How using the concept of 1000 true fans transformed Huel from a side hustle to an international business valued at £220M
On a damp, grey February afternoon, I stepped off a train in Tring, Hertfordshire. It was an hour’s walk to my interview with Julian Hearn, the founder of Huel, at his new HQ. I had plenty of time, but with the skies were grey and the air damp, the allure of the taxi rank was strong. What to do? After a second or two to contemplate, I decided the taxi option didn’t seem right. I was visiting a company that championed fitness and wellbeing. I needed to walk the walk before I could talk the talk. And so following a fifty minute walk, via a pretty country lane, I arrived at the home of what some think of as the future of food, health, and nutrition.
At Huel HQ with CEO and Founder Julian Hearn
I’d met Julian a few years earlier when he’d just launched Huel. I was immediately fascinated by what Julian was brewing. I’d never seen a product like Huel before, and even very early on, it was clear that he was gaining some serious DTC momentum. At that time, I wanted to talk to Julian about the nuts and bolts of his eCommerce setup, as we were just starting to step up our DTC efforts at Peppersmith. Julian knows his stuff when it comes to DTC, but right from the beginning, it was the product itself that was the most fascinating part of his business. It was great to meet Julian again, four years later, to hear first-hand, his account of the outstanding progress that had subsequently been made.
Huel has been described as a meal replacement, space food, the act of vomiting in reverse, the food of the future, beige gloop, and most memorably, “hipster gruel” by comedian, Dave Gorman. As you will have guessed, Huel isn’t everybody’s cup of tea. However, cynics beware, is beloved by a loyal army of “hueligans” and sales this year are predicted at over £60M.
The reason behind the mixed reviews is that it takes a bit of work to get your head around the product. Huel is a nutritionally-complete meal in a powdered form. It needs to be measured out for your desired calorie intake and combined with water it gives you a healthy, convenient and inexpensive meal. Julian was keen to remind me it was also vegan, and eradicated the problem of food waste, making it a much more sustainable option than most meals.
Measure out, add water, shake and you are done.
While it may not actually be food for astronauts, it’s certainly a new take on how to fuel yourself. Once you know what it is, the next question to ask is, who’s drinking this stuff? It must just be fitness freaks, right? Who’s buying Julian’s innovation and how he came to find those people, is what I had come to find out.
Fitness and health is an obvious place to start. Indeed, Julian came up with the concept when working on his fitness business, but he bristled at the idea of Huel being a meal replacement, or protein shake or slimming aid. According to Julian, Huel is not just a reaction, but an antidote to how most food and drink is marketed and consumed today. He believes that, because the main focus with food is taste and texture, health and nutrition firmly take a back seat. He explains, “Good nutrition is essential, however, the right information and access to the right nutrients are so hard to find. Look at the TV chefs – they’re all “taste this, taste that”, but they rarely - if ever - talk about the nutritional make-up of ingredients and meals, even in their cookbooks. The result is an epidemic of obesity, health issues and even malnourished individuals who are actually eating loads of calories.”
Julian is pretty hardcore about healthy food. For him, food is either functional (i.e. good for you), or it’s merely entertainment food. He says you can have your Sunday roast, but you need to acknowledge it as entertainment food as it doesn’t contain the optimal amount of nutrients or calories you need. Same with your Friday night takeaway. Huel is the flip of this, with the primary focus on nutrition and taste important but secondary. It’s this hierarchy which, instinctively, is the main turn-off for those who enjoy the experience of preparing and eating a meal, even if we recognise that what we’re consuming may not be the best thing for our long-term health.
Whilst I’ve always been a Huel fan, the unnatural look of the product is the main reason I am not a consumer. Chatting to Julian, however, was enough to make me reconsider. When it comes to promoting good health and nutrition, and highlighting how hard it is to put the right stuff into your body, Julian presents a robust case favouring a change to our eating habits.
“I am probably a bit weird, but not that weird, so there must be other people out there who want similar stuff”
Julian isn't afraid to be different, and he also likes to put his convictions into action. This mindset had already made him a fortune, years before Huel, when he founded, built and ultimately sold his a voucher code website. The site came about because Julian wanted to run a business from home - avoiding the London commute, and affording him more time with his pregnant wife and, eventually, child. The site was a success. It was soon making millions in profit with just a tiny team doing the work. While it was successful, Julian was also astute enough to recognise this success was probably not going to last forever, so he packaged up the business and sold it to an American buyer.
Julian continued, "This gave me enough money to retire if I wanted. We didn't go crazy with the money, and I ended up spending loads of great time with my wife and young son. The problem is, there's only so much "In the Night Garden" you can watch. Most people have the problem of too much work in their work/life balance. I now had the opposite problem." Julian had itchy feet and was looking for a side project that allowed him to flex his entrepreneurial and creative muscles without taking up all of his time.
Initially, he set up a new business called Bodyhack - a fitness website designed to cut through the conflicting advice on fitness and nutrition and sell fitness and exercise programs. To test the fitness plans, Julian put himself forward as the guinea pig, and at the age of 40 went from 21% body fat to 11%. He said he'd never been in better shape, but there was one snag, "The problem was, to achieve these results, as well as the exercise you had to be really disciplined with your food. To make sure I had exactly the right levels of nutrients and calories, I was weighing every single ingredient of every meal. The consistent feedback was that while people wanted the results, they just didn't have the time to collect and measure out the ingredients specified. They just couldn't find a way to meet the dietary requirements.
