“The food industry is full of people trying to convince you their product tastes delicious, regardless of what your taste buds might say. Julian Hearn isn’t one of them,” says Alex Lawson in the Evening Standard. “Hueligans” extol the virtues of Hearn’s powdered food with evangelical zeal, even while mostly agreeing that it doesn’t taste that great. The product, Huel, is a “complete meal” designed on a spreadsheet to meet the body’s energy and nutritional needs to replace breakfast or lunch for the time-poor.
You might think that its flagship product – a powder mixed with water that contains flaxseed, oats, sunflower, coconut, peas, rice and a vitamin blend – risks taking the joy out of eating. But Hearn thinks there’s a big difference between “functional” food and “entertainment” food. The powder is “never going to compete with a Sunday roast or a Saturday night meal out”, he admits. “We have never said people should eat Huel for every meal, but when it comes to competing with cereal or toast at breakfast or a sandwich at lunchtime, we think it goes head to head.” Plenty of people agree with him, says Lawson: sales are growing at 50% each year, hitting £60m in 2019. Hearn expects to make a profit this year.
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