me. It was like this time last year we hit the mark of selling 100 million products. And I just remember being like, this was meant to be something that only my mum ever saw.

[John Evans]

Yeah. Do you think that's weirdly part of the success that you entered it not knowing how it was gonna.

[Ella Mills]

I think so. I really, really do. I think it's because we built a brand before we built a business and we built this brand with no kind of financial motivations, with this kind of real purity that is quite hard to do when you're seeing a gap in the market. You know, this was like a really passionate, personal, quite evangelical, I want to help change the world and I want to help as many people as possible. And changing my diet did completely change my health. It took about two years. It wasn't, it wasn't quick. But I, I got my life back and I started thinking, wait a second, it's so easy to cook like this. Why aren't more of us doing it? I want to make it more accessible. And as I said, I became quite like passionate, maybe evangelical about kind of spreading the word of lentils and carrots and. And I think that did. I think it gave it this authenticity and this credibility that you can't pay for.

[John Evans]

Yeah. I mean, you're saying, you say casually, I did it without realizing anyone's going to read or listen. At what point did you realize suddenly, actually this has become something? And what happened there?

[Ella Mills]

There were a couple of different points. So I was really embarrassed when I was doing this. I really lacked a lot of confidence growing up. And then this illness had kind of taken probably relatively low self esteem and made it fully rock bottom. And I'D also showed no interest in cooking growing up. I was an expectacularly average child. Like, and I don't say that to be self deprecating. I just had never, I'd never been this, like, concerning failure, that my parents were like, oh, what do we do with Ella? But I'd never excelled in anything I'd ever done, like academics, sport, like, whatever it was. I was just so bang average. And I just therefore didn't have this, you know, my friends weren't doing things like this. It was a bit different. And I think I was a bit embarrassed. I did tell one person, I'm going to write a cooking blog. And then being like, you're going to do. Why would anyone ever read that? Like, you don't cook, you don't write. This is so random. So I was quite kind of sheepish about it and I said, okay, well, if 10,000 people. Oh, sorry. If I got 10,000 hits organically, then I'll show my friends and family and I'll tell them what I'm doing. And I did. Three months later, the site had 10,000 hits and there was this map on the back end of WordPress and it would show, like, light up all the different countries. And there was something like 25 different countries that people were reading it in. And people started writing in saying, I'm really enjoying the recipes I relate to your story. And it was so validating. I think having also felt so alone and so kind of lost at sea, it felt validating, it felt empowering. I felt like my life had a bit of meaning back in it, which I'm sure really sparked this like evangelical, like, I've got to spread the word of it. So that was the kind of big moment. And then about two years later, the site had 120 million hits. So it grew really fast. And in that, people started to ask for things. And there were things like cooking classes and supper clubs, but we're talking about 12 people, 15 people. So it's a pretty. That wasn't when I thought, oh, we've made it that we sell those out because it was small number of people, but people. This is when apps were becoming a bit popular and people were like, well, maybe it'll be easier as an app. I'd pay for an app. So I thought, okay. So I went out and found a developer and he built the code for me and I put all the recipes in it and we launched it. And I'm pretty sure it's 2.99 and I put it out on Our email list again, like I wasn't. I paid $20 on WordPress so that instead of being WordPress.delicious yellow.com or whichever order that went and it was just delicious. Yeah, but that's it. That's all the money I had spent on this. And I emailed out those people and put it on the blog and I put on our Instagram page that the app had launched and it became the number one app on the itunes chart, the Apple chart, which I was so naive obviously now sitting here today, if we replicated that, like what? This is so mega. Whereas at the time like I didn't really fully appreciate and obviously the app space wasn't as competitive as it was isn't today. But equally that's quite a feat to do with £0 $20 is our kind of total spend at this point. And that was when I thought okay, there's gotta be something in this. Like it's the number one app in the UK Apple App Store and I haven't spent a pound basically as in like it was. So yeah, it just felt that was a bit of a penny drop moment. And at the same time I had pitched out a cookbook to different publishers and one took it on and I started writing the book. And again I had this really strange moment. The book came out, was meant to come out early January 2015, so about a year after the app. And we actually sold out of books before the app before the book could be published because the community was so engaged and so strong. And then it was really. I'm not sure how this came about because I've never since ever been shown an interview ahead of time. But I had done this big interview for you magazine and they sent it to me before it came out and this was when the publishers just moved the pub date cause we had no books left, which is quite an unusual thing to do. And they had written this piece and it was a big interview and it was this journey from sickness to health and this new cookbook and the kind of personal story and the title was the Ella Effect. And I still remember reading it really clearly and thinking, goodness me, I feel like my life is going to change. I think some things, I think we've reached a tipping point. I think something's happening here. I don't think this is like a personal project for my parents kitchen anymore. And sure enough it then became number one on the Amazon book chart again. This is like any book in the world like Harry Potter and it was Amazon's biggest selling book that year. I mean, again, I look at it now and know what it means and I'm like, oh, my God. Number one, apparently.

[John Evans]

Number one book on Amazon.

[Ella Mills]

It's eight weeks, I think it did on Amazon. Number one across any book. I mean, it was mad. And then I was 23 and I was suddenly on, like, every radio show, you know, morning TV channel, being interviewed. I was so dear in headlights.

[John Evans]

How do you cope with that? I mean. Cause, you know, I mean, being in the public eye, like that is quite a thing. And the amount of attention you must be getting and people feeding back. I mean, good, of course, you know, people like, wow, good and bad. And bad. You know, there's good elements of. Adam. How do you cope with the sudden attention?

[Ella Mills]

I mean, it was so surreal. Like, again, I look at it now with the lens of experience and think, like, I just cannot believe that all happened. It's so serendipitous. Like, it just. It's so hard to manufacture that kind of moment. But I didn't cope brilliantly, I think, partly because I just didn't expect this. Like, this wasn't. You know, I remember talking to my mum, she was like, if you sell 500 copies, I'll be so proud of you. And that's what mums are for, isn't it? Totally. And I just, you know, as I said, like, I just wasn't a high achiever and I think so many founders are high achievers or they're the people that, like, set up this business when they were 7 and this business when they were 10 and they were, you know, maybe selling sweets, but they had this entrepreneurial spirit and I didn't had that, like, I didn't. I'd never done anything of note. And so I think I just had no expectation of myself and I don't think anyone around me had any expectation of me either. And so it just felt surreal on every single level. And also, as I said, like, when I started cooking this way, it was so kind of left field. The idea that also you could take this and it be so kind of central to mainstream culture and media and landscape felt really odd as well. And I. I wish I'd enjoyed it more and I wish I'd felt more proud of it because at the time I just felt so overwhelmed, so cripplingly anxious because it's that strange thing where, like, gosh, by no means, like, was I saying, like, I was so famous, but you were very relevant and kind of current at that time. And suddenly you guys, I know, be walking down Oxford street or walking through the park and people talk about you, not to you, or they'd like point. And it was so strange. And don't forget I was so young and I'd spent the last few years really ill. My self esteem was really low. And I think there was this just sense of like, what is going on? But equally it was so clear that there was this massive opportunity and obviously desperate to kind of fulfill something with it.

