It Was A Brand Before It Was A Business | Founder Classic

0:00Alex Chisnall:Deliciously, Ella, the plant-based brand which started as a personal blog by Ella Mills and has now evolved into an app, recipe books, a restaurant, a range of food products. It was just so clear that there was a business opportunity here to do something between us. Ella had built this amazing community. It wasn't really a business as such. We're not a restaurant or an FMCG business. And it was then just deciding about what kind of activities we could go into that we thought would be most useful for consumers and how we could continue to build community around those and to understand what matters to those people.

0:32And then trying to find the ways that you can provide a good or service that is of real use to them, I think is just a really brilliant way of building a business.

0:44back in may 2015 you and your wife ella went for a walk with each other and by the end of that walk you decided you wanted to start a business together and the first thing that you wanted to start so ultimately wanted to start was a restaurant um can you take me back to that time in 2015 um what were you doing work-wise personally um and you know what memories have you got from that conversation? Sure yeah so Ella and I actually met right after her first book came out in January of 2015 and we started dating a couple of weeks after it had come out and everything had moved very quickly in our relationship we'd moved into with each other after a week we bought a dog after about six weeks and we went for a walk in I think May or June of 2015 and we just started discussing I had been working in finance but had very itchy feet and wanted to leave.

1:36And it was just so clear that there was a business opportunity here to do something between us. And Ella had built this amazing community of people through her recipe website. And the book had really taken the brand from being what was an online community into something that was offline and being spoken about in the press. And it just was starkly clear to us that there was a business opportunity. And we felt like we could combine what felt like some skill sets then looking back I'm not sure if we had too many skill sets between us but we've we've been on a great journey of acquiring those um and but it just felt that there was an obvious opportunity there and we we went on and we got back from that walk and um I decided I'd quit my job and that we would start trying to do something together and that was the first time you'd had that conversation with that business together or yeah it really was I think that we you know our relationship had moved incredibly fast there was a lot happening in our world at the time and And that was the first time we really decided it.

2:34But it was a one or two hour walk and it was crystal clear in our minds when we got back from it that we should do something together. And at that point in time, what did Deliciously Ella look like as a business? We talked briefly offline about it was a brand before it was a business. But what did it kind of look like business wise, you know, with your CEO hat on there, like revenue wise? Yeah, sure. So it was I mean, it wasn't really a business as such. It had the first book had just come out. So there was revenues being generated from that. I think the social media following, I think Ella had about 320 ,000 or so followers on Instagram.

3:09So a lot smaller than now. I think the revenue of the business in 2015 was about£250 ,000 including all of the revenues from the book so it was Ella doing stuff personally really it was everything that was being done was driven through the activities that Ella was doing i.e. the book and any brand ambassadorships that she was doing at the time but it wasn't I would say a kind of business as such like we are today interesting and um when you met what did the vision look like that that ella had for for the brand herself and how did you go about joining forces and turning that into reality because as i mentioned in the intro you know pretty substantial food products range uh the subscription app is i didn't realize how many subscribers you got but it's like close to 200 000 crazy amazing um recipe books um deli now restaurant so yeah how do you what was the vision like and how did you you know go about joining forces and turning that into reality yeah the great thing was was that we were you know and i still believe this to this day that much more so than what you know we're not a restaurant or an fmcg business or an app or a cookery book at our absolute core we our plant-based food and wellness company.

4:28And that is what Ella had started. And it was then just deciding about what kind of activities we could go into that we thought would be most useful for consumers and how we could continue to build community around those and how we could be something that would be genuinely useful for people's lives. And the first thing that we decided to do was to open a physical space. So we opened this very, very small cafe on a pretty remote street and it was a kind of experiment really just to see how the brand could live as a commercial entity and I think we were surprised by the level of excitement that we initially got for that and I think it really compelled us to believe that there was just so much more that could be done with this and so I think we were both clear and I was I knew when we started working with each other we didn't want this to be a kind of small lifestyle business we wanted it to be something that we could really, really grow.

