Fuel10K founder Jason Kerr has relaunched cocoa brand Food Thoughts in an effort to disrupt the home baking category.
Best known for its organic cocoa powders, Food Thoughts has undergone a redesign, coinciding with the addition of five premium home baking lines, comprising two cake mixes, two frostings and chocolate chips, under its range.
Beautiful Chocolate Cake Mix and Beautiful Ginger Cake Mix (rsp: £4.50/400g), alongside Velvety Chocolate Flavour Frosting and Velvety Vanilla Flavour Frosting (rsp: £3.95/400g) will roll into 440 Sainsbury’s stores this week.
Milk Chocolate Chips (rsp: £2.75/100g), made with 41% single-origin Colombian cocoa, will also hit Sainsbury’s shelves, while Food Thoughts has snagged a listing in the retailer for its existing 70% Dark Chocolate Chips (rsp: £2.75/100g) in new-look packaging.
The overhaul contributes to Food Thoughts’ ambition to attract a new generation of bakers and become the UK’s leading British-owned home baking brand, it said.
Promising a “more premier tier”, the new lines combine “taste, convenience, value, provenance and ethical credentials to appeal to modern shoppers”, it added.
“When you look at how much innovation and premiumisation has taken place across the rest of grocery, home baking simply hasn’t evolved at the same pace, and we think that creates a really exciting opportunity,” said Kerr, who acquired Food Thoughts with Wholebake founder Mark Gould in 2024.
While established players such as Betty Crocker and Dr Oetker have long dominated home baking, Kerr said there was “room for something very different alongside them”.
“There’s also a real advantage in being a smaller, entrepreneurial British business. We can move quickly, listen to what consumers and retailers are telling us and keep pushing the category forward,” he added.
The cake mixes were developed with professional chefs, based on recipes already used in hospitality settings. Requiring only oil and water, they were designed to “reduce food waste, preparation time and the cost of buying multiple ingredients”, said Kerr.
Kerr founded better-for-you breakfast brand Fuel10K with Alex Matheson and Barney Mauleverer in 2013. Fuel10K was acquired by Premier Foods for £34m in 2023, after which Kerr stayed on as head of product until early 2025. He has previously held senior commercial roles at Jamie Oliver’s Fresh Retail, Tetra Pak, Kraft Foods and Allied Domecq.
Following Kerr’s departure, Fuel10K made its home baking debut, launching Chocolate Muffin Mix and Original Pancake, Waffle & Crepe Mix, in January 2025.
Gould is the founder and former owner of Wholebake. Under his leadership between 2003 and 2018, the business become a leading UK contract manufacturer of gluten-free snack bars, producing more than 160 million bars annually.
“When we acquired Food Thoughts, we saw much more than a cocoa brand,” Kerr told The Grocer. “We saw a respected business with more than 25 years of heritage, a loyal customer base and a natural place within home baking, but also a category that felt underserved and in need of meaningful innovation.”
“Our mission is to become the number one British-owned home baking brand within five years.”
Gould added: “Retailers aren’t looking for another cake mix. They’re looking for something that brings new shoppers into the category. That’s been our focus from day one.
“We haven’t developed this range to compete for the same customers. The opportunity is in encouraging more people to bake, and helping existing bakers bake more frequently. That’s incremental growth for retailers and exactly where we believe Food Thoughts can make a difference.”
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