For this reason alone, The Bodyhack product was not scalable. However, fixing the nutrition problem became the new focus, with the solution eventually becoming Huel". Julian teamed up with fitness coach and nutritionist, James Collier, to create a prototype for Huel that was explicitly designed to help get your nutrition right and make it as easy as possible to do so.
The very first product. The quote, on the wall above it, tells you all you need to know.
Once Julian had the product (which he himself liked and used), he realised that to build the business, he only needed a relatively small number of people who saw the same benefits as he did. Julian explained his thinking, "I’m probably a bit weird, but not that weird, so there must be other people out there who want similar stuff. My goal at this time was to have a lifestyle business. I was thinking about the Kevin Kelly concept of 1000 true fans, and I realised that if one thousand people bought £45-worth of stuff a month, then that business would be turning over £500K a year, and I could probably manage all that from home. That would be a nice lifestyle, and that was the concept.”
With this goal in mind, Julian set about making a product that people would pay £45 a month for. The other insight Julian had was that he realised for people to buy from him every month, he had to make the experience as personal and enjoyable as possible. It’s a lot of money, and he wanted to make people feel like they were getting good value. With a freelance designer, he designed and created the brand, with its clean, understated feel. Next, he sourced the packaging, and then put it all together to make sure the end product suited a DTC model.
The bag size and £45 monthly order value were essential in making the relative distribution and delivery costs low enough to make the margins work. The extra margin allowed Julian to add in a free shaker and a t-shirt in with each initial order. These extra touches enhanced the experience with the added bonus of customers posting pictures on social media wearing branded t-shirts and spreading the word when people asked about their Huel-branded shakers that sat proudly on their desk.
#Hueligans
Despite some mixed PR initially, mainly due to journalists not understanding enough about the product, word began to spread, and the orders started to flood in. The first thousand consumers were quickly obtained, and it was clear that this was going to be much more than a lifestyle business. The start-up made £750k in revenue in its first six months. This turned into £6M in its first full year, £14M the year after, £40M last year, and is now on track for £60M this year. Consumers now order Huel products from 87 countries, with the US acting as the source of much of their success. The US is so important that the business has established a satellite office in New York to make sure it can manage customer service in real-time.
Good customer service was a strong theme that ran throughout our chat. Being human and putting the consumer first is ingrained throughout the company culture. Julian explains “This goes right back to the early days when I hand-signed thank you notes for the first thousand orders, to when I switched our delivery company after I began receiving complaints about the erratic deliveries. I have two things which resonate with me; the first is to make sure consumers are happy. Everyone here has that mindset. The second is not to be a dick and to be fucking nice. It’s pretty straightforward”. There is no doubt, he means it. “Don’t be a dick” is written prominently on the office wall outside the room we’re sitting in. You know where you stand with Julian.
When asked about marketing, characteristically Julian had some strong views on this. He said his main success in driving awareness came from word of mouth, PR (both good and bad) and Facebook. From early on, Facebook was an important channel for consumer acquisition. The Facebook ‘lookalike’ feature enabled Huel to build on its first thousand fans and find more just like them. While Facebook is the main channel, it’s one of many that Huel now uses to drive awareness and find new consumers. Whether it’s Facebook, Instagram, Google or any other, what they all have in common is that they’re all digital. Julian explains, “Performance marketing, which is anything paid online, is head and shoulders above offline. I hate offline.” Indeed, traditional offline marketing seemed to be Julian’s only regret. “We’ve tried it all, but no one has convinced me it works”, Julian went on. “You see an ad on the tube, which is great, but you don't then go upstairs, find a shop and buy some Huel. I think there’s a disconnect, as people don't know what Huel is, so they aren’t going to engage with it”.
Maybe this is starting to change, as Huel has just launched its first products into retailers. Not the main powdered products, as, according to Julian, you need the whole experience with the shaker and t-shirt to get into it properly. The products they’re selling in the supermarkets are ready-to-drink versions of their shakes, and Huel branded healthy snack bars. Before you start thinking this is just another DTC brand going mainstream and selling in retail, this isn’t quite Julian’s thinking.
“I would not advise a DTC business to do retail until they have ticked all the other boxes. Retail is a distraction.”
“I would not advise a DTC business to do retail until they’ve ticked all the other boxes. Retail is a distraction, and you can easily get side-tracked by making retailers happy rather than your end consumers”. Why do it at all then? “Two reasons - there are times when you want a healthy snack when you’re out and about, and as well as helping on these occasions (which we can’t satisfy with our powders), it also extends our reach and builds more brand awareness.”
Retail distribution as a marketing tool is not a new idea, but it’s rare to find someone who admits brand awareness is their primary goal. Julian and his team are true mavericks: from the way they operate to the products they make. Maverick or not, the things that make it all work are Huel’s unwavering commitment to exemplary customer service, delivering a great product experience, and making sure they have products that solve a big problem. Julian was right, even if he is a bit weird, he’s not that weird, and there are plenty of people out there who value his products. Going back to the question about who actually uses Huel, after the hearing his story, I was no longer surprised to learn it’s not just fitness fanatics and bodybuilders who sign up and subscribe. Julian revealed most of their consumers are in fact desk workers, often in tech or creative industries, who want a quick and healthy breakfast and/or lunch fix. With its unique products, a loyal and growing band of Hueligans, and deep international reach, it would seem the sky is the limit for Huel. This really could be the future of food.