Agreed, the price hike is way to steep to justify buying huel and not the other great options out there.
Personally would have adjusted better to a 6% increase this year and another 6% next year, would have been just £3 extra for twos bag more this year and then the same again next year.
Or just an extra clean £5 for two bags from £45 to £50.
Would have been good to see too maybe a bigger price reduction introduced for larger orders as I assume that would be a win win for the transport costs when buying in more bulk.
I’ll still buy the powder, not sure about the bars.
Not sure though if there was ever another £6-7 price increase in the future if it would be feasable anymore. Let’s hope there will be no other price increases for a while because I do love Huel.
3 Likes
Defo not happy with the major increase, couple of quid would have sufficed, but this is major.
“We don’t anticipate decreasing our prices.”
Wait, waitwaitwait…so the price increase is blamed solely on the rising cost of ingredients, but in the scenario you’re replying to that if post-covid they decrease, Huel will still be kept at the same price? Sounds like you’re going against your goal of affordability by admitting you wouldn’t pass any future savings back to the consumer.
As we stand now, I’m looking at switching to a mix of slimfast and your main european competitor for my current huel meals - they’re just over £1 per meal. You’ll cost 50% more after this. Again, please review your internal spending and find savings elsewhere (or reduce the price increase) or many will have no choice but to switch.
2 Likes
I think you’re putting words in his mouth there. I think he’s saying Huel aren’t expecting a sudden drop in ingredients, transportation and energy costs anytime soon. If all of those factors did reduce then I’m confident Huel would pass the savings on.
2 Likes
…yeah you’re kind of right there, I guess I read the reply the wrong way, sorry. I read it as “I don’t think we will” to the question asked rather than doubting the scenario. An answer of if the prices will be reduced if the ingredient prices head back down would be nice though.
Wow, a lot of reactions to the price increase… My thoughts after reading all the comments:
Defending Huel:
- I like the fact that Huel announces the price changes in a timely and transparent fashion. Plenty of time to change your subscription(s). And you can calculate exactly what it will mean for your preferred products.
- I order BE regularly, for an order of 8 pouches there will be no change. Not a problem for me. Transport is an important factor and Huel offers free delivery, so it makes perfect sense that you get rewarded for placing larger orders, it’s a win-win situation. (I do understand this is not possible for everyone. Maybe you know someone where you live who also uses Huel, so you can order bigger quantities together? Find other users in your area via the fb group?)
Questioning Huel:
- You are now launching the new RTD flavours at (what I think might prove to be) an impossible price point. I just can’t imagine that you will sell the large quantities you need to make these a profitable business. For me personally, budget is not an issue, I’m willing to spend more for a high quality product I like, nutrition is so important. But 3,95€ a bottle is simply not an acceptable price… and that’s for an order of 48 bottles, not a single one in a supermarket!! For 24 bottles it’s even more than 4€, that’s crossing a psychological barrier for many, many people. And let’s face it, an RTD is not really ‘a meal’ at 400 kcal, it’s a snack, not a lunch.
So I will certainly continue to order BE. But the new RTD 2.0 flavours are just too expensive. Pity, I liked the idea of hemp and free of sucralose. I doubt if I will still order RTD 1.0, they were at my maximum price already, there is a limit. And I will now take a good look at what the competition has to offer.
5 Likes
I think it’s a shame this increase has alienated so many huel users.
Can you not think a bit more outside the box - maybe introduce a loyalty points system so your regulars pay less than your newbies - and I’m a newbie by the way!
I can see why the prices have had to go up. Huel has been magic for me but they aren’t magic enough to be immune from covid and its tendrils that grip everything.
Good luck all x
3 Likes
Cheers for the very open communication regarding the price increase. I would prefer to have smaller increases every year then a big increase every now and then. I will still be a customer of H&S, Black edition, the bars and RTD. The new 2.0 RTD is though over my price limit but will still order it every now and then for a change.
I have tried countless of alternatives but they are all subpar to Huel. A good thing to remember is that Huel is continuously innovating new products as well and are very far ahead of the competition. So far I have not had a Huel product that I could not finish so no food has been wasted 
2 Likes
Founder Julian says: ‘To give a bit more context… Huel made -10% ebitda profit in f2018 and -1.6% profit in f2019. So you can see that we are not a highly profitable company’. You don’t believe him? Have you checked that information?
1 Like
If companies don’t make profit they disappear. They shouldn’t be ashamed to make profit.
From what I can see they also spend time in r&d so it’s clear they put some of those profits back into the business.
And if we are talking about being more careful with internal spending is that redundancies…?
I’m ok with the price rise. It’s still cheaper, more efficient and less wasteful than cooking for me but I see I’m a minority.
5 Likes
Interesting, thanks for the information Rubyrails. 
Let’s see how Julian or Tim react to this. 
where is that data from? Source?
How many employees?
@Rubyrails my current annual salary is £144k which is below the average of a Cmo of a company Huel size… certainly not 1m lol
We don’t pay dividends either
We currently have about 200 do if this year salary was 7m that would qn average of 35k do the math.
I can assure you that the price increases has nothing to do with salaries.
The cost of virtually everything has gone up. E
G. International freight has gone up over 500% and peaked at over 1000% up. Energy has gone up. Ingredients gas gone up etc. Etc etc.
11 Likes
Thanks so much for the comments guys, rest assured we are reading every single one. Whether that’s here, emails, comments, Reddit, other forums, Facebook group and more.
