Deliciously Ella: From $20 Blog to $25M Wellness App

Ella Mills started cooking because she was sick, not because she wanted to be famous. In 2011, at 20, she was diagnosed with postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), spent a year in and out of hospital, and got no relief from 25 daily medications. So she changed her diet and started posting the results on a $20 WordPress blog. That blog became Deliciously Ella, and the Deliciously Ella app is now the recurring-revenue engine inside a business that turns over roughly $25 million a year. That is the gap most creators never cross. A blog is content. An app is a company. Key Takeaways:

Ella Mills built Deliciously Ella from a $20 blog in 2012 into a wellness brand generating about $25 million a year, per Fortune
Her first recipe app hit #1 in food and drink on the UK App Store, and her debut cookbook became the fastest-selling debut cookbook in UK history
The current Feel Better app holds a 4.9-star rating across 7,400+ ratings, with 2,000+ recipes and 800+ workout classes
The app runs on subscriptions that renew every month, not book sales that happen once
In 2024 the brand was acquired by Swiss manufacturer Hero Group, valuing a decade of audience-building at roughly $35 million

Who Is Ella Mills?

Ella Mills (born Ella Woodward) is a British food writer and founder of the plant-based brand Deliciously Ella, which she runs with more than 4 million followers across Instagram and other platforms. She is not a trained chef. She is a self-taught cook who documented her own recovery in public. "I taught myself to cook, and I did it on a blog," Mills told Fortune. That sentence is the whole model. She had a problem, she solved it in the open, and the audience showed up for the answer. The origin matters because it is repeatable. No investor, no agency, no viral stunt. A sick 20-year-old with a $20 blog and a reason to keep going.

From a $20 Blog to a Recipe App That Hit #1

The blog worked because it was useful. Within a couple of years the site had passed 130 million hits and reached readers in around 80 countries. People wanted to eat better and had no idea where to start, and Mills answered that question a few hundred times for free. Then she productized the answer. Her debut cookbook landed in 2015 and became the fastest-selling debut cookbook in UK history. Around the same time she launched a paid recipe app that went straight to #1 in food and drink on the UK App Store. In 2016 came the first physical product, a cacao and almond energy ball, and the brand has since sold more than 100 million products. Look at the order of operations. Free content built the trust. The app and the products turned that trust into money that arrives on a schedule.

This is the same path we see in profile after profile. Sadia Badiei did it with free vegan recipes before charging a cent, as we covered in the Pick Up Limes story. Bobby Parrish did it with grocery hauls before shipping the Bobby Approved food app. The content is the funnel. The app is the business.

Your audience is a business.

Built by Foundry builds, launches, and runs it for you. $0 upfront. Three weeks to App Store.

Book a free strategy call →

What Does the Feel Better App Do?

The Deliciously Ella: Feel Better app is a subscription wellness app that bundles 2,000+ plant-based recipes, 800+ guided workout classes, meal plans, and meditation content into one daily-use tool. It is published by Deliciously Ella Ltd and holds a 4.9-star rating across more than 7,400 App Store ratings. The important word is daily. A cookbook gets bought once and lives on a shelf. The app gets opened on a Tuesday night when someone needs dinner, on a Sunday when they plan the week, and on a Monday morning for a Pilates class. Every recipe added, every class filmed, is another reason the subscription stays active.

That breadth is a moat. A generic recipe app cannot casually add 800 workout classes and a meditation library, because a generic recipe app does not have a decade of audience trust telling it what those people also want. Mills does. The app is not a feature. It is the product her whole audience was built to buy.

How Much Does Deliciously Ella Make?

The Deliciously Ella brand turns over about $25 million a year across food products, books, and the app, according to Fortune. The retail snacks drive most of that number. The app is the piece that compounds, because subscriptions renew while book sales and one-off products do not. Here is how the app subscription is priced:

Tier	Price (US)	Effective Monthly
Monthly	$6.99/month	$6.99
Quarterly	$11.99/quarter	$4.00
Annual	$32.99/year	$2.75

The annual plan is the quiet winner, the same pattern we broke down in annual vs monthly app subscriptions. At $32.99 up front it locks in a full year of revenue and cuts churn to one decision instead of twelve. And the math scales fast. As we showed in how 500 app subscribers make $10K a month, a creator does not need millions of downloads to build real recurring income, they need a few thousand people who open the app every week. Then, in 2024, the whole business was acquired by Hero Group, the Swiss maker behind brands like Nutella competitor spreads and baby food. S&P estimates put the valuation around $35 million. That is what a $20 blog is worth once you turn it into a company someone wants to buy.

A blog sells once. An app renews forever.

We build the product, ship it to the App Store, and run it for you. You keep the business.

Book a free strategy call →

What Creators Can Learn From Deliciously Ella

Mills gave away her best material for years before she charged for anything. That is the move most creators get backwards. They gate the good stuff early and wonder why nobody trusts them enough to subscribe. She did the opposite: she answered the question completely, in public, until the audience treated her as the authority on plant-based food. Then she gave that audience a reason to pay every month instead of once. A cookbook is a transaction. An app is a relationship. One earns when it launches. The other earns every morning someone reaches for it before they reach for anything else. The catch is that building and running a real subscription app is a company, not a weekend project. App Store submission, payments, updates, retention, the whole operation runs forever. That is the exact gap we exist to close, and you can read how our model works on our about page. Mills built her business the hard way, over a decade. Most creators do not have a decade, and they do not have to. She had a $20 blog and a reason to keep cooking. You already have the audience. The question is whether you turn it into a company or leave it as content.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Deliciously Ella app?

The Deliciously Ella: Feel Better app is a subscription wellness app with more than 2,000 plant-based recipes, 800+ guided workout classes, meal plans, and meditation content. It holds a 4.9-star App Store rating across 7,400+ ratings.

How much does the Deliciously Ella app cost?

The app is priced at about $6.99 per month, $11.99 per quarter, or $32.99 per year. The annual plan works out to roughly $2.75 a month, the cheapest way to subscribe.

How did Ella Mills build Deliciously Ella?

She started a $20 WordPress blog in 2012 to document a plant-based diet after a POTS diagnosis, grew it to 130 million hits, then launched a bestselling cookbook, a #1 recipe app, and a food product line that has sold over 100 million units.

Who owns Deliciously Ella now?

In 2024 the Deliciously Ella brand was acquired by Hero Group, a Swiss food manufacturer. S&P estimates valued the business at around $35 million. Want to turn your expertise into an app? We build custom apps for creators, $0 upfront, 3-week delivery, and we handle all the tech forever.

Let's Build →