[John Evans]

I love how you described not being an overachiever, being the average kid in the class and so on. But like, that doesn't happen. Your success doesn't happen by accident, does it? You must have put a lot of work and a lot into building it, surely, to get.

[Ella Mills]

Oh, I worked on it 24 7. Like, I was obsessed. I mean, I have been the whole time. It was a real. It was such a passion project because it had. Delicious Yellow changed my life. It like gave me my life back in a hundred different ways. And so. And there was this amazing community and I was talking to all of them every day. Like, I would answer every direct message on Instagram or every comment, every blog comment, like every email. I was so kind of desperate to spread the word, to help people, to have this positive impact on the, on the food landscape. Like I. I so wanted it. And then everything to me. And also I had had a few years of basically basic, total isolation. Like, I was so lonely, I had no purpose. I was so lost. And this had given it back. And as I said, I'm all or nothing. And so I had like dived in 300% and I had. It has. It was all I did. I just like. So, yeah, I was. It was 24 7. All I did was work on Delicious Yellow.

[John Evans]

Amazing. I mean, and it wasn't the, it wasn't the only book you did as well. You did a good five or six books followed as well, didn't it?

[Ella Mills]

The first one, yeah, I think the one I've just finished writing, one that will come out January and I think that's our eighth, which is.

[John Evans]

Wow, that's amazing.

[Ella Mills]

Yeah, it's a lot.

[John Evans]

Any advice on. I mean, I'm sure some. Plenty of people listening that I really would love to do a book. Any advice on how to do. Given that you've had such success with books, any advice on how to nail a book launch?

[Ella Mills]

It's a great question. I think it. I mean, look, I think it's really hard. The world today is so much harder to launch anything in than it was when we started. And I don't mean to be like a Debbie Downer, but I think it. It's just so noisy and there's so much free content. And that didn't exist when. When I started publishing and when we started building our community. You know, it's the really early stages of social media and blogs and things like that, and it was just such a different landscape and I think so I think for me, it's always been. It's always been this kind of guiding light of, like, is it actually useful? Like, does this. Will this genuinely be tangible to someone's life and benefit it in a meaningful way? Because if it doesn't, I think particularly now, it's very hard to believe it has cut through. And I think that, for me, has always been the kind of guiding light of, like, we could have licensed the brand to do infinite number of things and made a lot of money from it, but it's not useful, and therefore I don't think it has longevity.

[John Evans]

I mean, one of the things that I think is pretty impressive about what you've done is you've built the brand before the business, and a lot of people do it the other way around. They build a business and they try and create a brand, but actually, like, if you take your blog, your blog then created permissions through the app, didn't it? And then once the app was successful, you got permission to then turn that into a book. So it kind of compounds on, you know, it kind of builds on each other, doesn't it?

[Ella Mills]

100%. And actually that was both in terms of, like, the kind of community and having people to sell to. Um, but it was also financial because each thing funded the next stage. And so, you know, when we launched our products, we didn't need to raise money because we had the money from the book, sales from the app, et cetera. And so it meant we kept control of it. But very clear to say this was an accident. Like, I didn't mean to create a brand. So I'm always really conscious, really easy to say here today, I had this great strategy.

[John Evans]

Everyone's a genius in retrospect, aren't they?

[Ella Mills]

It wasn't a strategy. It was just this, like, passionate excitement and obsession with what Delicious Yellow was and the community. And that then unfolded all of these different opportunities.

[John Evans]

Yeah, I mean, you were talking a bit earlier as well about how you kind of replied to every message and engage with everybody. How have you managed to scale that? Because, like, you know, onto your eighth book and you got a podcast as well, you know, there's Lots in the kind of media mix. How do you manage the scaling up of it all?

[Ella Mills]

Yeah, I mean, I think we kind of haven't to an extent, as in, I don't think that's replicable as you get bigger. And I think I really struggled with that because I felt this such deep personal responsibility to every single member of our community. And then it was actually my first daughter was born in 2019 that summer, and that was the summer where I had to kind of have quite a hard look at myself of like, this is not sustainable. Like, I remember being up at 2 o' clock in the morning or whatever it was, breastfeeding her, trying to reply to this, like, influx of direct messages and talking to Sarah in York about whether she could swap cashews for peanuts in this recipe. And my husband just being like, you have to stop. Like, it's not sustainable. And it really, really wasn't. And, you know, I think it's. When you look at people often from the outside and you obviously just don't get the full picture. And I think it's really important to say, like, you know, I built the business very much with my husband as well. Like, we have had no life whatsoever. You know, we've got our children, we've got two children who are nearly five and nearly six now, and they get a lot of our time, a huge amount of it, and work as the rest. And, you know, there was no. There's no way to dedicate yourself to building a business and believe you can also do an infinite number of other things. But when the girls were born, you know, I'd given 100 of my 100% of myself to work and obviously I. That wasn't sustainable, having two small children and that had to shift and I found that really, really, really hard.

[John Evans]

I can imagine any. I mean, looking back any. Anything you do differently or any advice on someone else, because it's life changing, isn't it, when you have kids and suddenly they are everything, aren't they?

[Ella Mills]

Totally. And they need.

[John Evans]

World never goes back, does it?

[Ella Mills]

Exactly. And I don't know. I don't know what the advice almost I'd give myself in retrospect, was, I think, you know, because really it was to let go a bit. But then I think that's what built so much of the meaning in the company and I hope, kind of gives it that little bit of magic and difference that that lasts indefinitely. So I think it needed that obsession. Yeah, Like, I think it needed that desire to do that. And I don't think that can really be replaced by other people. Like, yes, of course, we've got great personal customer service. And of course, like, you know, AI is coming into that now. And of course, there's a practical element of, yeah, sure, you can double that recipe or it freezes really well, but you can't replicate the. I don't think you can kind of replicate that personal touch or expect anybody else to want to do it to the extent that you're willing to.

