Mindful Chef’s Fabien Desiage on the challenge of keeping recipe box customers active

More mindful, more chef – that’s the mantra of Fabien Desiage, who has spent close to a year in the role of CEO at recipe box brand Mindful Chef.

Founded in 2015 by three school friends, the company was acquired by Nestlé in 2020. But major corporate ownership – and the appointment of Desiage, who has spent the past 30 years at the Swiss fmcg giant – hasn’t changed the ethos of the company.

“What we’re doing now is doubling down on something that was laid down 10 years ago,” says Desiage, who held roles at Nestlé’s petcare division across DTC, operations and its startup accelerator.

Desiage is speaking to The Grocer from Mindful Chef’s Wandsworth HQ. On the table in front of him is a fistful of forced rhubarb from the Yorkshire ‘rhubarb triangle’ – featured in a sea bass recipe this month – and a 2017 cookbook by founders Giles Humphries and Myles Hopper. The subheading: ‘Eat Well. Live Better.’

In many way, the setting sums up the holistic health maxim that defines Mindful Chef. As Fabiage points out, those credentials are now being emphasised. In August, the company appointed creative agency The Or to create its first brand platform. In January came a design refresh of fonts, menus, artwork and photography by Mother Design.

Then in November, it bolstered the team with the appointment of Sasha Watkins, formerly of Zoe and Field Doctor, as head of health. In that role, she is responsible for “redefining healthy eating”.

Amid a macro trend of consumers seeking healthier, more nutritional meals, “there is very little to work for Mindful Chef to reset”, Desiage says. “Because that was the direction in which the business was built. It was the philosophy at the time, and still very much relevant.”

Mindful Chef’s founders, then, still have an influence on the company, even though they are no longer present. Indeed, Desiage is still in contact with them: “The world has changed, obviously, but it can be many of the things we want to do they tried in the past. They know what works, what didn’t work.”

Nestlé’s impact is significant, too. It brings “world-class operations”, a history of brand building, and DTC experience from businesses Nespresso and Tails.com.

Its ownership has also brought a huge reduction in the cost of sales, as well as continued investment in customer experience (Desiage proudly shows off customer reviews on Trustpilot, where Mindful Chef is the highest-rated of the major recipe box brands) and operational efficiencies, including more than £3m in capex.

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There has been closer working with partner Oakland International, which assembles the brand’s boxes at a 50,000 sq ft packing operation in Redditch. And, most recently, an overhaul of the company’s technology.

“In several places of the business – and it’s quite natural – you build a minimal viable product, doing what you need now, and then this becomes the way you operate,” Desiage explains. Over the past nine months, Mindful Chef has been “ensuring we build the tech which is now ready for scaling, versus something which could have been an inhibitor of growth”.

Desiage rejects the idea he has been parachuted in from Switzerland to run Mindful Chef as a division of Nestlé. “I don’t feel this way. I’ve never felt this way. In football terms, I’ve got my Mindful Chef purple shirt on every day,” he says. “We are a very clear and distinct entity. We own our decisions.”

No more ‘hyper-growth’

Those decisions appear to be paying off financially. In September, Mindful Chef announced its latest financial results for 2024. Not only did it deliver turnover growth for the first time since the pandemic, but it secured gross margin increases and pre-tax profits of £10.9m, up from a £1.7m loss. Rival Gousto similarly declared itself to be in the “best shape ever” last year, reporting a second consecutive year of profitability. HelloFresh, however, expects further revenue decline this year.

For Desiage, it’s a sign of a maturing market. “It’s very clear that this phase of hyper-growth, the easy growth, is certainly behind us,” he says.

Initially, sales were driven by convenience and hefty discounting. The likes of HelloFresh and Gousto are still applying discounts of up to 60% on the first box for new sign-ups, plus money off the following eight boxes ordered.

But that’s an increasingly risky way to get custom. “Convenience and discounts are a reason for people to join, but also a reason for people to leave and switch,” says Desiage, who stresses Mindful Chef is “not in this game”. There are still introductory offers, but only enough for customers “to try the proposition”.

“We will never get to the level of discounts that we see. There is no interest for us,” he explains. “We know that in order for us to attract the right customer audience, deepening the discount is not the way to do that.”

Instead Mindful Chef is seeking “stickiness”. “Keeping an active customer active is the most important metric, ultimately,” Desiage says. There are three pillars to this: health (more than half of customers are joining for this reason, its surveys suggest), provenance (for example, it’s stuck to the Better Chicken Commitment where other brands have stepped away) and sustainability.

Plus, Desiage maintains the category is “still very young” with plenty of unexplored opportunities. On that note, Mindful Chef is about to relaunch a family-focused offering with healthy, veg-packed meals that are tasty enough to “ensure the plate is empty”.

Recipe boxes represent only 4% of food consumption, Desiage says. It can get much bigger. “We can evolve into something which is not only convenience and discount,” he stresses. “There’s no reason why we’re not in a position to solve ‘what’s for dinner?’.”