Paul Lindley, Founder of Ella’s Kitchen: On Why The Food & Drink Industry Must Cultivate Innovation

Launched in 2006, Ella’s Kitchen quickly disrupted the market thanks to its innovative approach to organic baby food products and packaging. 

With a mission to improve children’s lives through healthier relationships with food, founder Paul Lindley – who named the business after his first child – has grown Ella’s Kitchen into the UK’s best-selling baby food brand.

Now generating an annual global turnover of over £100m, Ella’s Kitchen holds an 18 per cent share of the UK baby-food market, with its products currently sold in over 40 territories around the world.

On course to sell one billion of his organic pouches in 2017, Lindley isn’t slowing down. Instead, the businessman is on a mission to get the rest of the UK’s food and beverage market to follow suit through innovation and investment,

Here, Lindley explains how passion, determination, and core values have helped to build his business, and why you should always listen to your children.

On leveraging your passion to grow a business….

I firmly believe that our children deserve the opportunity to eat better food – food that is fun, natural and above all fantastic tasting.

I have always believed that business is the most important force for positive social change, and it became my ambition to create a company which could address the growing obesity epidemic among young people.

Keeping our values and mission at the heart of the business has been the key to building a strong brand, but our rapid expansion is down to the understanding that people want the same level of health for their babies across the world.

I am extremely proud of what we have achieved. In just over ten years we have become the UK’s number one baby food brand and we are sold in over 40 territories worldwide, but our long-term goal has never been to hit certain financial figures.

We want to change children’s relationship with food, that’s why we set our benchmarks and business goals against the context of ‘tiny tummy touch points’.

Our ultimate goal is to serve children with one billion portions of Ella’s Kitchen food – that’s one billion tiny tummy touch points, and we think we’ll achieve this in 2017. We believe if we hit this goal and manage our business appropriately, the financial results will follow.

On never backing down….

When launching Ella’s Kitchen convincing supermarket buyers to believe in, and see the potential of my idea wasn’t easy.

Given that my goal with Ella’s Kitchen was to have a real impact on children’s health, I didn’t want to start selling in small farm shops and delis. I knew that we needed to sell in serious volume!

I contacted hundreds of people and was rejected or ignored more times than I can count, but things eventually took off through our first deal with Sainsbury’s.

It was by no means easy – I had to re-mortgage my own home to raise the money we needed to launch overseas – but every business venture involves risk.

For me, not trying would have been the biggest failure, and I’ve never looked back.

On taking time to scale the business….

The biggest challenge of scaling globally was to ensure we had the funds and resources behind us to meet market demand.

Once we were confident we were in a position to scale we took the time to do our research and understand which markets we wanted to enter. Organisations like UKTI are a great source of support for information on anything from distribution options to cultural differences.

Ella’s Kitchen first broke into international territories in 2009 with the first new markets including Norway and Sweden. Now, the company holds a market share of 14% and 12% for wet baby food in those countries respectively, and we export to over 40 countries worldwide.

On working from a ‘child first’ view….

I’ve often been told that truly successful businesses see things through the eyes of their customers, no matter how young they might be!

I’ve taken that advice to heart, so at Ella’s Kitchen we approach everything as a child would, making sure to engage with them across all five senses.

For both Ella’s Kitchen and Paddy’s Bathroom (my startup business), we are competing with huge multi-nationals, and negotiating with enormous retailers for space on the supermarket shelves.

This means we absolutely must have a point of difference, be noticed and be wanted. Nobody else works from a ‘child first’ view.

We built our brand differently; we took simple, natural, goodness-packed ingredients and mixed them together in unusual ways to create new sensations of taste, smell and texture. We also created packaging that really connected with babies and toddlers, using colours and even names that really interested them.

I even named our first product ‘The Red One’ (a smoothie fruit made with strawberries, raspberries, apple and bananas), because that’s what my son Paddy called it when I gave it to him to try – and I always listen to toddlers ideas.

On driving the UK’s food and drink industry forwards….

Today our food and drink businesses drive innovation and export growth across the country, bringing 16,000 new products to market every year. However, all too often, our historic strength and contemporary excellence in this sector goes unnoticed.

If we truly want to maintain the talent and success that has driven this industry in the past, we must make a concerted commitment to invest and support the industry this year.

Driving that commitment we have Liz Truss MP, the minister responsible for the whole food supply chain. She is passionate about maximising the impact the food industry can have on our economy, including exports.

That is why I have agreed to join her as a ‘food pioneer’, supporting her Great British Food campaign, and why I supported the Virgin StartUp Foodpreneur initiative with Richard Branson two years ago, with the aim of inspiring small businesses in the industry to become bolder on exporting.

Being a part of that experience really proved to me that the strength and potential of the British brand abroad should not be underestimated. The talent, innovation and creativity are all there – we just need to ensure F&D startups get the necessary support and mentoring they need to truly scale.

On building a business as a force for good….

I am a firm believer that business must act as a force for good in this world and answer some of society’s problems at the same time as turning a profit.

With that in mind, 2016 has been a big year for Ella’s Kitchen; we have celebrated our 10 year anniversary, certified as a B-Corporation and kicked off our ‘Veg for Victory’ campaign.

Our certification as a B-Corporation in particular is a key milestone for us as a business, and one that we are extremely proud of.

B Corporations are a global movement of pioneering companies that are using their business as a force for good. This movement is committed to redefining what it means to be successful in business.

Our certification is recognition of our founding purpose for the business and we are proud that this mission has remained at the heart of our business for over ten years.

On breaking into the food and beverage market….

My number one piece of advice for any food or beverage startup trying to crack the market would be to have a clear purpose from the word go, and then stick to it.

Today, the most successful businesses have a strong mission and purpose right at the heart of their business model.

Ella’s Kitchen was driven by our mission to improve children’s lives by giving them a healthier relationship with food; that ultimate goal has guided every decision we’ve made from the start.

You’ve also got to be bold about exporting, but you must be well-researched. It’s better to have double-digit market share in a select number of countries than a low impact in many, so research thoroughly and be disciplined about selecting which markets to enter.