[John Evans]

Yeah. And in a sense, as well, I meet lots of founders, and one of the wildest stories was the founder of a US Soda brand called Poppy. Yeah, of course, she pitched to. To the sharks, right?

[Ella Mills]

Yeah.

[John Evans]

Nine months pregnant.

[Ella Mills]

Yeah, I so get that.

[John Evans]

You know, Wild, isn't it? And I think she was as a third kid as well. I'm just like, that is insane.

[Ella Mills]

You know, But, I mean, I went back to work and I do not say this proudly at all. I say this, like, I think it's reflective of the kind of insanity that takes you over as you're building a business. Like, I went back to work when sky, my elder daughter, was four weeks old. Like, that's mad. That's a mad, mad thing to do. But I kind of felt. I mean, there's parts of it that you have to do. Like, we're just not a big enough company. You know, have investors. Like, you know, no one else can do parts of your job. Like, you've built so much, you kind of have to go back. But then there's bits of it that I'm like, I don't think I had to do all of those other things that I put pressure on myself to do because I felt this. Yeah. This responsibility.

[John Evans]

Yeah, I bet. What's it been like? Like running a business with your husband as well. That's. That's an unusual dynamic. How's that? How's that been?

[Ella Mills]

Look, it's not for everyone. I think the number one thing to say is you've got to be fundamentally both completely the same and ultimate opposites, which is quite an unusual thing to be, which is what we are, which is like, on the surface, we have the exact same kind of values. Belief, vision, purpose, and work. As I said, like, it is our life, and we've loved that. But equally, when it comes to what our day jobs are, we couldn't be more different if we tried. And that was. We met just after my book had come out, about a month after it had come out, and I was kind of inundated with opportunities of things I could do. With deliciousiella, particularly. Particularly licensing it for things. And I didn't want to do any of that. Like, I didn't want to. I wanted the kind of integrity of the company to always remain. And he was working in finance, hated his job was one. He's one of those people that had always tried to be an entrepreneur and had that in his blood, which I don't. I think it was right time, right place, personal passion. And it was so clear. Like, he started asking me questions and he was like, well, what spreadsheet have you got for this? And I was like, well, I don't have one. I've got this piece of paper and it says we're doing really well. And so, you know, and again, I don't say that to talk myself down. I think, you know, my strength was the brand, it was the mission, it was the community, it was the recipes. It was like the essence of what Delicious Yellow is. But you don't succeed having a great brand in the long run if you don't have a great business but behind it. And that was so where he sat. And he loves business, he loves building business. And so it was such an obvious partnership, ultimately, of how I wanted this to. To reach as many people as possible. He was desperate to kind of build a business and get out of the day job. And so we. We started working together. And obviously when you're little and you know, as in, like early on in your business and there's two people in the team, three, four, five people, you are always together and you. I don't know if that's sustainable forever, like, to work like that. Maybe it is, maybe it wouldn't be. But ultimately, as we grow, you know, we've. We've ended up doing completely different things. And like, whilst we used to go into the office most days together and come home most days together, we would actually, over time, started seeing each other for like 10 minutes or we'd go and grab some lunch together, but actually we'd be in like one meeting a week together.

[John Evans]

So it's not like literally you're spending every hour together.

[Ella Mills]

No, we were when we started the first few years, and that's. That was amazing because it was such a kind of shared responsibility and excitement and it's just like pure adrenaline, I think, getting you through that. But I don't know if that's completely sustainable. And as we've grown and I think you need to have autonomy, don't you? And I think ultimately you get autonomy by having different remits and having different strengths. And I think it also is that sense of, you know, divide and conquer. Like you can do more because you're both and you trust each other implicitly to go and do what. What your job is.

[John Evans]

Now, talking about turning the brand into a business around 2015, is that when you started actually creating your first product that launched, Am I right saying it's Starbucks? That's certainly where I first came across you, was the energy balls in Starbucks were very different as a kind of concept. So how did you go from kind of creating recipes, building a following, all that kind of thing, then to having a product that's in some of the biggest retailers in the country?

[Ella Mills]

Yeah. So beginning of 2015, that's when the book came out. And that was the moment that we went kind of from, yes, a big community, but online and niche, and if you didn't know about it, you'd never heard of it, into the kind of mainstream. And that was when we started talking about actually, like, let's take this opportunity and let's run with it and let's build something. And so we. And then we launched the products early 2016, so. And Starbucks was our first customer after Whole Foods, which was again, very.

[John Evans]

I know a little bit about that. I spent most of my career in fmcg. I've been selling to everybody. I say Starbucks is probably the hardest customer in the world to get into because the range of things they sell are tiny. Right. It's obviously their own brand, isn't it? And then there's like about five other brands in the whole thing. How do you convince someone of that size, get behind?

[Ella Mills]

Honestly, this was. I think this kind of was a really fascinating moment, but for me, we're looking back on it in the journey, which was that we had. So Matt and I, again, we've always been very. My husband very kind of keen on, like, what are we good at and what are we not good at? What do we know and what do we not know? And we were like, right, we've got the brand covered, we've got the kind of financial side of it covered through. Through him. But, like, neither of us have ever worked in this industry. And so we were like, well, we've got to hire someone who's going to be brilliant. And so. And as I said, I didn't have a huge amount of confidence. Matt was much more confident at this point. And he was like, well, if innocent with the kind of best in class at this. I mean, at this point in time. And so he was like, well, let's look at the best person there that we could hire. And so he was straight on LinkedIn and found this guy who was head of Innovation Innocent at the time and sent him an email. He was like, hey, my wife and I started a company like don't you desperately want to quit your great job and come and get involved? And he did. And I still like, he's still, he's a friend and he's a great guy and we worked together for a long time and I always look at it and I'm like, I cannot believe you took this the job. Like I remember we met him and I was just like, there's no way he's going to come and join. But again it was the beauty of the fact that we had built this brand and he could see it. Like they had talked about it in the Innocent offices and like this is really disruptive in food and like it's a different way of cooking and people are talking about it. And I think for him he was like, this is a really interesting opportunity to kind of jump. And now he's been CEO of lots of food businesses. And so actually I think it was an interesting career move for him. But he came to join and he said just what you said about Starbucks. And but Matt was like, well no, because our aim is to change the food landscape. Like why do things have to have so many ultra processed foods? And you know, let's do it differently, let's scale up with 100% natural ingredients. And the way to do that is through snacking because that's how you get front of the store and build that visibility. And if we're going to do that and we really want to change the way people eat, it's not necessarily at this point about being kind of back of store, multi pack in your big retailers. This is about being very kind of incidental purchase when you're out and about and getting people to switch their habits around. So we need to be somewhere like Starbucks. I was like lol. We have a blog and a cookbook like good for us three man band here. And so and lots of manufacturers wouldn't work with us because we wouldn't use flavorings, emulsifiers. So they either said it wasn't possible or it was too expensive. And so we eventually found a manufacturer. And so Matt again was on LinkedIn and he found the, I think it was the MD of the UK business and just tried like 10 different iterations of his name with dots, you know, [e-mail] et cetera and one of them got through and Dan was, you know, who came to work with us, was very like, oh, you know, cautioned here that these are really difficult people to work with from his experience. We had an email back 15 minutes later, would love to meet you guys, can you come in next week? And again we were like geared up for this really hard meeting and we arrived and they had goodie bags for us and it was like, when can we stock it? We'd love it next month. And we were like, we don't have any stock, but obviously you're there and you're like, we'll do it.

