Healthy eating brand Deliciously Ella was bought by a Swiss firm

Deliciously Ella, a healthy eating brand managed by “wellness” entrepreneur Ella Mills, has been acquired by Hero Group, a Swiss food company that owns Organix, a British-based organic snacks brand for children.

Mills and her husband Matthew, who is the majority shareholder, are expected to make millions of pounds from the deal. Terms for the acquisition have not been disclosed, but Deliciously Ella reported sales of £24m and a pre-tax profit of £1.8m in its last financial year.

The acquisition includes the Deliciously Ella app, which gives customers access to more than 2,000 healthy recipes, Deliciously Ella branded products such as snack bars and chocolate-dipped nuts, which are sold in UK supermarkets, and the company’s factory near Milton Keynes.

Not including the more recently launched Plants brand, which sells a range including pasta, kombucha juice and fresh soups, or the couple’s Plants by Deliciously Ella restaurant in central London. After the sale, seven employees will move to work for the Plants brand, with the remaining 70 joining the Heroes Group, including Mills and her husband.

Matthew Mills, 40, said the pair would stay with the company “as long as we are useful”. He said he hoped to become a Hero employee and took advice from his mother Tessa Jowell, a Labor politician who died in 2018. “My mother always said that leadership is not about responsibility, it’s about service,” he said, “and as long as we can serve company and continue to grow and lead the company, then we will do it.”

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Ella Mills, now 33, started Deliciously Ella as a blog to chronicle the diet changes she made to aid her recovery from a serious illness when she was a student. He said he was “thrilled” to have his first role as a salaried employee. “It was an unusual career trajectory, never having had a formal job before starting Deliciously Ella.”

After joining forces in 2015, the pair launched a range of products, including granola, snacks and oat bars, and have sold more than a million units to date. It also launched three London cafes, two of which closed in 2018. The other reopened as Plants in 2021.

Since the pandemic, the focus for Deliciously Ella has been on international markets, with launches in Switzerland and the Republic of Ireland in 2020, followed by Austria and Germany in 2023. Ella Mills said the brand will be launched in Whole Foods, a health food chain. , in the United States this year.

The execution of the deal has been “pretty full”, but they feel positive about the brand’s prospects under new ownership. “With a bigger company it seems we can really accelerate everything we want to achieve.”

Matthew Mills said that the growth of the Deliciously Ella brand in recent years had led to offers to buy the company “from a mix of trade buyers and financial investors, but we didn’t have the right fit or feel it was the right time.

“We’ve been approached by private equity quite a few times. We don’t really rule it out, but in a values-led business you have to make sure it’s a good fit. And having good long-term ownership is even better for that.

He said he looks forward to the vacation allowances that a corporate job provides — “we haven’t taken a day off this year” — and the sense of responsibility that comes with being part of a larger organization. “I’m glad to know that the people who can pay the bills don’t just depend on where we are. It’s nice that it’s not on our shoulders anymore.”

He admitted there was also a “huge pressure valve released financially” for the pair as a result of the deal. “We really rely on the business for our income. We have a personal guarantee on our house for eight years.

The couple said in a previous interview that despite their “privileged” upbringing – Ella Mills’ mother was Camilla Sainsbury, a supermarket heiress – her family did not help her business, financially or otherwise. “It’s an obvious notion and I totally understand where it’s coming from,” said Ella Mills. “We’ve both had special lives. But it really couldn’t be less. We’ve built this business, brick by brick, from the very beginning.

M&E Mills, the parent company, paid a dividend of £652,752 in 2023 and £777,721 in the 16-month period to the end of 2022.

The couple said they are confident they have found the right partner and that Hero will uphold the values ​​of the business, including in the origin and quality of the ingredients.

“We started talking in December last year,” said Matthew Mills. “Ella and I dated for about two months before we got married, while we dated for ten months before we got married. That’s a long time for us.