Mindful Chef

Building a digitally-native brand legend that makes healthy eating easy.

Invested £6m in 2018, exited to Nestle in 2020 

The growing importance of healthy eating to consumers cannot be overstated. Yet our busy lives make it harder than ever to devote time and effort to sourcing then cooking balanced and nutritious meals. When it comes to food, convenience is king.

It’s a problem that Rob Grieg-Gran, Giles Humphries and Myles Hopper understood – then set out to solve with Mindful Chef. The trio, childhood friends from school, had one goal: to make healthy eating easy. In doing so, they have together created the UK’s favourite healthy recipe box brand.

All meals are nutritionally balanced, gluten and dairy free and contain no refined carbohydrates or sugars. All ingredients are fresh, high quality and sustainably sourced from local farmers where possible.  Each week, 16 different recipes are available for customers to select from.

For the growing number of UK consumers seeking out a healthier lifestyle, Mindful Chef not only helps them discover and cook quick and tasty recipes conveniently and quickly but it also helps them to reduce food wastage by providing only the food they need to eat. Customers can also return their packaging free of charge.

The brand is mindful both in name and nature. Through every meal purchased, Mindful Chef’s charity, One Feeds 2, donates a meal to a child in poverty. To date the company has provided more than five million meals for children in need. In 2018, Mindful Chef was officially certified as a B-Corp status company, joining a global movement of organisations that balance purpose and profit and use business as a force for good.

The brand’s focus on health and nutrition has also seen Mindful Chef appointed the official nutrition partner for the English Institute of Sport while its partnership with the British Heart Foundation aims to raise awareness of how a healthy, balanced diet can help support heart and circulatory health. Testament to this, Sir Andy Murray, Victoria Pendleton CBE and Will Greenwood MBE are among its legions of fans.

In 2019, we invested £6m into the business to enable it to continue its rapid growth and expand its customer base across the UK. At the time of investment, the brand had annualised sales of £10m and employed 27 people at its HQ in Wandsworth, London.

With the growth of the recipe box market set to double over the next decade, Mindful Chef is well on track to help consumers lead healthier lives and bring benefits to wider society too.

We sold our stake to Nestlé in November 2020. In a wonderful two-year journey since we invested, sales have increased fivefold to £50m.

It’s astonishing how something so special has been built in such a short period of time. Since 2015, it has delivered over 9.5 million meals to households across the UK and become the nation’s highest rated recipe box according to Trustpilot.

As a truly purpose-driven brand, we are proud to have backed a team that embody our own values. We love nothing more than finding great custodians for our partner brands and, in Nestle, they now have a lifelong partner that can help them achieve their mission of getting more people to eat healthily.