[John Evans]

Of course we'll do it.

[Ella Mills]

Yeah, absolutely. And then at the same time we had opened a cafe again as a way of kind of bringing community together. And we were taking it to a festival. And so we were then there the next day. And I still remember it, we sold 1.5 tons of avocado toast in of the avocado to go on the toast in under 24 hours. Cause again, healthy eating had just taken off. But there wasn't anyone else doing it there. Cause it was so new and we had this line and people being like, why is it sold out? Meanwhile you're in the back like desperately trying to contract manufacturers, packaging, assure Starbucks, sure, we can do this, no problem, we'll launch next month. And so that was the other moment you asked earlier, like when did it feel like something? That was when it also felt like something where it was. You had this just never ending queue of people for the food we were making. We were talking to Starbucks, we were about to start our first production. We met Waitrose very shortly after he agreed to take it. And again, this was the whole beauty. Like we had a brand, we had consumers to sell to. There was nothing like it in the market. It was a white space opportunity where it was such a trend and it wasn't being served. We had a brand to serve it. And that was why we kind of did throw ourselves at it. Like we really did work seven days a week, 24, seven, like no days off for the first five years. Like we, I think we canceled something like 17 attempts at a holiday because you've just like when those opportunities come, like the only thing you can do is run with it.

[John Evans]

Yeah.

[Ella Mills]

And if you don't, someone else will.

[John Evans]

Yeah, it's, I mean it's so true. I mean getting into Starbucks is, is a one in a million shot, isn't it? It's just one of those things. It's also amazing brand build it's like literally, I mean, talk about shop windows, isn't it?

[Ella Mills]

But which is what we wanted.

[John Evans]

Shop window, you get in terms of getting people to try it. Did. Did you, like manufacturing get it in in a month? I mean, that's.

[Ella Mills]

I think it was like seven weeks.

[John Evans]

They gave you a little bit of wiggle room.

[Ella Mills]

Yeah, we did. We got it in. And so, yeah, we got it in, which was extraordinary. And that was so, so surreal. Like, just. And again, yeah, the moment was like, there must be something in this. Like, when a company like that has such open doors and gives you a goodie bag. Like, you were like, okay, we're not mad to quit our jobs and to go all in with this. There's something in it.

[John Evans]

And presumably the MD knew you who you were and had presumably read the cookbooks.

[Ella Mills]

Exactly. And we had just been everywhere for those, like, six months, all over the press, and there wasn't. It was really. We were really early mover in this space. And so I think it was like they could see this trend coming for natural, healthy. It wasn't. Well, it wasn't really served. And we were the kind of the brand of the moment, which is why, as I said, it was this sense of like, we have to throw everything at this because we won't be the brand of the moment next year and someone else will be. You know, no one's that relevant forever. But that was our kind of year of core relevancy, and if we didn't capitalize on it, we. We wouldn't be here today.

[John Evans]

It's a good lesson in taking the shot, isn't it? As in when something like that happens, just putting everything into making, you know, making it work and going for it. Because, I mean, you know, anyone who's not supplied those kind of retailers, there's a lot in terms of shelf life. You need logistics and pricing and, you know, managing stock. It's a very complicated thing to do. Managing your supply chain. It's not easy to make natural ingredients in the way you're trying to do as well.

[Ella Mills]

No, no.

[John Evans]

Yeah. What are the challenges you had to overcome to actually get it on the shelf?

[Ella Mills]

The biggest challenge was just that most people wouldn't make it for us because everyone was like, well, not going to do it without flavorings. I mean, the energy ball, for example, like, the core product was a market was graze, and they had like 20 to 25 different ingredients. And then we were like, we're going to make it with 4, 5, 6 ingredients. And, you know, people were just like, why? What a waste of time and money, you know, like, we can make it so much more efficiently by adding these ingredients and. And again, this evangelical, passionate. No, the integrity of the brand. I don't care that most consumers don't care. I don't care that they'll never read the back of packet. We are doing it differently. We are building a genuinely 100% natural brand and we will never compromise on that. And we've kind of stayed so true to that, which I'm so proud of. And obviously today the landscape is so different. I mean, there was a stat very recently showing almost 14 million consumers in the UK are trying to move away from ultra processed foods. Like now. I think we're so lucky. We've spent a decade learning how to scale up natural products. We know how to make them without flavorings, without emulsifiers, without stabilizers. Most companies don't, as you said, it's more expensive. We've kind of got all those structures right now. Consumers want it and now we can just fly, which is really, really exciting. But to start with, it was a huge amount of pushback of, like, what is the point?

[John Evans]

I can imagine your innocent high is quite inspired, actually, because it's very. It feels very similar to what Innocent did in soft drinks, which is my background, where everything is preserved and long shelf life, that kind of thing. And innocent went into. No, it's got to be fresh, it's got to be nothing but the fruits and, you know it's going to run out in six days.

[Ella Mills]

Exactly.

[John Evans]

Whereas in the supply chain in soft drinks it's usually nine months or 12 months. So it's a completely different game you get yourself into.

