An industrial park on the outskirts of Tring, a leafy market town in Hertfordshire, is an unlikely place to find one of the most dynamic and fastest-growing brands in the UK. But once you step inside Huel’s head offices you are instantly transported from a monotonous car park into a world of cutting-edge nutrition, social media influencers and global ambition.

On the walls of the atrium, there are signs dedicated to the origins of the company, its successful adverts and how to be an effective member of staff. A “How to be Hueligan” sign lists eight points: make customers happy; don’t be a dick; hustle hard, work fast; muck in together; be on brand; take ownership; be proud, care more than the rest; and be better than yesterday.

That is an insight into the unique culture of this health and nutrition-focused food business. Julian Hearn launched Huel in 2015 as a hobby after selling his marketing business. He did so because he was passionate about health and nutrition. It quickly became apparent there was big demand for Huel’s products from a new generation of health-conscious consumers.

Huel’s first product was a powder that you mixed with water to create a drink. It has now expanded into vitamin drinks badged as meal replacements, energy bars and pasta boxes. Its products are vegan, lactose- and gluten-free. Yet as the range has grown, Huel has tried to protect the upstart attitude with which Hearn launched the company.

“When you start a business as a hobby it’s very different,” says James McMaster, the chief executive. “There is a lot more heart to the organisation because of that. Julian was almost surprised by how successful it became. It was initially just something for him to keep busy for a couple of days a week. He had a young kid at the time and didn’t want to be at home doing nothing. I think it has this very honest, transparent and modern feel that’s quite hard to recreate.”

McMaster was hired by Hearn to be chief executive in 2017 after it became clear that Huel could grow quickly. McMaster had worked in the food industry for Gü, the dessert brand, and Ella’s Kitchen, which makes healthier snacks for children. He brought commercial acumen alongside the product and marketing expertise of Hearn, who is still the chief marketing officer.

“I’m someone who enjoys everything, but I’m not really a specialist in any one area,” McMaster says. “I think if I was just an expert in one area and he was an expert in one area, that’s not going to work. I know it’s a phrase that people overuse, but I am a generalist. Even going through school I was never someone who was great at one thing. But I’m pretty confident I know enough about lots of things. That’s why I can go across every department, work with them and help make decisions on things. It’s something that I have learnt across the years, and that’s been my forte.”

When McMaster joined the company, there were about 20 staff at Huel. Now there are more than 300, with offices in the US and Germany as well as the UK. The company published its annual results in November 2024, which showed revenues were up 16 per cent year-on-year to £214m and pre-tax profits had nearly tripled to £13.8m.

The pace of Huel’s growth has posed challenges with recruitment: how to find the right people, understanding what skills are needed and how to protect the culture of the business. Huel, therefore, uses some unique recruitment techniques. McMaster is keen on candidates doing tasks, for example.

“We try more than most companies to do tasks in an interview. I think a lot of people can be great talkers but can they get stuff done? I think the ability to get stuff done is so underrated in a company,” McMaster explains.

These tasks include drawing up a new look for Huel’s vitamin drink if you are a designer or completing a coding challenge within a set time if you want to be a software engineer. After the task, the potential recruit could be asked to meet two people from different departments within Huel to check if they are a cultural fit for the business.

“Their job is to go and just have a chat with the person,” McMaster says of the two Huel people asked to meet the candidate. “I think that has helped us a lot over the years to get the right people. It’s not foolproof, but it is about trying to find similar-minded people with different skills and different personality traits.

“A similar mindset is we care about food, we care about the environment, we care about being high performing, we care about getting stuff done, we are easy to work with, we are collaborative and we haven’t got an ego. Someone might be an expert with a degree in a certain area, or they might have been a management accountant and be a totally different personality, but they could still have the right commonality to be a success here.”

However, finding the right people is one thing, giving them a platform to succeed once they join is another. Roles at Huel are constantly evolving as the business grows.

“Sometimes you need someone to come in and run a function to a greater degree – more international, more people or more size. You just need a bit more experience,” McMaster says. “Sometimes people can learn and improve. It’s really difficult. If you think about demands on an employee versus ability – you always want to be slightly stretching people, so placing slightly greater demands on their experience or ability. That’s how people grow and learn. Sometimes employees are saying: ‘Do you know what? You’re not actually asking me to do something as challenging. I need something harder.’ That’s fantastic.

“Equally, in a growth business, the reality is that more people often struggle. Initially they can handle it, then as it gets bigger – not through their fault, just the business has changed, they joined a start-up and now it’s a business several times bigger, one that’s omnichannel and operating across multiple countries – they haven’t seen that before. It’s really hard to go and learn something like that. We encourage people either internally or externally to listen to podcasts, go and see other people and go and learn from others.

“You have to work really hard to keep pace with the business. Otherwise, unfortunately, you probably need to hand the baton over to someone else. And that’s OK, that’s normal. We have people that we try so hard to keep here, help them keep carrying that baton, do a different role and support them with coaching or whatever. It’s really hard to shortcut the experience and learning bit. You can do it. It’s just rarer.”

McMaster says that if a chief executive can focus on who you hire, how you onboard them and how to keep people together, then you go a long way to scaling up a business. A key part of this for Huel is a culture book about 50 pages long. It is designed to help people understand the business and what is expected of them.

“I think a lot of companies don’t do onboarding particularly well. You start somewhere and you kind of learn from the person next to you, which could be great or it could also just be one view,” McMaster explains.

“We got quite inspired by Netflix back in the day. Something that Julian and I did really early on is that we wrote a culture book. It’s our way of summarising what we believe in – in terms of how to show up, why being better than yesterday is important and why mucking in together is important. In the book is a picture of when we had a flood here a couple of years back. Basically, we’re all there together, sweeping the flood and mucking together. Like I said, there are no egos.

“It’s about trying to get people to drink the Kool-Aid pretty quickly when they first join, regarding what we care about and why. Then we do a huge amount of onboarding where they do loads of inductions and it’s really intense in the first couple of weeks. I know people are keen to get cracking and get stuff done, but the reality is most people take months until they are really productive in a company.

“The quicker you can get people to understand the company, what the culture is and what you are trying to achieve, the better. We spend a huge amount more time on onboarding than other businesses. We also have a lower employee turnover and some really smart staff who have done a brilliant job. How do we get them to pass that information on to others and all work well collaboratively?”

Staff are encouraged to communicate with the management team through an all-hands meeting called All-Hueligans, held every two weeks. McMaster will talk through the positive news for the business and the “not-so-good” news before introducing new starters.

“Each new joiner has a microphone,” he says. “They have to introduce themselves and say something funny and interesting. That’s probably really daunting now, more daunting than before. When we first started, there were only 20 people in a room. It was quite easy.”

The new starters are now speaking to more than 300 people, some of whom are physically present and some on video screens in different parts of the world. How this meeting has changed is a mark of how much Huel has changed.  Nonetheless, McMaster still thinks that Huel staff – Hueligans – have stand-out attributes.

“Ultimately it’s being a person who is proactive, thoughtful, cares more than the rest, is curious, driven and a good communicator,” McMaster says. “All these things link together. Sure, not everyone can have all those character traits, I get it. But the best people have most of them and they are like gold dust.”