Best business recipe is having someone else make the food
Paul Lindley, founder of multi-millionpound-baby food company Ella’s Kitchen, tells Anna Issac of outsourcing, the risk of running out of capital, and realising it is not all about profit
QHow did you get started? AElla,
my daughter, was born in 1999 and it was really hard to get her to eat anything while she was being weaned.
I worked out that the only way I could get her to try new food was by making it fun – through silliness, mess and games. I wanted to make food fun and healthy for kids. The mission at Ella’s Kitchen is to improve children’s lives by developing healthier relationships with food. QWhat did you do before you started the business? AOne
of the experiences that helped me most in setting up the business was my nine years at Nickelodeon, where I developed the mindset of a marketer. It gave me a real passion for kids’ issues and I learnt about the key milestones of growing up. The idea of having a brand that’s “kids first” was an important one from which to learn.
I also saw how television was being
blamed for a decline in kids’ health and obesity. It made me aware of the complexity of the obesity crisis and increased my interest in children’s health. QDid you have any reservations about using your daughter’s name as a brand? AI
wanted to use an authentic, real story that people could relate to, so that it felt like a parent talking to a parent, not a big corporate talking to a consumer.
That’s something we’ve worked really hard to hold on to as the brand has grown. My daughter has never been asked to do interviews or anything like that, but it was important to be honest about the fact that the brand was built on a real family experience. QWas it hard to get into food manufacturing? AI
learnt very quickly that my skills and experience were in marketing, business and social impact – and I had no experience in the manufacturing side of things.
I decided that we weren’t going to try to create a factory ourselves. We would write the recipes and own them – and they would be nutritious and healthy – but the actual making of the food would be outsourced to experts in a tightly controlled way.
We work with people with extensive experience of creating foods to the right standards. We now have more than 150 different products. QWas it hard to give up some of the control by outsourcing? AIt
can be, but entrepreneurs need to learn to let go. As a business person you should really know where your strengths are, play to them and work with partners or outsourcers who are strong on the areas where you are weak.
That all depends on two things: one, the quality of the contract between you, so you know who’s responsible for what if things go wrong – and the remedies. Second, and more importantly, you must build a trusting relationship.
One of my biggest learnings is that business is about people, not money, and that’s built on trust and understanding. Everyone who works with, or for, a business wants to get some sort of meaning from their role.
They get that if their values overlap with those of the company. It’s about more than a contract. QHow did it work at first? AI gave myself two years to get to market. I had a little bit of savings – around £20,000 – to develop the proposition. Eighteen months into my first two years, we still hadn’t got any distribution and I started dusting off my CV, but then we got the green light from Sainsbury’s.
I thought: “Oh great, we’ve done it.” But really, that’s when I had to properly start delivering. We had to remortgage the house, which financed initial production and marketing costs. I used that and my accounting background [I was a chartered accountant at KPMG for five years] to do good commercial deals on payment terms with suppliers.
Two kinds of businesses run out of money: badly run ones and ones that grow too fast and run out of working capital. We risked falling into the second category because we grew so fast, so we used invoice financing as we grew. That proved really helpful, as I was reluctant to give equity away early on. QHow important is it to ensure a business is about more than profit? AIt’s very important. The idea that you can have a different set of values and ethics during the working day is gone. It’s more of a blending of work and life now. Business can be a massive force for good in lots of ways – from a hairdresser giving elderly people a discount to a huge business changing the town in which it is based.
Business is the most sustainable way of creating change in our world. The millennial generation recognises that and they will be our leaders in business and politics very soon. We became a B corporation this year. It’s a group of businesses trying to see beyond short-term profit. Returns shouldn’t just be about money.