[Ella Mills]

Yeah, no, they were the kind of like absolute, like heroes of the day when we were starting and exactly that we looked at them, felt like they had been so, so disruptive and so different.

[John Evans]

So you started with the energy ball, right. And now you've got a whole portfolio of cereals and energy bars. How do you decide where to go from that initial incredible success that you had day one? How did it build from there?

[Ella Mills]

It was a mixture. It was either recipes that our community absolutely loved, or it was things like, for example, our oat bars, which are now our most popular range, that actually came back from a request from Tesco's who wanted us to make them. So that was the following year, that was 2017 and they wanted us to make them for them. And then again, like, as we said, you don't always see the kind of reality of what it takes to Build a business. What actually happens behind the scenes. So we did this for Tesco. Couldn't have been more excited. Obviously Tesco is the biggest retailer in the country and it was a complete failure. They didn't sell, they came out of market. I can't remember exactly how long, but say like nine months later, you know, tiny rate of sale. But we, we, again, we were looking at that category and being like, there's nothing else without multiplier stabilizers, blah, blah, blah, we're going to do it and we're going to revisit these, we're going to reformulate them, we're going to redo the packaging. We, we believe that there was something in this, but we didn't get it right first time. So, yeah, Tesco got rid of them and they were kind of, yeah, a failure. Rebuilt them, relaunched them and we made 25 million of them last year.

[John Evans]

Really?

[Ella Mills]

Yeah.

[John Evans]

So the product you'd had withdrawn out of testing.

[Ella Mills]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Has become our biggest wow. And it's like if you, you know, all the supermarkets we're in, like in Sainsbury's, fit right in the main aisle, all of the big cereal bars and they're like the top of the category. I mean, because of them, Delicious Yellow this year is the UK's fastest growing snack brand.

[John Evans]

Amazing.

[Ella Mills]

Which again, like, it's so. It was a failure. The product that's kind of captured, no.

[John Evans]

One ever talks about, no one's talking about. Because I have so many conversations with entrepreneurs and like behind every success is a ton of failures, but you just don't hear about them. Do you know?

[Ella Mills]

I mean, goodness me, so many failures. Like there's so many things that we got wrong and so many products that didn't work or we've reformulated and all the rest of it. And I think the thing is, is that now it's so easy to sit here today and like, open book, like lots of things didn't work, those products, you know, complete disaster. But you have to be really careful what you say at the time because it's not appropriate to often talk about these things publicly. You know, you don't want suppliers to be concerned you're going out of business, you don't want your team to be concerned. You know, if they think there's too many things going wrong, they'll be like, well, is this viable anymore? And I've always kind of been really, really conscious of that. But I think because these things aren't things you can talk about as they're happening for those Reasons I think people sometimes think they don't happen.

[John Evans]

That's very true. What have been the. Which of the sort of failures have kind of like hit you the most? What have been the sort of maybe the toughest moments for you?

[Ella Mills]

I think there's sort of one like complete, obvious standout. So when we, as I said, when we started, we opened one cafe and then two more. So we had three. One was more of a central kitchen with a very small thing attached to it. And one was. Our first one had 16 seats. It was teeny, it was completely unsustainable. So we opened a much big one down the road at the same time as we launched the products. And we weren't clear which route we would take essentially in terms of hospitality or products. It was very clear to both of us very quickly that hospitality required really needed us to raise money and we really didn't want to do that. We didn't want to bring anyone else in at this point because what we were doing was really different. And as I said, like, when we talk to manufacturers, they weren't really willing to not use certain ingredients, etc. And it was not trendy and we just, we didn't want to bring someone else in. And the products were absolutely flying. And the, the sites, we had always opened them with this belief that once we got to four sites, it would be as a kind of total operation, break even. At six sites, it becomes profitable. So all the sites were profitable at site level, but by three, you need some ops managers and things like that. So we knew this, this wasn't a like, oh my gosh, we're going bust moment. And the products, as I said, we got it to Starbucks, to Waitrose, to Sainsbury's, to Tesco. It's like we were just flying. I think we were in almost 5,000 stores a year later. And so we made the decision like, we're going to close the sites. This just doesn't make any sense. They're taking up a huge amount of time, a huge amount of money. We're going to keep the big one and we're going to turn it into a restaurant. And then the teeny one with 16 seats, scrap it. Central kitchen. We then don't need it anymore because we're not going to be supplying lots of sites. Let's close it. And in a very British like, let's cut down and put anyone back to size if they're succeeding. The press. I just had this field day with it and it was. The whole thing was like, ha, here's this young girl who is annoyingly privileged. Just. We don't like her anymore. She's had too much success. Look, she's failed. And it was this very bizarre celebration of this failure that wasn't a failure. It was a really conscious decision to choose one side of the business and cut the other, but keep the biggest sight of all. And it's. So anyway, and they wrote, like, I got a call from the CEO of Morrison saying, like, you guys going out of business?

[John Evans]

Oh, no.

[Ella Mills]

And we had. And so then all our retailers were, you know, because didn't mention the products. The articles. Didn't mention the products once. It didn't matter that we'd gone.

[John Evans]

But they made the connection between the.

[Ella Mills]

They basically were like, now we're going back. Well, the whole. The whole. All the articles were like, they found they're closing down. They're closing down.

[John Evans]

Oh, no.

[Ella Mills]

And that was the biggest. Like, obviously, also, it was so tough. Like, we made lots of people redundant. It was a horrible. It's a horrible thing to have to do anyway. Like. And. But you don't succeed in business if you don't make decisions. Like, you do pivot as you go. And, like, that was an important decision for us to make. Like, it wasn't plausible to scale that fast to fundamentally different operations. Like, you look at it. So they got to huge size before they went into retail. Like, you can't do them both at the same time. It's not a sensible decision. And that was what we decided to do. And so, yeah, that was. That was really difficult because there was this huge pleasure. It felt like people were taking in a failure that wasn't really a failure, and it put us really on the back foot. So, you know, when I said, like, we can't really talk about things that are going wrong as they're going wrong. Because that was such a great example. Like, we were really transparent about what we were doing and people were like, ha, What a failure. What a disaster. Told you so. She'd never make it. Which was really interesting.

