The Wellness Scoop - 2020 Finale - Baby News, Future Plans & What Happens Behind the Scenes

Episode Date: October 27, 2020

Ella and Matt reflect on 2020 from May’s birth story to navigating a business through the covid crisis, plans for next year, their personal favourite recipes and what happens behind the scenes at Deliciously Ella. A Monk's Guide To Happiness: Gelong Thubten  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hi and welcome to the Deliciously Ella podcast with me, Ella Mills. And I'm very happy to say I have got my former co-host, Matthew Mills, who's also my husband and business partner, back with us today. Yep, out of retirement, and we've got a new addition lying in between Ella's legs here, which is our beautiful little daughter, May, who is... Two weeks old tomorrow. Gosh, that's insane. and say oh and there she is she's sneezing her way and saying hello she um her sister Skye's welcome gift to her was a cold so she's a little bit snuffly so if you can hear a kind of little puggy noise in the background then that is May just hanging out she thinks the microphone is particularly interesting bless you and we just wanted to use the last episode of 2020 as a little bit of a summary.

We've had lots of requests for things like Maymay's birth story, what we're planning for next year, what we've been up to at Delicious Ciela, how we found this year, the kind of trials and challenges and successes of the strangeness that has been 2020. It's certainly not a year that I think any of us expected in so many different ways. I definitely didn't think I'd be a mother of two by this point. And it has been literally the biggest blessing in the whole wide world. And May came into this world almost exactly two weeks ago, just after midnight, early Thursday morning on the 8th of October. And I have to say she was a test of everything that I have ever learned at Delicious Cielo. And I was very grateful for all our former podcast guests

and all the kind of wisdom they've shared and all the techniques they've shared for staying calm and staying present. Because I had something that my midwife called prodromal labor for about four and a half weeks before she was born where I would have several hours of contractions almost every single day but then nothing would happen and it was both physically and emotionally exhausting. I felt sort of constantly quite anxious about what was happening. Would I give birth in the supermarket or trying to take Sky for a walk. And I really had to tap back into meditation and trying to find all those ways of being present and stopping overthinking things. And all those tools were so incredibly useful. And then she just kind of burst into the world

out of nowhere. Sky came down with a cold and we both woke up with it that Wednesday morning. And I thought, oh, perfect. Well, if she's going to stay put a bit longer that's ideal and made soup we got into bed and watched David Attenborough which if you haven't watched it yet his new show on Netflix it's absolutely amazing he heralds the benefits and the beauty of a plant-based diet and its importance for sustainability which was really exciting to see that in such a mainstream documentary but it feels like a really important watch for looking at kind of sustainability in the future of the planet especially for our children but it's I have to say it is a bit depressing obviously because we've we've done a hell of a lot of damage to the world

as a population and so we watched that and we went to bed and between 9.45 and 10, I had three contractions. So I called our midwife and said, I think maybe, maybe, maybe this is actually it. And then she was born two and a half hours later. It was so quick. It was so different from Sky. It was like, it was the world's longest run up to labor and then the labor itself was infinitely easier than sky it was a incredibly calm experience which i know is a massive privilege to be able to say i mean we did a huge amount of prep work we've discovered hypnobirthing through our readers when i was pregnant with sky and it was a complete game changer for us both for understanding how the body works you know the importance of things like oxytocin in labor and how the kind of calmer quieter more secure

you feel the more likely you are to produce that so my mum came over and collected Skye and took her over to her house to look after her and we set up the well Matt had already set up the birth boy had made him set it up four and a half weeks before that when I first started getting contraction so it was ready but started filling it up made a smoothie got peanut butter coconut water it was um brilliantly on brand I guess for deliciously Ella and then our midwife came over and a doula as well who was amazingly supportive. And she just sort of came really, really peaceful into the world and has stayed that way ever since.

