Nestlé To Buy Majority Stake in UK’s Mindful Chef

Nestlé has agreed to acquire a majority stake in the healthy recipe box and prepared frozen meals company, Mindful Chef, bolstering its food and direct-to-consumer offerings in the UK and Ireland.

Commenting on the deal, Nestle UK&I CEO Stefano Agostini says the founders have "built a brand with a clear purpose, offering consumers a trustworthy proposition that makes healthy eating easy through a direct-to-consumer subscription model."

“Nestlé and Mindful Chef share an ambition to increase the availability and convenience of healthy food while paying close attention to how ingredients are sourced and reducing food waste. It means this is an ideal partnership for both parties as Nestlé continues to transform its portfolio and Mindful Chef accelerates its growth plans.”

On the partnership Mindful Chef CEO Tim Lee says: "Nestlé’s experience and support gives us the opportunity to build on this success in the UK and beyond, making healthy eating easy for more consumers."

"We will continue to run the business with the same entrepreneurial, ethical and consumer-centric vision that has already brought us so much success.”

The subscription model works

Since its launch in 2015, the business has delivered over 9.5 million meals to households across the UK and expect to end the year with over £50 million in sales.

Consumers have a choice from 16 healthy recipes developed by the team each week. The combination of delivering recipes based on sustainably sourced ingredients while staying nutritionally balanced has made the brand the highest rated recipe box in the UK according to Trustpilot.

The brand’s focus on health and nutrition also saw 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. The name ‘Mindful Chef’ embodies all that the brand aspires to be; mindful of the suppliers it chooses, mindful of the healthy ingredients it uses, and mindful of the brand’s impact on the environment. As well as being a certified B-Corp, for every meal sold, a school meal is donated to a child living in poverty through the firm’s ‘One Feeds Two’ initiative, which has seen more than five million meals donated so far.

Nestlé’s play

The acquisition further expands Nestlé’s portfolio of direct-to-consumer businesses with Mindful Chef joining established coffee brands Nespresso and Nescafé Dolce Gusto as well as newer additions in petcare, like Tails.com, in which Nestlé acquired a majority stake, and Lily’s Kitchen.

Great tasting, healthy food is core to Nestlé’s food strategy as it looks to transform its portfolio to meet growing consumer demand in this area. Mindful Chef represents another step forward in the strategy and underlines Nestlé’s focus on investing in businesses with attractive growth prospects and acting on consumer trends.