Lune & Wild Raises £2 Million Series A Led by Guinness Ventures to Scale Premium Frozen Baby Food Onto Ocado and Beyond
Lune & Wild, a London‑based baby and children's food brand, has closed a £2 million Series A funding round, equivalent to approximately €2.3 million, as it moves to scale production and extend its retail reach following a landmark listing on Ocado Retail. The round was led by Guinness Ventures, the investment arm of Guinness Asset Management, with participation from a group of strategically significant food and nutrition industry figures.
New investors joining the round include NHS GP and food writer Dr. Rupy Aujla, founder of The Doctor's Kitchen; and Doug Struthers, who serves as Chairperson of Lune & Wild and previously served as Managing Director of Ella's Kitchen, the UK's most recognised children's food brand. Returning investors include Charlie Gardiner of Our House (formerly Little Houses Group), Siân Parry Jones, co‑founder of Archer Street Cocktail Bar, and Harry Bloice, former Commercial Director at Butternut Box.
The Problem Lune & Wild Was Built to Solve
Founded in 2021 by cousins Lara Rodgers and Nadia Simonds, Lune & Wild was created out of direct personal experience with the shortcomings of conventional baby food. Rodgers, a chef, began weaning her child in 2019 using home‑cooked frozen cubes and found that nothing comparable existed at retail. Simonds brought complementary experience from working with ethical food brands and sustainability‑focused businesses. Seeing a clear gap between what nutritionally conscious parents were cooking at home and what the supermarket shelf offered, the two co‑founders launched Lune & Wild.
Their critique of the existing category is evidence‑based. Much of the conventional ambient baby food market is characterised by products with high free sugar content, limited flavour variety, and a texture profile that does little to advance a child's palate development. Lune & Wild's alternative is a range of handmade, frozen meals developed in partnership with paediatric dietitians, made with organic produce sourced from Soil Association‑certified suppliers and welfare‑assured meat. The result is food that is genuinely nutritious and flavourful enough to serve a dual purpose: meeting infant nutritional requirements and actively broadening a child's exposure to ingredients, textures, and tastes.
The product range covers the full arc from first weaning at six months through to school‑age children, with meals including updated British classics like Cottage Pie and Beef Bolognese alongside dishes designed to introduce world flavours and diverse plant ingredients. All products are hand‑prepared and frozen to lock in nutritional value and freshness, then delivered to customers directly or available through retail partners.
Commercial Performance and Ocado Expansion
Lune & Wild has doubled revenue annually since launch and delivered over one million meals in the twelve months preceding this funding announcement, metrics that reflect genuine consumer pull rather than marketing‑driven sampling.
The company's recent listing on Ocado Retail, one of the UK's dominant online grocery platforms with a customer base heavily weighted toward premium and health‑conscious shoppers, is the most significant distribution milestone to date. Early sales on the platform have exceeded the company's own expectations. The Ocado range features ten products spanning the developmental stages from first weaning to family meals, and positions Lune & Wild directly in front of a customer demographic that actively seeks organic, nutritionist‑led, and transparently sourced children's food.
Beyond e‑commerce, the brand has established presence across cafés, delis, farm shops, family clubs, and nurseries across London and the Home Counties, building a community‑based distribution model that reinforces the brand's premium, trust‑driven positioning.
Lisa Fox, Head of Co‑Investment at Guinness Ventures, described the brand as defining the future of food: purpose‑driven, product‑led, and building deep trust with parents. That framing resonates with the broader structural shift in the UK baby food market, where a generation of parents with heightened nutrition literacy and ethical consumption habits is demanding more from what they feed their children.
How the Capital Will Be Deployed
The fresh proceeds from the Series A will be directed toward a significant expansion of production capacity, allowing Lune & Wild to meet the demand generated by the Ocado listing and anticipated retail growth without compromising the handmade, hands‑on production model that defines the brand. Investment will also support team growth, marketing activity, and further retail expansion as the company builds its national footprint beyond its current London and Home Counties concentration.
The participation of Doug Struthers as both Chairperson and investor is particularly meaningful for the growth phase ahead. Struthers guided Ella's Kitchen through the distribution and production scaling challenges that accompany the transition from cult DTC brand to mass‑market grocery staple, a journey Lune & Wild is now beginning. His operational knowledge of the UK children's food retail landscape, combined with Dr. Aujla's credibility in the nutrition and healthcare community, gives the brand's advisory structure unusual depth for a company of this stage and size.
The UK premium baby food market is expanding as parents increasingly treat infant nutrition with the same level of scrutiny they apply to their own diets. Frozen as a format has been rehabilitated by brands across the food sector as consumers recognise that properly frozen, freshly prepared food retains nutritional integrity better than many ambient alternatives. Lune & Wild's positioning at the intersection of these trends, premium, frozen, chef‑led, dietitian‑approved, and organic, gives it a defensible category identity in a market where many rivals have compromised on at least one of those attributes.
For parents looking for more, the full product range can be explored at luneandwild.co.uk.
With the Series A closed and the Ocado rollout underway, Lune & Wild enters its next phase of growth with the financial backing, retail infrastructure, and industry expertise to test whether its model can scale into a nationally significant children's food business.