I mean, we are so lucky she's a complete kind of angel baby. And it's been the most beautiful two weeks. I think in retrospect, I realized that I was probably a lot more anxious when Sky was born than I realized and worrying about every single thing and whether she was breathing. And this time it's felt a lot calmer and like I've been able to soak it up and enjoy it a lot more. And you've been around a lot more, which has been absolute heaven. Yeah, it's been bliss. When right after Sky was born, we were actually just launching a new product. Our caramel cups. Yeah. So I was spending a huge amount of time at our factory as we were rushing to get those out in time for a new listing. And so

this time has been bliss. I mean, May was was born very, very early on Thursday morning. I took Thursday and Friday off, but I had to be back at work on Monday. But working from home makes such a difference. And even just in between meetings or calls, being able to come up and give her a cuddle and has been absolutely lovely and one of the other big offshoots that has just been absolute bliss for me has been all the time that I've had with Skye and so we've had a really conscious effort to try and make her feel incredibly special and spoiled and that her world hasn't changed in any way so we've had these dates each weekend so we've been out to our favorite restaurants and we've been out shopping together and we've been to the park lots and just trying

to really soak up all of that time with her and it's amazing how even just these these couple of weeks as well it's kind of deepened our bond even further and so I feel very very grateful for all of the time that I've had with her too. The pictures of them on their date is just literally the sweetest thing I've ever seen in my whole life and so while I've been off getting ready to bring another little life into this world you've been running Delicious Dealer through the strangeness that has been 2020. Yeah it's been a completely mad year we're an unusual business because we have effectively three different businesses that are all very different in the way that they've been affected by COVID. And so obviously our cafe in central London has been shut effectively since March. We reopened for a short time from mid-July, but trade really didn't enable us to stay open for much longer than about two months with the

new restrictions that have come in so that's been a shame that that's been shut but really excitingly we're now turning that into a full-blown restaurant and so we're putting a new kitchen in and we've hired an amazing chef and that will be opening in January which we are absolutely thrilled about. It's been a kind of lifelong dream really for us hasn't it to open a full delicious yellow restaurant where you know we obviously feel like plant-based food can be absolutely unbelievable and so keen to change any preconceptions that people have around it so being able to create a restaurant and really show that off is just absolute magic yeah we're incredibly excited about that so i'm just going

through all of the design and planning and various consents that we need and building quotes and all of that kind of stuff at the moment but really really excited to get that reopened and then we have obviously our food products business which is the largest part of our business which i suppose is a tale of two halves we have all of the the customers that we sell in to on the high, mainly through our single serve snacks has been obviously incredibly badly affected. And a lot of that business is now a fraction of what it was, whereas in our grocery customers, trade has increased and is doing incredibly well. And then we've launched a new sales channel for us, which is our web shop, which is doing

incredibly well too. So overall in our products business, we're still quite far ahead of where we were at this point last year but down against the budget that we had set in in November of last year so still in a in a pretty strong spot with that which is which is great and then the third part of our business is our app which is again has we've been very fortunate has done very well and our subscriptions for that have increased quite a lot with more people cooking at home we've added lots of new wellness content and exercise content which i think has been really well received and so alongside the just the day-to-day operational running of all of that we've been really really keen to not stop in any new innovation or growth projects we've launched seven new different products this year which which we're really, really proud of to get those launched in this environment.

Obviously, our restaurant work and then we've got our app. We're launching a new product for that at the start of 2021, which will be a new product that effectively combines the recipe content that we've learned in delicious yellow over the past eight years around health and wellness into much more of a kind of holistic health and wellness product so we're very excited about that and we're also going to be launching a subscription service for corporates on our app so that you can offer it to team members and as an employee perk which we're just working through at the moment and then we're also really excitingly we're working on a new category launch for our food products. So I think if we weren't running a food business ourself,

I think the place that most people would expect Delicious Yellow to be or would be approaching yellow for a licensed deal, if we weren't doing it all ourselves, would be in the chilled category. And so we're really, really excited to be working on some plans for that. And we're working on some really great products. The initial feedback we've had and something that we've done has been incredibly positive. And so just building steam up towards that. And then as the umbrella on top of all of that is a big new branding project that we've done.

