The byRuby Story

Our History

And how we evolved....

byRuby was formed as a partnership of 3 generations in the food business and the combined experience and knowledge of its founders RUBY MILLY & JULIA

 

RUBY grew up amongst the almond groves and lemon trees in Mallorca. She still remembers the sights and smells around the apricot coloured farm buildings where the sun seemed to always shine as she and her sister Indigo picked up juicy, sweet fallen oranges from the dusty ground. The old tile farmhouse kitchen with copper pans bubbling with soups and stews was the inspiration for all the byRuby packaging we use today.

Leaving school early, Ruby worked as Commis chef and Sous chef in Bristol restaurants before coming to London to start a formal training with Leiths School of Food and Wine. She found Milly and Julia when she took the job as head chef at Finns of Chelsea where she began to introduce new recipes to a hungry and appreciative customer base always listening and learning with the dream of running her own business and two years later the idea for byRuby was born.




 MILLY grew up the eldest of 7 siblings and from an early age could be found in an oversized apron, standing on a wobbly stool helping her Granny stirring at the  big aga in her airy kitchen in the Yorkshire Dales. Her love of cooking grew from entering tray bakes in the local agricultural shows to feeding her student friends and mashing potatoes for rows of pies in her local pub in Lancashire.

For ten years Milly has co owned and run Finns of Chelsea expanding the catering business and building a cafe in the busy shop. It is  through slowly built relationships with her customers that Milly and Ruby identified the repeated requests for frozen meals made with high quality ingredients for the new Mums,  convalescing friend, hard working executive, or unexpected visitor .

Now as a busy  working mother of two young children with a husband who loves to entertain, Milly knows better than anyone how to juggle life’s ingredients whilst making family meals and at home entertaining, wholesome, nutritious and above all easy .


JULIA had a sixties childhood in London in a house where food was for fuel and shopping limited to what was in season and could be carried from the local store. Olive oil was sold in chemists and food was firmly British.  
In 1984 she opened one of London’s first delicatessens Finns of Chelsea and she attributes much of its success to the relationships developed with her suppliers. Fish from an Irish trawler, meat from a traditional family butcher and vegetables chosen from Covent Garden market stalls. Sustainability, seasonality  and tractability have always been the bedrock of the business.
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