Butterfield Harris supported Mindful Chef's entry to this online/offline sector by championing its healthy and responsibly sourced positioning.
To create, define and launch a new premium brand into the fast-growing UK home delivery recipe box market. Both Hello Fresh and Gousto had been early entrants into this market, but both offered quite ‘mainstream’ recipes. The founders of Mindful Chef intended to enter the market with a more healthy and responsibly sourced platform. The challenge was to define a brand positioning that would reflect this ‘mindful’ purpose, appeal to a premium and more health conscious segment, and yet would not be seen as too niche or marginal.
From a standing start in Summer 2015, Mindful Chef has grown to being the clear leader in the healthy recipe box market, with an annualised turnover of close to £10m, and now delivering over 5000 boxes a week in London and beyond. Brand communications, mainly online but also including tube cards and panels, have delivered above market average customer gains, at below average cost per acquisition. The company has also been through two successful fund-raising rounds, totaling over £3m, and has attracted high profile investors and sponsors like Andy Murray and Victoria Pendleton.
After trialing the service, we conducted online interviews with a large number of early adopters, quizzing them on their lifestyles as well as their food preferences. It became clear that there was a significant group of current and potential customers (especially in London) who were younger, busy professionals, who were health conscious and active, but not ‘on a diet’. These were people who wanted to get in shape and stay in shape but without going to extremes. Often they used Mindful Chef recipes on early weekdays to ‘balance out’ more indulgent eating on Friday to Sunday. They cared a lot about quality and convenience, and were prepared to pay a little more for higher quality meat and fish, fresh vegetables and imaginative recipes that excluded heavy or refined carbs.