The slopification of British food

A British food company whose flagship product has been described as ‘a thin suspension of powdered grit in water’ – cloying, artificial and somehow both sweet and bitter – has just been sold for around €1 billion (£870million). This is Huel, bought last month by French yoghurt giant Danone.

Huel is not alone in raking in the big bucks despite dubious quality. From Cadbury’s £11.5 billion takeover by Kraft to BrewDog’s £1 billion valuation when it sold a large stake to private equity, some of Britain’s most underwhelming food and drink brands now command extraordinary market valuations. How do products this mediocre become so valuable?

Huel’s awfulness is no accident – it is the entire point. Huel, founded in Aylesbury in 2014, takes its name from a composite of the words ‘human fuel’. It appears to have been built around the idea that actually making food to eat with your loved ones is inconvenient, and that eating for pleasure is beside the point. The aim, instead, is efficiency: one part powder to five parts water, shaken and consumed while on the go.

When Huel was reviewed by the Guardian in 2014, the disgruntled reporter said it reminded her ‘of the medicine I had as a child for bottom worms.’ A reviewer for Vice later quoted someone calling it ‘late-stage capitalist nutrient paste’. Tellingly, defenders of Huel tend to praise it for convenience rather than taste, or else parrot the product’s claims to being a ‘healthy’ replacement for actual food – that is, despite the drink’s ingredients being processed beyond all recognition.

And yet, Huel is now worth around £870million. Danone didn’t purchase it because it tastes any good, but because it’s a scalable answer to the very modern desire to not think about eating. Let’s not forget that Danone itself had to recall baby formula over contamination concerns and has been accused of operating as part of a milk-price cartel. Even its press release about the deal confirms that this is primarily about scale, infrastructure and growth. What else could justify a food product so divorced from food?

Birmingham’s Cadbury is an even sadder case. This is a company that started out as something genuinely good. Built as a reaction to Victorian industrial slums, Cadbury gave its workers decent housing, open space, shorter hours and stability, all of which were exceptional for the time. The worst you could say about the company was that Cadbury’s Quaker roots meant no pubs in Bournville, the purpose-built village where factory staff lived.

But that time is long gone. Since Kraft acquired the company in 2010, Cadbury has been diluted in the same way that countless other heritage brands have been. Even before Kraft’s takeover, the widespread introduction of palm oil in the chocolate industry, as well as various other cost-saving changes, had already drawn global complaints. Cadbury Dairy Milk now offers ‘20 per cent minimum’ cocoa solids and ‘vegetable fats in addition to cocoa butter’. This only just meets the legal definition of milk chocolate. A product that was once high quality and distinctive now tastes totally generic.

This decline in standards didn’t come out of nowhere. Reformulations, shrinkflation and price rises have all contributed to the steady erosion of quality. Recently, Cadbury has also faced renewed accusations of child labour in its cocoa-supply chains. Though many still buy the brand out of habit, affection for the former British staple has certainly thinned out among the public.

When it comes to Scotland’s BrewDog, the problem is not so much taste or quality, but pretence. BrewDog positioned itself as a ‘punk’ alternative to corporate beer – something for the anti-establishment and rebellious. For a time, this worked. Then, perhaps unsurprisingly, that sense of ‘rebellion’ transformed into a rather un-rebellious business model. In 2017, BrewDog sold a 23 per cent stake to American private equity firm TSG Consumer Partners in a deal valuing the company at £1 billion. This deal was made explicitly to fund global expansion.

The fallout was huge for those small investors who bought into BrewDog through its ‘Equity for Punks’ scheme. Many now risk being left with nothing. But perhaps the warning signs were there all along. BrewDog has spent years mired in accusations of cultivating a toxic workplace, with former staff describing operating within a ‘culture of fear’. There have been many additional disputes over the company’s ethical and environmental claims. Ultimately, the story has become far less about the company’s mission than about the brand, the rollout and the money behind it.

Those blaming foreign ownership should know this is only part of the story. The aforementioned companies had their issues long before they were sold out of British hands. None of them was built around pride in craft, or even a serious interest in what they produce. Each represents a different route to the same destination: efficiency, dilution or branding overtaking substance.

The result is a food culture where the most valuable products are often the least worth eating.

Richard Crampton-Platt is a food writer and former restaurateur.