[John Evans]

That is, isn't it? You are. I do wonder if that's a British thing. I know. I worked with a guy who launched a vitamin water drink and then went to the US and launched a nutrition. Nutrition subscription business. Really successful. And I remember him saying to me, he said, I'm loving la. And I'm like, well, of course weather's good. Yeah, you know, and he said, you know what? The moment I landed, everyone asked me about my business and everyone wants me to succeed and they Just assume it's going to be a wild success, you know, whereas in. Whereas I fly back to the UK and I see people and they just. The default assumption is like, oh, must be going wrong. You know, we kind of talk. We talk ourselves down.

[Ella Mills]

Yeah, I think we do, because that's kind of our society, which is fairly odd, and we desperately need more entrepreneurs and we desperately need more people to start businesses, but we don't. Yeah. Is that when you're starting? I think people are like, yes, good for you. But then I don't know if we're as receptive as things.

[John Evans]

The moment something goes wrong, it's like, I told you so I knew that was it.

[Ella Mills]

I knew she was a moron. It's kind of the general sentiment. So that was really interesting. That was hard to recover from, actually, because the sentiment was, they're a complete failure and we're like, whoa, whoa. No, we're growing so fast.

[John Evans]

You've obviously made lots of decisions as you go, how do you manage the kind of the risk and return? Because you need to invest in the business, you need to hire people and grow. So how have you kind of managed that balance between, you know, taking the risk, like opening. Opening, you know, outlets? Yeah, of course, you know, because it. That's quite.

[Ella Mills]

Well, I think the thing that sort of helped in lots of ways is like, we. We didn't have external capital and so we had to live within our means. And if you have to live within your means, you can't make that many decisions. And interestingly, again, like in the earlier stages, I think a lot of our team found that very frustrating because this was the moment, like 2017, of 0% interest rates, and everyone was raising so much money and spending so much money on ads and all sorts of amazing events and things like that. And we were like, we've got five pounds on Instagram. We just didn't have any money to spend on marketing, none at all. And so we couldn't do all of these things that other brands were doing because we were like, no, we have to live within our means and if it's not profitable, we can't do it. So we said no to a lot of things. And I think that was such a different way of operating. Whereas obviously, now, again, the world looks so different and all of those businesses are scrambling to make themselves profitable because now the expectation is you should be profitable and you should live on those profits and spend accordingly in our industry. So it feels like there's been a huge, huge change. And so we're like oh well we're practice at doing that. That's great. And it's kind of normal now and that's, that's really helpful. But to start with it was really hard but I think it has taught me quite a lot in terms of again, every industry is so different but I think if we're looking at our industry, I think there's, it's a kind of ego boost of spending huge amounts of money on above the line and all the rest of it. It feels really good, like it's so cool but I don't know how much it always does in terms of genuinely meaningful business growth. And you know, we, when we, we sold delicious yellow last year and we had a smaller brand plants that we spun out of there and it's tiny comparatively and it's really new and we've got a team of four people and you know, we are on a kind of zero spend drive essentially as you know, in startup mode. And the rates of sale are absolutely extraordinary. You know, we're top of the category and we didn't even post on social media for six months because we were, you know, figuring we were rebranding and all the rest of it. So, so in the time that we didn't post on social media and we spent literally zero pounds, we just kept growing and the rates of sale are kind of top of the category all round and we're most incremental brand in the category and all the rest of it. And I don't know, I just, I kind of keep coming back to like actually I think there's, there can be a bit of fluff in it. And I'm not saying it all is. God, it's not. You've got, you know, to build a brand you've got to be doing things. But I think it's, it did teach me something. Cause I would be envious of those brands, to be honest, where I was like, I wish we could do this, I wish we could have this amazing stand at this trade show. And it was like I was like this big tiny table and actually I look at it and I think some of those things obviously pay off but I think a huge amount of them don't.

[John Evans]

Well, I think, I think what you've done incredibly well though is you've built your own media channel and you're, you know, you've got your book, you got your blogs, you got, you know, you got, we've got podcasts as well. Right. And, and you basically built your own brand and your own media channel. So you can talk to what, tens, hundreds of thousands of people every single week?

[Ella Mills]

Yeah, exactly. And we can talk straight to them, which is absolutely amazing.

[John Evans]

Yeah. And they're captivated audience. They buy into you because they care and they want, you know, they want to eat better and they want to follow what you're doing as well, which I think is huge.

[Ella Mills]

Yeah.

[John Evans]

The rate of sale thing is really interesting because I know in my career, what I've noticed is like, that is the moment of truth, isn't it? The moment the product's on the shelf and also whatever it does almost in week one is how it will do. You just know. It's one of those instant feedback things, isn't it? You go, right, where am I ranking in the, you know, in the rate of sale charts? And it will be that.

[Ella Mills]

It will be that. I totally agree. And obviously you'll climb a bit because implementation will get better and you'll do a good promo and things like that. But I agree, definitely for us, things that have started at the top generally stay at the top, and things that have started at the bottom generally come out. Margaret, after a little bit. I don't think we've had anything that after a month isn't performing that suddenly becomes this massive performer. Obviously, I said about the oat bars earlier, but we scrapped those, we rebranded them, we reformulate. They were quite different when they came. Came back.

[John Evans]

And how do you make decisions then, on how do you test to make sure that what's going to be supplied, Tesco, is going to work in terms of product? Because you've got a big product range now, how do you kind of pick the winners?

[Ella Mills]

We've really whittled down the range actually, over the last few years and I think our sense was like, to start with, innovation was everything and it was this sense of, like, let's try everything and we'll see what works and, like, don't be afraid of failure. Like, there's lots of products that come out of market quite quickly, but we've switched, you know, we got the sweatshirt space, we got the footprint and we switched them in for something else, which I think's been really helpful. And now it's actually like, no, we've got our core range and it's working really, really well and that's just really double down on that as opposed to chasing endless innovation.

[John Evans]

And like you say, do you know, I remember I worked in, in, in Juice and like, I. I could literally walk anywhere and tell you what order things sell based on. There's like, right you want the orange and passion fruit at the top, you know. Exactly. The rhubarb will be at the bottom. Yes, you just know, because like people have preferences for certain taste profiles, you know, of course, don't change, you know.

