National Cereal Day: Inside the making of Lakeland Mues

Luke Christian suffered the injury after crashing on his mountain bike in Keswick, but it proved to be a lucky break as, not long after, he and his best friend Tim Cottingham created Lakeland Mues.

Luke's only previous business experience involved selling bouncy balls at school, and running a James Bond themed burger van named 'License to Grill'. 

But now, the Wigton-based business produces award-winning muesli from a tiny kitchen, before being sent to stockists across Cumbria and the UK. 

In an interview with the News & Star, Luke said: "We were first introduced to the concept of toasted muesli by a Swedish friend of ours, who is a mad professor in the kitchen. My best mate Tim and I started to make it ourselves. We always said it was good enough to sell but we never did anything about it. Then I broke my collarbone in a mountain biking crash near Keswick and got signed off from my job for six weeks.

"I’m not very good at sitting around doing nothing, so with six weeks on the cards, we decided to start trying to sell this, because there wasn’t really anything like it in supermarkets. It was either dry, pretty tasteless muesli, or very sweet granola, and toasted muesli is the best of both worlds.

"We booked into Keswick Farmer’s Market on a bit of a whim, cobbled together some branding and started toasting it up in our mothers’ kitchens. It went really well and people really enjoyed it. We did it for those six weeks then I went back down to work in London.

"Not long after, we decided to quit our jobs and go full time with it. September 2016 was our official launch when we went full-time. We’re a tiny little business, there’s still only three or four of us and we toast it all by hand in our kitchen. In some ways, we have fluked it, but the feedback and support from our customers has always been very good.

“We’ve picked up a few awards along the way. We won best muesli in the country last year at the taste awards. We’ve managed to avoid going bankrupt so far, so something must be going right."

Luke and Tim at a taste festival (Image: Supplied)

Tim took a step back from the business after two years, and Luke has been running it by himself ever since, but the two remain best friends and Tim happily provides an extra pair of hands when required. 

When it comes to breakfast, a bowl of Frosties has never personally let me down. But there is no denying the fact that most packaged breakfast cereals are ultra-processed, and filled with sugar. 

Muesli offers a far healthier, more natural alternative, and while Luke admits he might be biased, he suggests that Lakeland Mues' five flavourful options are among the best choices of cereal option in the UK. 

Some of the muesli on offer at Lakeland Mues (Image: Supplied)

He added: "We could have more options, but we're a tiny business but every pack is toasted through an oven, and packed by hand. We maybe will bring something different out but I believe that doing one thing very well, making it the best it can be in that field, is better than doing something for everyone, and losing a bit of that quality.

"The cereal market is ridiculously saturated, there's aisle upon aisle of options in the supermarket. If you pay attention to what goes into them, and recognise the ingredients that go towards making them, then it's probably worth buying. A lot of cereals are packed with sugars, sweeteners and things that aren't good for you. We always make sure ours are made with good, wholefoods that will keep you fuelled and are very good for you."

Having started out in his mother's kitchen, Luke concluded that he 'never would have imagined' that the business would become known as one of the UK's best.