Mindful Chef says it was hit by its “first significant website crash” on 28 December due to the weight of existing and new customers logging on to “get their healthy start to the year locked in ahead of New Year’s Eve celebrations”.
The week from Boxing Day saw a 2,069% increase in new customer sign-ups, the brand said, while 2 January saw Mindful Chef enjoy “its biggest day for new customer sign-ups since the Covid pandemic”, an increase of 70% versus the same day last year.
“Seeing the website crash just ahead of the new year was a clear indication to us that health and wellbeing remains at the front of many people’s minds,” said Giles Humphries, co-founder of Mindful Chef. “We were delighted to see such a significant spike in new customer sign-ups this post-new year. This has beaten the 452% increase that we experienced at the peak of the Covid lockdown.
“As a business with health and wellbeing at its heart, the new year is typically a busy period for Mindful Chef,” Humphries added. “However, with increased pressure on customer spending, this recent hike is higher than expected.”
Mindful Chef – which was acquired by Nestlé in 2020 – experienced a huge jump in sales during Covid, as the pandemic fuelled demand for its healthy recipe kits and ready meals. However, accounts filed in September for the year ending December 2022 showed operating losses had increased by £5.1m to £7.7m as gross profit margins slipped 5.6 percentage points to 25.1%.
CEO Tim Lee told The Grocer trading had rebounded in 2023, leaving the business on course for its most profitable year since launching in 2015. The company was also experiencing its strongest period of growth in terms of new customer acquisition for the past 12 months, he added.
The company said today that ‘winbacks’ of lapsed former customers had also increased, and were up 25% year on year.
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