32 | The Grocer | 20 July 2019 Get the full story at thegrocer.co.uk
big interview Tim Lee
Megan Tatum
P
rior to joining Mindful Chef in September
last year, CEO Tim Lee already had years
of experience in building brands from
scratch. Or at least from inside “the
mothership” of a large organisation.
In a 13-year tenure at Tesco, Lee had set up the
supermarket’s sourcing arm, growing it from zero to
a £300m internal business, and was among the team
that launched the mult’s (failed) Fresh & Easy concept
in the US. At M&S, he built up its online tech and opera-
tions team from nothing.
And so moving from a supermarket HQ into the
startup’s rather cosy Wandsworth office, its 35 staff all
within shouting distance of one another, wasn’t too
much of a shock to the system, he insists.
“There’s quite a lot of parallels,” he says. “Even in the
big plcs, when you go to another country you still have
to learn how to do things differently and independently.
In America nobody knew about Tesco so you were sell-
ing the business and developing a vision and strategy
to win hearts and minds.” At M&S, too, he was “look-
ing at the future of online and running trials with lots
of young, disruptive companies”.
Which was how he first encountered the young
recipe box business. Set up in 2015 by schoolfriends
Giles Humphries, Myles Hopper and Rob Grieg-Gran,
Mindful Chef was, by the time Lee joined, on its way to
sales of £17m, delivering 20,000 of its gluten and dairy-
free meals per week to health-conscious customers.
But to scale up – and secure Series A funding – they
were looking for outside experience. “There was recog-
nition that if you want to scale a business you need to
bring expertise in and leverage the knowledge of peo-
ple like myself,” says Lee. His appointment was quickly
followed by other key hires, such as Kate McNuff (pre-
viously finance director at notonthehighstreet.com) as
CFO and Andriana Gavrilovic (previously senior brand
manager at Net a Porter) as head of brand.
The three founders are still closely involved in the
day-to-day running of the business. And their hires
seem to be working. In Januar y, within four months of
Lee’s appointment, the business had secured £6m of
Steering the Mindful
Chef ‘mothership’
Since taking over as CEO last year, Tim Lee has
helped take premium recipe box startup
Mindful Chef to the next stage of its growth
funding, led by private equity firm Piper. It signalled
huge confidence in the business. Particularly given
a market that’s beginning to feel, from the outside
at least, awfully crowded. “IGD are forecasting £6bn
growth in online – that is the largest in cash terms
growth over the next five years of any channel, ahead
of the discounters,” Lee points out. “So yes, there are
lots of competitors, but that’s because customers are
coming to this world and they want that service.”Points of difference
For its part, Mindful Chef is firmly targeting those con-
sumers willing to fork out a bit more for their health. “By
providing people with super convenient – and, impor-
tantly, delicious – food that’s easy to prepare you get a
great result. That’s tick one. It takes the cognitive load
away as you’re not worrying about it.
“The other point of differentiation is that we focus
on how we do the business.” That means achieving B
Corp status – it’s one of only 200 UK companies to do
so – and also forging a partnership with charity One
Feeds Two since 2017, by which the business donates
a school meal to a child living in poverty for every box
purchased. “It’s customer expectation now that busi-
nesses do the right thing,” says Lee.
Buying into an ethical business that also likes its
beef grass-fed, its chicken free-range and its vegeta-
bles locally sourced does come with a more premium
pr ice t ag, t houg h. At t he t i me of w r it i ng, e ve n b y s e le c t-
ing the cheapest meals from its 16-dish menu, a box of
five Mindful Chef meals for two would cost £57.50. At
Hello Fresh the equivalent would be £41.99. At Gousto
it would be £34.99 for four meals. Has charging more
ever stymied growth?
“No. Growth is not a problem for us. Keeping up with
the growth is the problem. In fact, customers talk about
how they end up saving money. They say it’s delicious
food, that comes pre-portioned so they have no waste
and it stops them going to shop elsewhere so they’re not
filling the fridge up with things they’re not going to eat.
They translate that to great value for money.”
The model is profitable too, he points out, albeit