Michelmores has advised Mindful Chef, the UK’s favourite healthy recipe box brand, as it secured Series A investment of £6m from Piper, a leading investor into fast growing consumer brands.
Mindful Chef was set up by Exeter school friends Rob Grieg-Gran, Giles Humphries and Myles Hopper with a mission to make healthy eating easy. Since its launch in 2015 it has experienced rapid growth – including a 178% rise in sales in the past year – delivering nearly two million meals to UK consumers. Based in Wandsworth, London, the brand has annualised sales of £10m and employs 27 people.
With its focus on making healthy eating easy, all Mindful Chef’s meals are healthy and nutritionally balanced, are gluten and dairy free, containing no refined carbs or sugars. All the ingredients are fresh, high quality and sustainably sourced from local farmers where possible. Each week 16 different recipes are available for customers to select from and for every meal purchased, Mindful Chef donates a meal to a child in poverty – to date the company has provided more than 770,000 such meals.
Piper’s £6m investment will enable the business to continue to grow and expand its customer base in the UK, helping it capitalise on the rapid growth of the recipe box market which is forecast to double over the next 10 years. It is the fifth investment from Piper VI, a £125m fund.
Tim Lee, previously Head of Food and Online Strategy at Marks & Spencer, joined the business earlier this year as CEO.
Rob Grieg-Gran, co-founder of Mindful Chef, said: ‘The investment and expertise that Piper bring to our business will help us to bring healthy eating to many more consumers in the UK and enable us to accelerate our growth ambitions for the brand next year and beyond.’
Rory Gibbs, Piper’s Investment Director who lead the deal, said: ‘Mindful Chef is well placed to continue accelerating the growth of the recipe box market with its highly differentiated health focused positioning. We are backing a young, dynamic team who are passionate about making healthy eating easier for their customers. We are excited to be joining them and helping them to realise their ambitions.’
Corporate finance advisors to Mindful Chef were Cavendish Corporate Finance. Piper was advised by Womble Bond Dickinson and Sentieo.
