Little Dish’s Hillary Graves: the right side of the childhood obesity debate

Little Dish can do no wrong right now. While babyfood pouches are in hot water with the health brigade, this chilled ready meals brand for toddlers is on the right side of the childhood obesity epidemic. And sales are booming.

With national distribution across all the major full-service supermarkets, as well as HelloFresh, Gousto, Amazon, Booths and select convenience stores, sales of the nine Little Dish variants and three new Big Dish options are up 58% year on year, and RSVs are expected to exceed £30m this year.

Momentum was already strong even before a recent BBC Panorama documentary exposed the high sugar levels and low nutrients (from heavy sterilisation) in even the most premium babyfood pouches.

In contrast, Little Dish ready meals use a gentler pasteurisation process, which retains the nutrients, claims founder Hillary Graves. “Every Little Dish recipe has a clean deck of all-natural ingredients, delivers a perfectly balanced meal, including one and often two of a toddler’s 5 a day, tastes delicious, and most importantly, is eaten with a fork and spoon.”

But there’s more to the success Little Dish is enjoying than just the ingredients.

A relaunch three years ago with a new manufacturer used “better technology” to deliver meals that are “as close as possible to home-made”. It also enabled a switch to new wood-fibre packaging, eliminating 260 tonnes of plastic.

“We’ve always wanted to come out of plastic packaging. It’s important to us and our shoppers.”

Of course it helps that Little Dish operates in one of two “relatively price-insensitive” categories, Graves admits. “Consumers always want the best for their children – and their pets.”

But despite its bijou Notting Hill mews house HQ, Little Dish is not middle class, Graves insists. Its biggest customer is Asda, she points out. And at £1.43/100g, each £2.85 portion is “on a par with ambient alternatives on a per gram basis” – and only 14% per higher than in 2006 when Little Dish launched.

Another component of its strong growth has been NPD. In October Little Dish launched Big Dish, aimed at five to 10-year-olds. Inspired by feedback from customers wanting bigger portions for growing kids, “their need is almost like a new customer acquisition point”. With 90% of sales incremental, Little Dish is “growing the category by providing more occasions”.

A healthy chicken nugget

The latest product launch is arguably the most ambitious yet: a healthy chicken nugget.

“We wanted to develop a chicken nugget that was tastier and healthier. It’s clean deck: all the ingredients are natural.” It’s also gluten-free. “We didn’t set out for it to be gluten-free but our supplier said they could do it, and it’s turned out to be a blessing as it makes it accessible to more kids.”

The first frozen Superstars SKU launched into Ocado in April. The full four-strong range will roll out into 600 Tesco stores from September. And despite going up against Birds Eye, Bernard Matthews and own label, Graves is undaunted. “We literally can’t keep them in stock,” she says of their launch into Ocado. “The ratings are off the charts.” And again there’s incremental potential, she argues. “In Ocado 25% of shoppers have never bought a chicken nugget.”

“To do well in this category you have to live and breathe the detail”

To promote the Superstars launch, Little Dish will likely turn to digital and social media initially. Its influencer campaigns have been “massively” successful: Little Dish sends out “beautiful” packages of meals and merchandising, and whether it’s micro influencers or major celebrities, they’ve lapped it up.

“With some influencers, we have relationships where we pay them to go into store,” Graves adds. “Because mothers don’t always know where to find the dishes in store. So that’s been a great way to drive awareness.”

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To further boost in-store awareness, Little Dish also appointed a shopper marketing exec at the start of the year. Signage recently rolling out in stores is already achieving “really great results”.

With the success Little Dish has been enjoying, the other option open now is advertising. In May it launched its first above-the-line campaign. Using out-of-home, national radio, social, digital and in-store media, “it puts the product front and centre and speaks to the importance of being guaranteed to be eaten by kids, but it’s ‘guaranteed with an asterisk’,” she explains – the asterisk being the colourful conditional caveats kids insist on which feature in the copy.

Since 2023 Little Dish has also been working with the Felix Project on a pioneering ‘buy one give one’ mechanic, in which shoppers effectively donate a meal (funded by Little Dish) to families in need. It’s shortlisted for the Consumer Initiative of the Year in the upcoming Grocer Gold Awards.

Setbacks and snafus

It’s not all been plain sailing for Little Dish. In 2017 US-born Graves moved back to New York with husband, business partner (and ex-Waitrose and Tesco executive) Dean Brown to launch Little Dish in the US.

But after securing listings with the likes of Target, Fresh Direct, Kroger and Walmart, the arrival of Covid scuppered its plans and it retrenched. “We made great contacts and learnt a lot,” says Graves. “Hopefully we will go back.”

Luckily, the Chicago-based private investment firm which backed the US offensive with a £17m stake “still think there’s a great opportunity. And we’ve launched in Belgium. So that’s another market to grow.”

Another challenge is managing the supermarkets. “There have been lots of ups and downs. Working with food retailers isn’t always straightforward,” she smiles.

And there’s always the threat of own label. But Graves is confident Little Dish is resilient.

“If you’re going to be good in this category you need to go deep into the nutrition, taste testing, understanding what consumers want – it’s high maintenance and you need the time and bandwidth. They’ve all tried, but it didn’t stick. To do well in this category you have to live and breathe the detail.”

Read more from Health Week:

• Tesco to focus its Accelerator Programme on health and wellbeing

• How the ultra-processed food narrative has splintered and why

• Junk food ad ban: does the industry at last have clarity on how the watershed will work?

• A maelstrom of disruption is coming – from AI to GLP-1s

Even before the Panorama documentary aired last month, Graves felt parents were “moving beyond the pouch” in their weaning of babies and toddlers.

“Pouches play a role but when parents are feeding their kids at home, there’s no reason you wouldn’t pick something fresher, healthier, more delicious, and that tastes like food.”

And despite strong growth, Graves believes the potential is still huge. “Penetration is only 9.4% vs 77% for ambient baby and toddler food, so it feels exciting.”

Does Little Dish have ambitions beyond ready meals? “We would love to do lunchbox.” The challenge is finding a healthy and natural solution. Instead it’s hoping to target a foodservice partner to extend Little Dish beyond grocery. “If we were able to get into [outlets] like Legoland or a garden centre chain, that would be great. There is a consumer need in out of home for [a solution like] Little Dish.”

As to an exit, with so much untapped potential, Graves isn’t interested in a sale “right now”. But if she were to sell up, the other thing that would need to be right is the partner. “It’s someone who wants a deep relationship with the mothers of young children.”