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Posted: Tue 28th Jul 2026
8 min read
Ed van der Lande doesn't look like your typical food entrepreneur. Then again, the former Army officer who once rode alongside the King's carriage at the coronation never expected to become one.
"I'm not a natural entrepreneur," he admits with characteristic frankness. "I wasn't that kid selling sweets in the playground."
Yet today, the father of two is pioneering a radical rethink of toddler food through More Toddler Meals, a freeze-dried meal company that's bringing military rations technology to Britain's high chairs.
The idea came in 2022, during a six-month deployment to Africa. Back home, his wife was juggling full-time work, an 18-month-old, and pregnancy with their second child.
The van der Landes had always prioritised home-cooked meals, but with Ed away, convenience became crucial. What they found on supermarket shelves left them cold.
"There was nothing that really inspired us, nothing we would actually eat ourselves," Ed recalls.
The irony wasn't lost on him – in the field, he'd been surviving on freeze-dried rations that retained nutrition, flavour, and texture, making squidgy supermarket toddler pouches feel lacking.
He says:
"I thought, hold on, this achieves exactly the gap I was looking for – convenience and nutrition quality."
Ed brought a home freeze-dryer and began experimenting with his own recipes.
By April 2023, while simultaneously completing his riding training for the Household Cavalry, which involved getting up at 4.00 am to polish his kit before dawn rides, he launched his first products at Kingston High Street market. They sold out on day one.
"The packaging was crap. White plastic boxes with some horrible design," he laughs. "But I needed to know: would people still buy it if the product was good? They did. That told me there was something here."
Ed's path to business was hardly conventional. After deciding to leave the Army due to the constant relocations and deployments that were taking their toll on family life, he landed a supply chain role at Amazon.
"The commute was an hour and a half each way. The passion wasn't there," he admits. "Ex-service folk need purpose and drive, that's why we chose that career path in the first place, not the corporate route."
The turning point came when he secured six-figure pre-seed funding, led by a design agency he'd met at a trade show, supplemented by a close-knit group of strategic investors. The firm launched with Ocado in September 2025, and Ed’s now full-time on the business.
His current range – 5 Veg Macaroni, Super Green Pasta Stars, and Sweet Potato & Aubergine Dhal – sits in the premium segment, challenging what he sees as a "creatively tired" category dominated by squeezable pouches.
After BBC's Panorama raised concerns about sugar content and misleading nutritional claims in baby food pouches, parents are increasingly questioning what they're feeding their children, Ed notes.
If there's one thing Ed's military background taught him, it's to plan for the worst.
His manufacturing setup spans three facilities: a kitchen in West London for cooking, a facility up north for freeze-drying (the UK's only commercial operation willing to work with baby food), and a third for packing. Minimum order quantities are high, but with a two-year shelf life, he can produce in batches and sell through stock.
More impressive is how he's engineered the margins. Through relentless scrutiny – "asking questions, really scrutinising everything" he’s pushed margins up.
He insists:
"I want to generate a sustainable business model from the beginning. I don't want to be in the realms of raise after raise. It's risky, especially in today's climate."
This bootstrap mentality extends to hiring. Despite the capital raised, he's hesitant to employ full-time staff just yet.
"With employment rights from day one, it's super risky for me. I'll go to fractional people first and get expertise with flexibility," he says.
His marketing strategy has evolved from working with micro-influencers to landing organic posts from macro-influencers like Olivia Bowen from Love Island. Email marketing has become his passion – bi-weekly newsletters featuring recipes he's cooked for his own boys, nutritionist advice, and transparent business updates.
He explains:
"Parents are overwhelmed with information. I'm trying to simplify the feeding thing – here's something that might work for your kids, it might not, but it doesn't need all bells and whistles."
Despite the daily grind – "there have been moments when I've thought, Ed, just go and get a normal job" – he's anchored More Toddler Meals around three principles: respectability ("we're not compromising by adding sugar because kids will eat it"), profitability ("a sustainable business model that's self-sufficient"), and accessibility.
That last pillar is personal.
"The product is expensive by nature of freeze-drying," he acknowledges. "But those at the lower end of the economic scale are struggling most with health outcomes."
He's already donated surplus stock through City Harvest to food banks across London. Future profitability, he hopes, will fund a charitable arm that gets quality food to families who need it most.
His long-term goal:
"Some level of financial freedom whilst retaining the integrity of the brand – something that can last without me."
After that, he's eyeing food policy and government work, leveraging the connections he's building through Enterprise Nation's Supply Connect programme, which helps small businesses access public sector contracts.
When asked about the business environment under the new government, Ed's response is refreshingly pragmatic:
"I'm fairly ambivalent because at this tiny stage, employer national insurance or business rates don't affect me directly."
He acknowledges the challenges – his manufacturer's rates have increased fivefold, but refuses to be dragged into doom-scrolling.
"Everyone always talks stuff down. You use it as an excuse not to be proactive," he says.
"The SEIS and EIS investment schemes are still there and are fundamental for de-risking early-stage ventures like mine. And frankly, there's nothing I can do about the political noise, so I focus on what I can control: making the best product possible."
It's a mindset shaped by service life.
"During the 2011 London riots, everyone came out with their brooms the next day. In COVID, people came together. We're more resilient than we give ourselves credit for," he recalls.
"I care about what kids eat. Unfortunately, our nation's not in a great place health-wise. I'm trying, in my limited way, to actually do something about it."
More Toddler Meals is available through Ocado, Amazon UK, and a growing network of independent retailers, including Nourished Communities.