[Ella Mills]

And they really don't change. And I remember early on someone saying, like, you can't change the way consumers operate. Like, you just can't. Like they'll shop where they want to shop in the way that they want to shop for the flavors to a point that they want to shop. And I think again, what we've also seen obviously kind of existing in the world of health and wellness that has boomed like there's no tomorrow over the last decade when we started to now, there've been so many trends, you know, it's been extraordinary. And we've seen so many brands kind of come and go as they're like and they're huge because they're so trend led. And then the next year it's another trend and it's so cyclical and instead we're like, no, we're just going to stay in our lane. We're going to focus on things that taste good at the right price point, at the right price, the right place in store. And actually, again, like, I think the longevity of that is higher, albeit tempting to jump on trends. You know, we've seen it in our space in the kind of meat mimic category. It's everything and now it's nothing.

[John Evans]

Yeah, I like, I think it's Jeff Bezos that said this. The tell me what won't change in the future and I'll build a business on that. Yeah, you know, because you're right. You gotta balance kind of as you've innovated with kind of plant based food, but also making sure you deliver what you know, people want.

[Ella Mills]

Totally. And like our best flavors, you know, apple and raisin and peanut butter, like, you know. Yes, we've, you know, we've done it a little bit differently in the sense of like the formulation with the ingredients that we use versus the convention, as we said, without using ultra processed foods. But the flavor profile is the flavor profile that people like and are comfortable with. And when we've got funkier flavors, they just can't be apple and raisin.

[John Evans]

Yeah, totally agree. It's fun actually, in my day job at System where we had this phrase called 80% familiar, 20% new, and we've actually measured like, I think it's something like 60,000 different bits of innovation. And we've measured how people respond emotionally to Them and the optimum mix is you want to do about 80% happiness and about 20% surprise. So it's good to have a bit of surprise as in, oh, this is plant based. I didn't realize. But then you need to offset that with oh yeah, it's apple and raisin. I know what that's going to be like kind of thing. If you mix both. If you go like it's plant based and it's kind of, you know, wild flower from some remote island or something, then they go, what on earth is this? It's too much to kind of comprehend.

[Ella Mills]

I love that. 80, 20. I hadn't had it. Hadn't. Yeah. Heard it in that way. I totally agree with you. And I think exactly our 20% was like it's 100% natural, it's plant based. That's novel, that's different.

[John Evans]

That's your 20%. Right. And then the rest you just go. And I know what I'm guessing with granola.

[Ella Mills]

Exactly. Yeah. It's an oat bar. I don't think. You know, as we said, we've done all sorts of innovations, all sorts of funky things, but our oat bars are our best sellers. Followed by granola.

[John Evans]

Totally. In fact, I've met some tech people and they were saying the equivalent phrase in tech is called maya, which is most advanced yet acceptable. And most tech does most advanced and they don't do the yet acceptable kind of thing actually as most of us who are not massively into tech would just need something that's a little bit different to what we have today. But if you make too big a jump, then people just. And that's why you have so many brands, I think that are too early, we say before their time because they've just to ahead of that curve.

[Ella Mills]

Totally. And look, I think a huge amount of success is right time, right place and we were right time, right place and we threw everything at it. And I think there's so much in that be it like being the right place for social media's early days and the blog's early days. It wasn't equally. No one else was really sharing these sorts of recipes. So we had such a first mover advantage and I think it changed everything.

[John Evans]

You also. I was gonna cause this year. You sold the business last year, didn't you?

[Ella Mills]

Yeah.

[John Evans]

But you've now pulled a brand out of potential insolvency, didn't you? With all plants as well. What was the thinking behind that?

[Ella Mills]

Love to keep going, do lots of different things.

[John Evans]

You're not Going to take us some time off and sit on a beach somewhere?

[Ella Mills]

No, I don't think. Not yet. Not, not at the moment. No. I think it's so yeah. So we had this plants brand which is actually with Delicious Yellow like the core recipes in the books and things like that had always been savory. It was like quick stir fries and salads and things and actually. But because we started snacking to this point at getting to front of st store and you know, all the eyeballs on you, it was quite hard in store to transition Delicious Ciella away from snacks and cereals into savory food. And so we had this opportunity with waitrose back in 2023 to launch a natural plant based brand for them basically. So we created this brand Plants with Waitrose, we developed it, but it was for Waitrose and we launched 50 products in six months.

[John Evans]

50.

[Ella Mills]

Yeah. It was.

[John Evans]

Honestly that's a logistical nightmare.

[Ella Mills]

It was so stressful again and do you know what as we were saying was opportunities like we were coming out of COVID as a brand that had always been brand first and very like team focused. We completely lost our mojo. Like there felt like no momentum that had all gone during COVID and we desperately needed something big, like a big moment to get it back. And so when we got this opportunity and obviously developing 50 products and getting them to launch in six months with literally three people doing it, it's kind of insanity. It was like we need this, we need a moment, we need something that's special. And so we, we ran after that. We obviously did not expect all 50 products to work but. And they didn't. Some have been amazing successes, some rates out of zero basically and they've gone now. But then when we sold Delicious Yellow, Matthew and I bought the plants brand out of there which was so excited about because this natural plant base feels like a very underserved, underserved part of store on the back of the meat mimic kind of collapse and then. But we've always really admired the all Plants brand and it went into administration around the same time that we were taking Plants into into its own company. And the two just felt like they had very similar values, very similar community of people and so actually they make more sense together to really try and be a kind of powerhouse when it comes to plant based. And so we had the opportunity to buy the trademark, so we did and we're currently redoing our packaging and things to really try and bring the two brands together. But it's really exciting, it's performing really.

[John Evans]

Well, well, what is it? Because I mean plant based has kind of gone through a bit of a, I mean, like, you know, placement. A bit wild, isn't it? Like it's the biggest thing and it's not. Some of the businesses are, you know, kind of like valued like.com businesses. And it's just been a wild journey, isn't it? I mean, what's where, where's the kind of market and what do you think's going to happen next?

[Ella Mills]

And that's been so interesting for us to watch. You know, we were saying a minute ago about not jumping on trends. Obviously we're a plant based company and everyone's like, well this is what's cool right now. Like why aren't you making meat mimics? Like, because that's the antithesis of what we're about. Like we're natural. Plant based is about more almonds, more carrots, more lentils. This is not about mimics, it's not who we are. We're not going to do it. But I felt like we were in the industry very uncool at that point, very irrelevant. And that was quite challenging. And you know that again the temptation to jump on these things is there because it's an obvious opportunity but it would have been so against our brand standards again for longevity. It's just not the right thing to do. And I think we always felt this would come around because ultimately it's still ultra processed food. And so for the vast majority of people who just want to eat more veg and vaguely flexitarian, if you're going to have a meat free meal, you probably want it to be like aubergine and carrots, not, not a mimic because it's not as healthy, you know, it doesn't necessarily taste as good anyway. And so, so yeah, it's been a complete boom or bust. The categories in horrendous decline and it's so fragmented. You've got so many tiny brands selling very, very random things. You've got seven different plant based bacons or whatever it is. And it's just, it's just the category needs such a huge overhaul which all the big retailers are now doing, which is really interesting to talk to them about and be a part of. But there's such an obvious opportunity for those people who just want simple, natural plant based food and that's not really being served, which is obviously what we want to do with plants and all plants.

