Amelia Christie-Miller didn’t always like beans. In fact, she outright avoided them. To the now founder and CEO of a challenger bean brand, canned pulses were always “boring, dull and tasteless”.
These days, Christie-Miller is “obsessed” with beans, and her start-up Bold Bean Co is turning heads in the canned pulses aisle. Selling high-end varieties into what was a ‘race-to-the-bottom’ category, Bold Bean Co has created a new ‘premium tier’ in beans.
Bold Bean Co shakes up the legacy bean aisle
Bold Bean Co was founded by Christie-Miller in 2021. Eighteen months on, the CEO brought in co-founder Ed Whelpton, and with their small team, they sell gourmet varieties of pulses in the UK and Ireland.
The start-up has also entered the baked beans segment, disrupting an aisle that has long been stacked with household names like Heinz, Branston, and others.
In so doing, Bold Bean Co has made great headway in turning the legacy bean aisle on its head - at least on home soil. Shaking off a stigma associated with flatulence was laughable just a few years ago, recalls Christie-Miller. But ultimately, there’s something playful about a brand trying to make beans ‘cool’, she says, when traditionally beans have been so ‘uncool’.
For a long time, it didn’t cross Christie-Miller’s mind that the bean category was even worth disrupting. But during a university exchange to Spain, the founder tasted her first heirloom butter bean from a jar. Her reaction speaks for itself: “Oh my God, this is a completely different thing.”
It was then Christie-Miller’s perception of preserved beans started to change. “I’d been exposed to a really gourmet version, which meant I didn’t see beans as something stuck in the canned food aisle.”
Today, beans are no longer relegated to tins. In 2024, jarred beans as a whole grew by £5.7m (€6.7m) in the UK, £4.8m of which is thanks to Bold Bean Co.
In 2024, Bold Bean Co sales grew by a whopping 259.5%, compared to the segment’s 20.3% increase year-on-year. By unit, the start-up celebrated a 303.3% boost, whereas the category’s increased by 5.9% (North Star).
Inside the jar: What makes Bold Bean Co different?
On the packaging side alone, Bold Bean Co stands out. The start-ups sells its beans in tall glass jars, rather than cans, accompanied by a bold, colourful label reading ‘Queen Butter Beans’ or ‘Queen Chickpeas’.
Why the Queen prefix? Bold Bean Co opts for premium varieties of beans that consumers are unlikely to find elsewhere on-shelf. The brand’s butter beans, for example, have a thinner skin and a creamier texture than the stock-standard butter bean.
Bold Bean Co ensures it sources varieties grown in the climates best suited to them. The start-up buys its butter beans from Poland and its chickpeas from Mexico.
How the company sources its raw ingredients is “fundamental” to product quality, says Christie-Miller. But so is the processing. Whereas many producers soak their beans in the can without discarding the soaking liquid, Bold Bean Co’s approach is different. Firstly, it discards the soaking liquid, which can contain impurities. This step can help consumers better digest beans, suggests the founder. “It stops people from having as much gas, which is obviously a problem with beans.”
The start-up’s cooking process is also lengthier than other brands on the market, suspects Christie-Miller. “We soak the beans for a longer time, and cook them for a longer time. It costs us more, but it means they taste incredible.”
Do consumers care about bean quality?
On the whole, consumers have not cared about bean quality. The market has become “commodified”, fuelling a “race to the bottom”, according the Bold Bean co-founder. When players are laser-focused on price matching, why would consumers care whether the beans come from a fresher harvest, or are a more premium variety of butter bean? Christie-Miller makes a good point.
“There’s no reason for them to care about quality, because no one has ever proposed they should in this category.”
Can beans play into the high-protein trend?
Bold Bean Co may be coming to the fore at just the right time.
Protein is in demand, but so is cutting down on meat - two trends Bold Bean Co is perfectly positioned to meet. Shoppers see premium beans as a way of elevating their meal, but not as a replacement for conventional meat, says Bold Bean Co founder Amelia Christie-Miller.
Data suggests shoppers buying Bold Bean Co are also moving away from meat mimicry. “Consumers shopping the likes of tofu brand Tofoo Co are also buying Bold Bean Co."
The founder likens the bean aisle today to the coffee aisle of 30 years ago, when finding single-origin coffee was needle-in-a-haystack stuff. Today, the specialty coffee aisle represents a good example of legacy category disruption.
Bold Bean Co: A threat to legacy bean brands?
Inexpensive coffee still sells well in the coffee aisle, and so too will ordinary canned beans. They’re attracting different shoppers, explains Christie-Miller. “We’re not going after the average bean consumer,” she adds. “We’re going after a new usage.”
Bold Bean Co’s best-selling cookbook backs this strategy. In it, author Christie-Miller invites consumers to whip up creamed corn and jalapeño salsa, or pull together a fennel and black bean salsa. It’s unlikely those making kimchi and black bean quesadillas are also the average beans-on-toast consumer.
For that reason, the founder doesn’t believe the bean legacy brands like Heinz or Branston should feel threatened.
On the other hand, Bold Bean Co’s sales data could be putting the bigger brands at least a bit on-edge. The start-up sells into major retailers Sainsbury’s, Waitrose, Tesco and Morrisons, and is building a loyal customer base through independents and direct-to-consumer sales.
In Waitrose, Bold Bean Co’s Queen Chickpea and Queen Butter bean products are the two best-sold in the Canned Pulses category. And for every £3 spent in the supermarket’s Canned Pulses segment, £1 is spent on Bold Bean Co. In Sainsbury’s, one in three Bold Bean Co customers are new to the Canned Pulses category, with half of all shoppers repeat buying.
Bold Bean Co is doubling down on reaching more shelves and kitchens within the UK and Ireland. But Europe is also on its radar, and the start-up has plans to launch in the Netherlands within the coming months. The country’s love for beans, including baked beans, helped to drive that decision.
“There’s still so much to go after in the UK, but we do want to export and that’s something we’re focusing on. But it’s considered, and we want to do it well.”
