As she launches an exclusive collaboration with John Lewis, the entrepreneur and food writer is cutting through the wellness-industry noise
You probably know Ella Mills as the founder of Deliciously Ella, a global brand that started out aiming to make plant-based eating easy and accessible.
Deliciously Ella is now best known for its products and is the fastest growing snack-bar brand in the country; there’s also a series of bestselling cookery books, an app, a podcast and a community of millions of people. “Fundamentally, I’m doing the same as when we started in 2012; sharing easy and digestible information on how you can eat more plants every week,” says Ella from her London home. “It’s hard to believe it’s only been 13 years since I started out because relatively speaking that isn’t a long time, but back then there was nearly nothing in terms of healthy eating. I’d say to people ‘what you put in your body will affect your health’, and they would look at me like I was telling them the world was flat.” Since then, the health and wellness industry has boomed, with controversial new food trends and complicated regimes making headlines every week.
“We wanted to create products that make everyday cooking more fun and easier”
“We are completely and utterly inundated with advice wherever you look. Because of the proliferation of TikTok and algorithms, in order to be heard in the online world things have to be so click-baity and extreme,” she says. “I read a report that 98 per cent of information shared online in the nutrition world was either false or misleading, and didn’t match public health guidelines. It feels like whoever can be the most extreme and shout the loudest is the only way to cut through. The advice that I use myself is to just try and be 1 per cent better every day. It can apply to your diet, your career, or your mental health goals but it breaks things down into something manageable.”
Perhaps this is one of the reasons Deliciously Ella has remained so steadily popular: the recipes are healthy, easy to follow and won’t take you longer than 30 minutes to whip up in your kitchen. “We are uncomplicated and we don’t follow trends,” she explains. “Our premise is how to eat better and avoid ultra-processed foods, and I think a huge part of our success is that we’ve been slow and steady and stayed in our lane. We’ll help you find the sweet spot between time, flavour, nutrition and practical things, like how many pans is it actually going to take to make this meal.”
Speaking of pans: the 60 pieces created with John Lewis span prep, cook, serve and store. Two years in the making, it’s been a labour of love. “It’s easy and tempting to say yes to all the partnership offers that come your way, but we built Deliciously Ella on the basis of it being useful to our audience. If it’s not useful to our community we’re not going to do it. I was thrilled to team up with John Lewis and be so thorough in the product development.”
As for the products, “we wanted to elevate the everyday. These aren’t items you’ll use once every two months at a dinner party – they are things you’ll actually cook with all the time. When I first moved out of home to live in a flat with two girlfriends, my mum took me to John Lewis and kitted us out with plates, knives, forks – the whole lot. So it made sense to work with a brand I trust and it felt like the right time to say yes to such an exciting opportunity.”
Alongside a tiered multipan (according to Ella, you only ever need three pans in your kitchen) the collection includes plates, glasses, tea towels and Ella’s most coveted item: freezer storage cubes.
“I was thrilled to team up with John Lewis and be so thorough in the product development”
“I’m such a batch cooker because there’s nothing more satisfying than the win of having a busy day and knowing in your freezer there’s a delicious dinner ready to go. The silicone freezer cubes are my favourite because so many people are increasingly aware of microplastics and want to improve their environmental impact. So I loved creating something that myself and the community will use every single day.”
With a new cookbook out this December and a busy family life, is there ever time to do any actual cooking? “I keep thinking I should be over cooking,” says Ella, “but I genuinely do love it. Maybe not so much on a Monday night when you’re tired… but that’s when the batch cooking saves me!”