So over time, I think our branding has massively improved, but we're doing a new branding project. So the packaging that you see on shelves will look slightly different I think it will be much easier to shop as a result and that will then sit across everything that we do so we're really excited to bring that out as well yes it's been a busy year despite all the madness yeah it's been a it's been a crazy year and I think that know, we run the business as a family business, we run it for the long term. I think when we very first started Delicious Cielo, we were really excited, at least I was anyway, really excited to have this startup. But I think what

I realized pretty quickly was that it was much more fun to actually have a business than it was just to have a startup. And so in everything that we do with our business, we take a very, very long term view, we try and live off just the cash that the business generates, we don't want to be raising external funds. And so we have to be conscious of that. And I think that in growing a business, it's obviously very important to know where the accelerator is, but you've also got to know where the break is. And fortunately, we've got the right structures in the business where we had, we had saved over the last couple of years when things were good. And so now when things aren't so good, we've got the right level of reserves and we're still able to run the business in a sustainable way.

And overall, the business is in a really good balanced place. Have you managed the kind of stress of never knowing what's happening? Because I think that's one of the biggest questions we've had is about managing the uncertainty at the moment of not knowing what next week holds. Yeah, I mean, this is definitely been the toughest year that I've had in running the business. We thought that Brexit would be bad enough and the challenges that undoubtedly that has already thrown up and will be throwing up ongoing, let alone a pandemic to throw into the mix as well. And so it's been incredibly difficult. I think that if you didn't have the right internal structures going into this, it would have been much more difficult. But we had planned for some kind of economic shock happening. Obviously, we didn't know that it would be a pandemic. But we had the right controls, I think, in place. And

I think you've had to have a mix of managing the absolute detail of the day to day. But you've also got to have the right lens on the longer term. This won't be with us forever. And the most important thing that we have is our community and the intangible nature of our brand. And so it's just been about being able to kind of roll with the punches, to be very, very present, to take each day as it comes. Soak up in the time I've had all the the time with our growing little family and really just to put our customer at the front and center of every decision that we make and if it's not right for them then it's not right for us and I think that so far we've we've been able to navigate it in I hope as good a way as we could yeah absolutely and I got some readers questions

for today and one of them was what has 2020 taught you on a personal level and what have you been most grateful for this year so I think it just shows the importance of of family and and being present I think that we never know when enormous shocks like this are going to come. I think that it teaches us what really, really matters in life. I think sometimes we can get so carried away with thinking so far in advance of, oh, when this happens, I'll be happy or we'll be able to do this. And I think that it just really brought us back to a place of today and what can we do today. I think it's brought us to the sense of how utterly interconnected as we are as a world, something that originated in China is obviously having enormous effects here,

which makes me question so much how when this has been so illuminated to us, we're insisting on then putting barriers up around ourselves as we see so much of the politics happening today when it's so clear that our world is already so interconnected it appears the only way that we should really be operating is is together and as well not as individual units and I think just take each day as it as we can and do our absolute best each day and hopefully the accumulation of good decision making on a day-to-day basis that adds up into the to the right place for us to be absolutely and i i don't

know how many of you listened to our episode it was quite a while ago with um the amazing buddhist monk galon tupten but he wrote the most amazing book on happiness as well and i will um i'll pop it all in the show notes below. But the kind of number one takeaway was the importance of being present and that you never know what's coming and what's happened has happened. And that is something that really stuck with me, especially at the beginning. So I was like 11 weeks pregnant or so when we went into lockdown and they were saying, you know, you know, the effects on pregnant women and they should be shielding and still, you know, felt a bit sicky and rubbish, you know, that 12 week mark anyway. And, and we were trying to move house and the business was all up in the air and

it was definitely quite a kind of topsy turvy time. And it was the most brilliant way of thinking to bring you back to the fact that all you have is this moment and what can you appreciate in that moment? And we were lucky enough to have Sky and Growing May and focusing on that was just absolutely incredible. I have to say 2020 for me has also been the year of Netflix. In the last six weeks, I've never watched so much TV. It's extraordinary. I feel like I've finished Netflix and I've just started Game of Thrones, which is not

necessarily the most relaxing breastfeeding watching, but it's absolutely absolutely amazing I feel like I missed a huge thing there so I'm finally catching up on popular culture again and one of the other questions we had was updates both on American launch and then people asking specifically about countries like Germany and France and Austria yeah sure so our American launch I'm so keen for us to launch in America I lived in America for seven years. A lot of my very closest friends live in the States. And it's something that we've been incredibly keen to do. And it's why our dog's called Austin.