Welcome back to any old school Hueligans who have come back to share their thoughts, thanks so much, and also welcome to any new accounts made, hopefully you will find other areas of the forum useful too. Let me reply to a few comments here but firstly say that we absolutely empathise with you guys and reiterate this was not an easy decision at all and we absolutely are not passing on the entire cost of increases to you.
I think this is very dependent on what foods you’re talking about. In general food has increased in price, but the amount you purchase groceries for doesn’t necessarily translate to the increase we are experiencing on raw goods. Or the increase in shipping. It’s just illustrative of what is happening right now. If you’re shopping has gone up by 5% that doesn’t mean everything we are buying/shipping has also gone up by 5%. We’re just using it as an example of things are getting more expensive.
Absolutely, and Julian has said that we have been working extremely hard to negotiate better prices and be smart with where we spend. This is something we have always done and worked harder to do better, not least because it just makes good business sense. We haven’t passed all the increases on to our Hueligans.
Rest assured that we don’t advertise without full awareness of what any adverts deliver.
I think I’ve already said, but just to say again, we aren’t for a moment suggesting that Huel is or has ever been more cost effective than something you make at home. Your 25p sandwich is cheap but won’t have close to the nutritional profile that Huel does. That is one of the key benefits of Huel and the energy and health that Hueligans experience and talk about here on this forum as a result of having Huel regularly attests to that great, well thought out nutritional profile.
This is awesome news @Herbivore, so pleased that you’ve managed to take on something a bit less full-on. Good luck with it, let us know how you get on 
I think Coup has responded to this, but just to add that covid is not the only reason that food, freight, delivery, and many other areas of our supply chain have increased in price. We have no vision of if costs will ever come down, so making promises we cannot keep is not something we want to ever do.
Ruby I appreciate that you are frustrated, we haven’t taken this on lightly. What you purchase is entirely up to you and I hope another product works for you. However, nutritionally I am sure that anything significantly cheaper than Huel will not be 99% the same, even if it looks so on the surface. Better quality ingredients, more vitamins and minerals from the whole ingredients, additional nutrients to support the essential ones, vitamins and minerals with better bioavailability, a superior fatty acid profile are just a handful of things Huel excels at.
We absolutely haven’t backtracked on our sustainability pledges. There are many threads here where we explain the pros and cons of plastic. The tl;dr is that plastic produces <3% of the carbon emissions from a meal of Huel. So, we need to focus on the aspects of Huel that truly deliver a positive impact on our carbon. While Huel is low carbon anyway we are always looking to improve. For example, our ingredients are one of the biggest sources of our carbon (~80%), so we have been experimenting with hemp protein which has a much lower carbon footprint than rice and the other week released RTD v2.0 which uses hemp instead of rice. A huge step forward. To add, our RTD bottles are made from 51% recycled plastic and are recyclable.
Thanks for the balanced post, really appreciate it.
I can’t really go into detail on this, I just want to say that while I can see your logic here it’s not how it ends up in practice and isn’t a correct assumption.
Julian has answered this but it isn’t creative accounting it’s just how business works. Revenue is not equal to net profit. I don’t know how much stock we have, but of course it’s important to have a lot of stock so that we can keep delivering Huel next day. To reiterate what Julian has said, we have 207 employees, so spending that much on wages is entirely reasonable.
I know that you guys are feeling the sting here. We’re reading everything and think it’s so important for you to express this on the various forums you have. Hopefully at the very least you appreciate our transparency and forewarning. We truly believe Huel is offering the best quality nutrition in the most convenient format, something we don’t think anything else can offer together, even at our new prices. We hope you will stick around because while maybe you can find something cheaper, we don’t think there is something with the nutrition, customer experience, community and mission like Huel.
7 Likes
I understand prices need to rise due to the current market conditions.
But 14% is a cash grab. And it really is disingenuous to say otherwise.
I started Huel years ago because I was attracted by the mission. I think you are going against that mission.
Julian you are a serial entrepreneur and presumably are keen on floating or selling at some point.
Can you at least come up with a product that is super basic and cheap and 90% of the benefits? No need to add lots of expensive vitamins. This will cater for loyal hueligans that cannot afford the more premium products.
Kombucha for instance, I’m not fussed if that’s in or out and may be an expensive addition
Absolutely not a cash grab. We will be making less margin this year than last year, even after the price rise.
I’m starting to have a feeling that we are getting away from the key discussion on the price increases and start to dig in people’s pockets…
2 Likes
they didn’t blame the cost increase on their financial situation as a company, purely on materials&shipping increase, part of which they have absorbed.
1 Like
Lots of different discussions going on here. I don’t personally think that the increases are down to Huel being greedy at all, and i’m not a fool to think that with everything else going up that this wouldn’t too. Although disappointed with the amount of increase especially on my subscription of H&S the effect it has for me personally is what is affecting my decision.
I do agree with some of the comments saying a small increase a year is better than one big increase. I have been using Huel more and more over the past few months now ordering RTD’s to take to work as well as Bars and my main lunch H&S when WFH. For me personally I was at the limit of my food budget before the increase and something will have to give. This will probably and sadly mean I drop the bars completely, purchase RTD’s less and maybe with my weekly shop and cut back on the amount of H&S I use per month and maybe purchase a 8-10 week subscription instead of 4-5.