Love Island DJ to gut health entrepreneur: The Gut Stuff’s Alana Macfarlane Kempner

Long before fibre became fashionable, Alana Macfarlane Kempner and her twin sister Lisa were trying to convince consumers that gut health mattered.

Back then, Macfarlane Kempner admits, her own diet left plenty to be desired, and she recalls subsisting mainly on Greggs sausage rolls and 20 Lambert and Butler. Fast forward to today, and the Gut Stuff co-founder has just seen her business snapped up by Hero Group, the Swiss food giant behind brands including Organix and Deliciously Ella.

It’s quite the transfornation for a set of twins once better known as the DJs on Love Island, having abandoned places at university – where they were set to be studying medicine and law – in favour of a very different path.

Speaking on the latest epsiode of What the Fmcg?! after appearing at The Grocer’s SME Business Lunch last month, Macfarlane Kempner charts her journey into entrepreneurship amid the fibre boom, and shares what founders need to know before embarking on an sale process.

Founded in 2017, The Gut Stuff began as an educational platform after the sisters took part in a microbiome research study led by Tim Spector at King’s College London. There, the pair discovered that, despite being identical, they only shared around a third of their gut microbiomes.

The finding sparked an ongoing fascination with the role of gut health and the microbiome in overall wellbeing.

“We were very lucky in the early days to have all the best experts in the world on gut health at our fingertips,” says Macfarlane Kempner. “The thing that they all agreed on, from every area of research and science, was that fibre was the thing that would make the difference.”

That insight also evolved into a multi-platform business which now spans workplace wellbeing programmes, books, television, apps and, ultimately, food and drink products built around fibre and gut health.

The conversation also explores the challenges of educating consumers around gut health, why fibre remains misunderstood despite growing awareness, and how The Gut Stuff balanced its educational mission with commercial growth.

Macfarlane Kempner also shares her hard-earned advice for fellow founders, including lessons learned from fundraising and scaling a business with her twin sister, to navigating due diligence and preparing for acquisition.

“If two DJs who had never worked in food and drink before can do it, anyone can,” she says.