[John Evans]

Yeah, I mean that's something I love about the books you've written as well, is how you Focus on making it easy as well. I think in all this innovation, people forget that the best chance you got is to make it easy for people to be healthy. Right.

[Ella Mills]

100%.

[John Evans]

I think you've absolutely nailed in, kind of. Because eating healthy can be hard. I mean, like so hard. And I did the Zoe thing and my man, I was like, you know, it's hard yards just to do the research and think about it and plan and get the ingredients and it's really hard, for sure.

[Ella Mills]

And people are so busy and generally quite overwhelmed. And so I think I've always taken the approach and it was honestly the foundations of Delicious Yellow, which is like, for anything to be sustainable, it has to be enjoyable. And I think enjoyable is two pronged. It tastes good, obviously, when you're talking about food, but also has to be achievable, like it has to fit in your life. And I think, you know, the average person in the UK does 126 fad diets in their lifetime.

[John Evans]

Really?

[Ella Mills]

Yeah. And, you know, I want about six.

[John Evans]

You've got a way to go that's insane.

[Ella Mills]

It's mad, isn't it? And you know, and it's because they don't last. Like, you know, you'll gung ho for a week and then life gets in the way and you're like, this is not sustainable, I cannot keep this up. Which is again, it's like, if it doesn't taste good, if it's not easy, everyone's going to give up on it really quickly. And again, I think they, you know, obviously we've got decades to go and we know the business isn't that old, but 10 plus years in, I think they're. I think, I would say that's the ultimate testament to the brand is like, it just tastes good and it's. And you understand what it is. And I think that people can sway into all sorts of other things, but they always come back.

[John Evans]

So many parallels to my drinks experience because I've done so much research in my career on what makes a drink sell. And number one, it doesn't matter what category, it's gotta taste good. And this is why I can go to any kind of cafe, any shop and I could rank the products and go, that's the highest seller, that's the lowest seller. Because, you know, taste is everything's the primary motivator for everything. It's got to taste good. And then you'll come back to it. Yeah, maybe to round us off then, as I've got a fellow podcast host on the podcast. Congratulations on the podcast success by the way. And you've talked about some lots of hot topics as well on the podcast. What's it been about and what are the kind of hot topics you've been covering?

[Ella Mills]

Well, as we were saying, the world of health and wellness has kind of exploded in the last 10 years or so and it's been for me, it's been a really interesting and I think to me now, really frustrating watch, which is like it's great that people are talking about health and wellness, but we're a situation in the most reductive terms where like 99 plus percent of the UK population know they should eat their five a day. The most recent research that came out a few weeks ago shows 1 in 5 of us manage it and it's 1 in 10 teenagers, like if you want. Just like the basic fact of how poorly we collectively eat. I think as that obviously again like almost 1 in 5 people, 80% their calories come from UPFs. 90% of people don't even have fiber. Like we're really struggling and then HS is kind of collapsing under the weight of it all. So I think for me, I feel this again, this never ending sense of passion to really try and make a difference in it. But I find it so ironic that the world of wellness is so enormous in trillion dollar industry and we're being sold every powder and gadget and gizmo under the sun and people are so tempted by all of these quick fixes and yet nothing's clearly working. This gulf between the conversation that's happening, the all sorts of fancy things that are being sold and our day to day habits is so far removed from one another. It feels very ironic to be honest. And I think for me, the podcast, and I do it with a friend of mine, Rhiannon Lambert, who's a brilliant nutritionist, is like what's going on in the news, you know, whether it's the zempic, whether it's the new government plans on obesity, you know, trends, cortisol, whatever it is and try and break them down for people like what's actually going on here? What's this study actually about? What's relevant to your life and what can we park? Yeah, there's a lot of parking.

[John Evans]

I bet there is. I mean that's the thing I find really difficult is like there's so much fact and fiction out there and it's just like navigating through this particular diet. Oh, it's all about this and then it's suddenly about that. And then what you thought yesterday is no longer true. And it's like, it's really, really hard.

[Ella Mills]

Almost 98% of the information, nutritional information on social media, again, this is relatively recent information is either misleading or wrong and goes against the British public health guidelines. And I think lots of it's misleading versus kind of fundamentally wrong. But it's the world of social media that we live in now because of the algorithm changes that TikTok kind of ushered in. It's all clickbait. Everything's clickbait and everything's virality. And nuance doesn't have virality. You know, eat a few more vegetables, but don't worry if you eat a Mars bar, it doesn't have virality. And so the problem is that gets lost. And as a result, result, because it's such an important kind of financial stream for so many people, it has to be like, this is the three things that will kill you this week. That doesn't help anybody eat better, but it does create virality. And so I think that's the problem, is so much information has become conflicting, dogmatic, extreme, because that's what creates clickbait and that's what therefore succeeds on social media. And nuance doesn't really do that, which is a shame.

[John Evans]

It is a massive show. And look, that's also why podcasts so cool, right? Because people will sit and listen for 45 minutes to an hour and really understand the nuance.

[Ella Mills]

Exactly.

[John Evans]

I think, you know, the success of podcasts in the last few years, I think, has hopefully provided a channel by which that nuance can live. Yeah. Well, listen, congratulations. I love hearing your story. It's just absolutely delightful to hear. And congratulations on all the success and on what's coming next as well. I watch with interest to see how it all does.

[Ella Mills]

Oh, thanks for having me.

[John Evans]

Thank you very much for listening or watching Uncensored cmo. I hope you enjoyed that. If you did, please, please do hit the subscribe button wherever you get your podcast. If you're watching, hit subscribe there as well. I'd also love to get a review. Reviews make a big difference on other people discovering the show. So please do leave a review wherever you get your podcast. If you want to contact me, you can do. I'm over on X Uncensored CMO or on LinkedIn where I'm under my own name, John Evans. Thanks for listening and watching. I'll see you next.