Yeah. Matt wanted to call him Texas because that's where he used to live. And I thought that was a step too far. Yeah. So that's where Austin originates from. So we've been incredibly keen to launch in the US. But it just feels like whenever we've been right on the cusp of doing so something enormous has thrown itself up whether it's been a baby or whether it's been now this pandemic and so we absolutely do have plans on

launching in the us it will definitely just be direct to consumers so through our web shop and through amazon which we're really really excited about And so we're building plans up for that now. And we definitely hope that we'll have products available for people in 2021. I don't think I could be quite held to the exact time of 2021 when that will be happening. But it's a huge focus for us and definitely something that we're incredibly keen to do. In terms of other European countries, so we had had a big plan to launch into Germany this year. Unfortunately, that was all scuppered when the news around COVID started to really escalate. And we really wanted to make sure that we were protecting and managing our core UK business as much as we possibly could be. But we are launching in Germany next year. We're waiting on the news of the

dreaded Brexit and how many frictions there will be to any kind of trade with everyone that we would love to go sell to in Europe. And we're hoping that our government doesn't get in the way of that too much. But we will definitely be launching in Germany in some way next year, definitely through our webshop. Anyone in France and Germany can still buy our products through our UK webshop now, which is doing really, really well. But we'll be launching on Amazon in Germany, and then hopefully launching into some various retailers that we've had some discussions with in Germany at some point next year too. One of the other questions as well is about the app launching other languages, especially German. Yes, so that's actually something that we've been working on just recently. So we are launching a completely German language app.

And that will be out before the end of the year, which we're really excited about. Yeah, that's going to be absolutely amazing. And how big is the Delicious Yellow team now? Gosh, so our Delicious Yellow team. So we have 21 in our office and then we've just got we're down to four now in our cafe that we've been keeping on for when it reopens. And so we're a team of 25. We just hired a new product manager for our app, which we're really excited about. And, you know, we always say to people when they come and start at Delicious Yellow that we're not here to offer jobs, we're here to offer careers. And success for me would be sitting around a table in 30 years with colleagues who have been with us for that amount of time and having our

girls come work in the business one day is something that would fill me with enormous pride if they wanted to do it and so when we're looking for people we typically hire very slowly so that we we really can make sure that we attract the right people and that they're the type of people who who want to stay for a very very long time and we've just added a couple more team members who have bedded in really well and still looking to make a couple of new hires. I think it's a rarity in this market, but we're proud to still be employing people

and it's something that we don't take lightly, but are very, very proud of. And someone else was wondering, our favorite recipes from Quick and Easy and from the app. So I'd say yours has got to be the mushroom walnut ragout. Yeah, I absolutely love that. whenever we have friends over for dinner if we have been able to recently that's typically the go-to dish which I absolutely adore yes toasted walnuts and like dried puccini mushrooms and things simmered in tomatoes garlic and onion and celery and herbs and it's just with

spaghetti it's absolutely so delicious and amazingly easy and also a big win with anyone that's not kind of plant-based or anything and then there's some absolutely gorgeous new recipes on the app as well just like some dark chocolate coconut bars which are heaven and exactly the kind of thing I've been munching on for feeding snacks and also an incredible new aubergine and lentil curry so if you're looking for something kind of warming on a gray day that's amazing and in quick and easy the tomato risotto it's a bit unusual because it's got miso and things in but it's so rich and warming and again like I'm looking out the window and it's raining and gray and kind of becoming winter and it's a bit dark in the evenings and that one is just absolute heaven and another question which I can relate to 1000%

is tips on healthy eating when you're exhausted with a newborn and that one hour sleep a night magic that's going on at the moment I really relate to that and I have to say now more than ever it's so interesting because when you're so exhausted sometimes the last thing you want to do is eat well but god it makes it well I find for me it makes such a big difference in helping you feel good and getting through the day when you are completely run down so I've just focused on super easy things like smoothies chuck in frozen berries you know raspberries blueberries frozen banana massive handful of spinach some oats some nuts or nut butter some chia seeds some hemp seeds something like that and oat milk blend it up and you've got a few portions of fruit and veg fiber etc etc and it's taken one minute I have