5:21And it became very clear to us very, very quickly that the way to really grow this business would be one through food products, which we launched our food product in August of 2016. We're now in about 6 ,000 shops in the UK and it's been a really amazing journey with that. And then the other way that we could do it is through trying to find ways that we could monetize our content. So Ella is an absolute genius at creating content. And the way that we've been able to monetize that is through our app where we have 800 plant-based recipes, we have 250 exercise videos, we have 200 bits of other mindfulness and sleep content.

5:57It's a really great holistic health tool. I find a lot of that really, really interesting, what you said that I'll probably come back to. I love that idea of building that community and then finding out what that community actually needs and how you can supply solutions to the problems that the community has. Was a lot of that crowdsourcing asking them what they wanted or was the vision that you both had together pretty strong then and it's kind of mirrored in what you're doing now? Yeah, I think when we were starting out, it was probably more done on feeling, whereas what we can do now is I think much more based on facts because we've got much better data sets and much more data that we're able to use.

6:42At the start, it was more done on the basis of what had been really popular on social media, what were we anecdotally finding that people were cooking the most or seemed to be most interested in. And so, but then also, which categories, so for example, when we were launching our food products business, which category did we think was the best place for us to launch a food business into? And we decided that was snacking. So that was the way it started about at the start. And I would say that there was a kind of priority on action over great strategy at that point. but I think as the business has grown and as we've been able to make using data a really key skill within the business I think that that's obviously shifted a lot.

7:23How much of the decisions you make are based in data because I remember chatting to the CEO of Graze and he was saying at the time that they could they just expanded into the US and they'd got a hundred thousand and subscribers within 30 days or something crazy like that, but they could turn around the new product in 24 hours, which is like, it's kind of like jaw-dropping really and how they could turn that around. But how much you led by data and how much, now obviously the business has expanded considerably over the last five, six years, but how much is based on data and how much is still on gut instinct or the community's kind of leading the questions?

8:05Yeah, we're still, I feel like as a company, We're still completely community led. But we, as the business has grown, we've definitely been able to get much more useful data around what we think would work. So, you know, when we were first starting out, we didn't have the budgets to be able to invest into till data. So understanding actually how our product was performing in store and our app is a relatively new evolution of the business. But we now have great data where we really believe that the content that we're adding there and the services that we're adding there are things that we know our users really, really want and we can see the way that they're using the app.

8:45And so I'd say it's definitely something that as the business has grown has been something that we've got much, much, much better at. But still, it's not perfect. No, it just popped into my head because it's really interesting. And I've chatted to Alan Barrett a few times. he's become a friend of mine you know um fan of grenade and um the chocolate you know they turned that protein bar into a chocolate bar you know very obviously marketing led into what they did there but you know he kind of drilled down into the decision they made with that he said that the whole board was against it they all ruled it and he said i just i just went off and i just got a thousand made or ten thousand i think like a ten thousand production run and he said they went in 24 hours and I went behind the boards back to get it done and I just knew that it was going to be successful now they've got like the number one shot in the UK so yeah no sometimes you do sometimes you do just know and sometimes the most difficult decisions are when the what the data is showing but what you really really believe when those things contradict each other that's when the really difficult decisions have to be made and I think there's lots of businesses where they're kind of the data of today may be saying something but as a leader of the business you you have to have an eye on tomorrow as well and you may be seeing something beyond just what today's data showing that means you feel like you need to make a change of some kind we've we've had that in our

10:02Alex Chisnall:business for sure thanks for listening and if today's episode has inspired you to take action why not take the next step come and meet me at the festival entrepreneurs this november at the nec in birmingham you'll be able to meet many of the founders you've heard on this podcast along with hundreds of ambitious entrepreneurs from across the uk i'd love to see you there So just go to festivalofentrepreneurs.co.uk to register for your free, yes, free ticket.