Deliciously Ella wants to be a healthy food campaigner like Jamie Oliver – and she’s certainly got politics in her blood
Her food empire is valued at about £60 million, but Ella Mills isn’t one to just sit and count her cash. She’s revealed that she would like to follow in Jamie Oliver’s footsteps and take up food advocacy.
The 31-year-old, left, behind Deliciously Ella tells today’s You magazine: ‘I know I can do the most good working directly to change the way people eat.’
Over the past decade, Ella’s empire has grown from a humble blog to a firm that sells a food product almost every two seconds – and her plans for the future underline a commendable determination to spread her message.
She reveals that the vicious trolling she endured after her first book, Deliciously Ella in 2015, almost forced her to quit her venture.
Over the past decade, Ella Mills’ (pictured) empire has grown from a humble blog to a firm that sells a food product almost every two seconds – and her plans for the future underline a commendable determination to spread her message
Ella has revealed that she would like to follow in the footsteps of Jamie Oliver (pictured) and take up food advocacy
‘We’d gone from something niche to people talking about you instead of to you,’ she said.
‘I was so young and out of my depth and confused. I didn’t know what I was doing … I definitely had moments from 2015 to 2017 when I thought, ‘Do I really want to do this?’ ‘
Ella said it was her online community that kept her going, adding: ‘When you hear from people who say this has changed their life, you think ‘Who cares about this random person I’ve never met who doesn’t like me?’ ‘
Her range has now grown to 40 vegan products – including her original cacao and almond energy balls – which are all sold across 6,000 UK stores.
Ella’s mother is the supermarket heiress Camilla Davan Sainsbury but she says there have never been any handouts from either set of parents.
‘My family haven’t worked in Sainsbury’s since before I was born,’ Ella said. ‘Ironically they were one of the last retailers to stock us.
But there is a spirit that comes from my great-great-great-grandpa, who started one of the biggest brands in the country.’
If she does move into ‘food politics’, Ella may well turn for advice to her father, former Labour MP Shaun Woodward.
Meanwhile, her husband Matthew Mills, the chief executive of Deliciously Ella, is also considering following in the family footsteps with a run for parliament.
Ella said if she does move into ‘food politics’, Ella may well turn for advice to her father, former Labour MP Shaun Woodward
Matthew is the son of late Cabinet Minister Dame Tessa Jowell and Ella said it was ‘definitely in the ether’ that he would one day stand as an MP.
The couple met through their parents in what Ella has dubbed ‘an arranged marriage’. The mother-of-two added: ‘The first two times we met it was business and not a date.
‘Eventually he asked me out to dinner and three days after that we moved in together.’
