Deliciously Ella, the plant-based food brand started by the food blogger Ella Mills, has been sold in a move that mean its oat bars and energy balls are sold all over the world.
Although the price paid by Swiss food group Hero has not been disclosed, Mills and her husband Matthew are expected to bank millions after turning the website she started in her parents’ kitchen, aged 21, into a healthy eating empire.
Deliciously Ella was initially all about Mills, who is a member of the Sainsbury food dynasty, herself. The blog, started in 2012 to share the vegan meals and snacks she was eating after suffering a health crisis, snowballed into a bestselling cookbook and, by 2016, a supermarket food range.
The takeover by Hero brings Deliciously Ella under the same umbrella as the Organix brand which, with its “melty carrot puffs” and “strawberry weaning wands”, is a favourite with middle-class parents.
“What started as a small recipe website and a cookbook has become something bigger than either of us could have imagined,” the couple said in a joint statement confirming the sale. “We have had numerous approaches to sell or partner with other food companies over the years, but only this one felt right.”
They added: “Hero has brands all over the world and a proven track record in helping brands reach much greater scale. This is a transformational moment in bringing our natural, plant-based ranges to more people, both in the UK and abroad.”
Although by 2017 there would be a backlash against the type of “clean eating” regime Mills was seen to espouse, it did not hold back the success of the vegan food brand.
With her husband – son of the late Labour cabinet minister Tessa Jowell – as chief executive, the business has experienced rapid growth. Revenues at the profitable group had grown to £24m in 2023, according to the most recent set of accounts at Companies House.
Available in most supermarkets, Deliciously Ella has shifted more than 100m of its cereal bars and granola packs to date and “sells a product every second”. Its products are seen to fit the bill at a time when Britons are eager to make healthier food choices.
In a recent interview Mills suggested that over the past decade the brand had helped bring food traditionally found in health food shops to the mainstream. “A lot of [health] food had very little flavour and a holier-than-thou cardboardy feel to it,” she said. “It seems amazing now but no one was selling avocado on toast back then.”
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Key to Deliciously Ella’s success has been a large social media following, which at 4 million is said to be the biggest of any vegan brand. The eponymous app boasts of 1.4m recipe downloads, and Mills’s seven cookbooks have shifted nearly 1.5m copies worldwide.
Hero, based in Lenzburg in Switzerland, said the deal would enable it to enter the UK snack market with a brand that “shares a similar way of thinking, values and mission”. Last year the group had a turnover of CHF1.2bn (£1.1bn).
The Swiss group bills itself as being on a “mission to delight consumers by conserving the goodness of nature”. It wanted to sell “natural, healthy food to consumers”, said Rob Versloot, Hero’s chief executive, adding that “Deliciously Ella is a perfect fit for us.”
After the sale, 70 employees will join Hero including the Mills, with Matthew staying on as chief executive and Ella in the role of “founder/brand ambassador”. The couple are tasked with leading the “next stage of growth”, which in the short term includes an assault on the US market, where its oat bar range is set to go on sale in the Whole Foods chain.
