Yahoo Finance The bone broth rise: 'One Freja customer said his grandmother called it the Italian penicillin'
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When Jess Higgins and Ed Armitage purchased a pallet each of chicken and beef bone broth, spent a mere £500 on packaging and design during lockdown in 2020 and stocked on Amazon, the husband and wife team quickly realised they had a product to enrich the 'stale' stocks, broths and gravy section in supermarket aisles.
Their initial batch, called Take Stock, sold out within three weeks in November 2020. Relaunching two months later they took £30,000 in their first month and are now growing at 200% year-on-year, having sold more than one million units to date in their new guise, Freja Bone Broth.
Too small and growing too fast — with looming revenues of £6m this year — to be included in the most recent Alantra Food & Beverage Fast 50, which showcases the fastest-growing privately-owned companies in the UK, there is every indication that Freja is on its way to entering the top echelons of the list as the co-founders aim to become Europe's No.1 bone broth brand.
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“I had been looking at the bone broth category for five years in the US and questioning why it had not exploded in the UK and Northern Europe,” says Armitage.
“The underlying trends are there, we have competitors in the category who are easily as good as ours in some respects but the category is tiny.”
Armitage estimated UK gross retail value at £5m before Freja’s emergence. “We haven’t created it but we have done a huge amount to grow it,” Armitage states. He now estimates retail sales value of £20m, of which Freja's share will be around 60% in 2025.
The co-founders went to launch having met strict criteria in flavour, nutritional profile — how much protein and collagen could be included into the product — packaging and having a shelf stable solution, which can now be stored for up to 24 months.
With the duo having been brought up on bone broth in their youth, they went through several recipe iterations in their kitchen during lockdown as they looked for ways to add nourishing fast food with nutritional values for their four teenagers.
On the cusp of buying a house, they then took the plunge and put their deposit into scaling the business. “It was a meaningful sum for us with four teenage children and a huge risk,” says Armitage.
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His confidence was one based on experience, having spent 15 years working in consumer businesses up to CEO or board level. “I wasn’t making uninformed bets with blind optimism. I was carefully calculating whether there was a market opportunity,” he adds.
Freja is sourced, manufactured and packaged in Norway. “Going to Scandinavia, they are respected for their standards, environment and are the best in the world,” admits Armitage. “We can now create a brand and story around sourcing that everyone can get behind whether you are in the UK, France or Germany.
“A lot of people are sceptical in the UK that bone broth is a poncy name for stock. And guess what? It is. But it’s the best stock you can make with the correct ingredients and made in such a way it creates an incredibly nutritious food.”
While Higgins, a former solicitor, ventured into the category for nutrition values, Armitage had started his working life in kitchens and says he hasn’t used a stock cube since he was 17.
“I’ve always called them poison cubes,” the 45-year-old jokes, “but my passion for getting into the category was more around traditional versus ultra-processed foods. One of our customers said that his grandmother called it Italian penicillin.
"Everyone uses it as a health drink or a base for food. People said not too long ago that if your grandmother wouldn’t recognise the ingredients it’s probably not food. In 20 years we have gone so far away from that, to plant based, ultra-processed food being supposedly good for you.
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"Whereas only 20 years ago there was more common sense to have a balanced diet that was local and seasonal without any waste. I don’t know how we have gone away from that so quickly.”
Freja Bone Broth recently announced a £2m fund raise, with investment from sports figures such as Harry Kane and Alistair Brownlee, while Armitage says that bringing the former managing director of Innocent Drinks and ex-CEO of Unilever to the cap table has added clout. “That is a testament of where the category is going and what we are doing as a brand.”
Further, the collagen-rich bone broth’s growth has been fuelled by health benefits such as weight loss and anti-ageing.
“Soothing gut irritation or recovering from cancer or COVID, or whatever their health goal is, bone broth is the cornerstone of a healthy diet protocol or trying to cure something,” adds Armitage.
Gloucestershire-based Freja Bone Broth, currently with 12 employees, is now into a five-pillar strategic plan called ‘2424’, a bold vision to sell £24m of product in 24 months.
“If an opportunity comes along we say ‘no’. It’s about sticking to a plan and saying ‘no’ a lot, being disciplined and focused,” says Armitage.
Behind the brand: co-founder Ed Armitage on…
The ‘challenger brand’ rise
“We have more access to information via the internet, access to manufacturers and partners who are more willing to take a chance on unknown brands. There is a great culture of starting challenger brands in all areas, not just food and drink. If you look at those brands which are winning, they are quite often functional, ‘better for you’ brands.
"They have a reason for the consumer to believe in them and are trying to take market share away from stale legacy brands who quite often have poor environmental credentials and poor quality ingredients. If you go to any island supermarket and take a look at the brands, you don't have to look very far to find a way to make it better.”
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