been living off our chocolate dipped almonds they are the best snack they're just kind of crunchy and more sweet but not too sweet and the multi-grain flakes as well they've got toasted hazelnuts and raisins and coconut chips and again they're like the best one minute breakfast ever to go alongside the smoothie and then also number one tip is whenever you make anything make too much of it so you can freeze the rest so we've been making loads of soups and I always make way too much soup because it takes so much less time to just cut up a couple more onions and carrots than it does to remake the whole soup again. And then I'll pop the rest in the fridge and I've got another meal completely ready to go. So the final question is how is studying going? So I actually decided at the

beginning of lockdown when I was kind of, the whole world felt uncertain. It felt like a good moment to kind of take stock of everything. And I started in degree in nutritional therapy before Delicious Yellow really took off back in 2012 when I started the blog. And after a year and a half, unfortunately, I had to pause it because work was just so busy. And I've always wanted to go back to it, but just haven't had the time. And when lockdown kicked in, I felt like now was the moment I just had a baby and I was kind of looking for something else for myself and and to kind of grow as a person and take the next step and so I signed up with ION and I've been this year I'm doing the science course

so effectively like a condensed chemistry and biology a level the chemistry I found so hard and then in February I'll start the beginning of the nutritional therapy degree so it's going to be about almost five years in total so it's a huge commitment but I'm something I'm so happy I've made and I've really actually minus some of the chemistry have really really really enjoyed this year I've still got to finish the anatomy and physiology part which with a teeny tiny who wants to feed every 10 minutes might be interesting over the next month or two but I'm going to find a way to make it work it's been a real highlight for me 2020 actually being able to take that forward and then the final final question was when will the podcast relaunch so I'm hoping that we will

be back in January I didn't really take any maternity with Sky. It took about three weeks. And then I was back finishing quick and easy our cookbook. So this time, my plan is to really be off until beginning of January and soak up those couple of months with May. Mine is trying to finish my science diploma so I can start my nutritional therapy degree. And then I'm hoping we'll be back in January with lots of ideas and inspiration. So thank you so much for everyone

who's tuned into the podcast in 2020 for all the amazing guests and for just, yeah, getting through this strange year together. I've so enjoyed reading and researching for every single episode. It's given me so much inspiration on a personal level

and being able to share that as a community has meant a huge amount I have missed my co-host but he's been so busy as I feel like he's probably alluded to that it just became too difficult to find the time to record together we actually changed this recording three times I think in order to find half an hour so it was a good case in point and why we did it it is indeed but and I also just want to say the most enormous thank you for all of your support the messages you send buoying us on and cheering us on in everything we do we feel so proud to represent you and everything that we're doing at Delicious Yellow and we are so eternally grateful for it. Yeah for us I mean trying to change the way that people look at health and wellness to make plant-based living and healthy

living that little bit easier that little bit more accessible is everything that's why we do the podcast it's why we try and make everything as accessible as possible like keeping the app at 99p and that won't change as we bring in all the new functionalities and stuff it just means the world to us to know that we're in this together and that it's a collective and it's a community of like-minded people and that it's a collective and it's a community of like-minded people and that support and encouragement is absolutely everything and you know again just as a reflection eight years ago when deliciously other started almost nine years ago now veganism and plant-based living was so weird no one had even heard of the word plant-based and so to be

where we are today and to be sharing this we just hit two million followers on instagram and you know to really feel like this is something that's in the mainstream and that we're all able to share and enjoy together. It's just, it's incredibly, incredibly exciting and makes me feel less weird on an individual level as well saying I'm vegan. So I appreciate that.

But no, it's absolutely incredible and we wouldn't be here without you guys. Yeah, we're eternally grateful. So thank you so, so much. So I hope you enjoy the rest of your 2020 as much as you possibly can. We're sending so much love to you all. We're hoping you're all getting through this okay.

And we really look forward to seeing you back here in January. Thanks so much, everyone. You're a podcast listener, and this is a podcast ad heard only in Canada. Reach great Canadian listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libsyn Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements or run a pre-produced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target audience with Libsyn