Alan Richard Barratt

Alan Richard Barratt is best known as the co-founder of Grenade, the UK performance-nutrition and protein-bar brand. Companies House lists his full name as Alan Richard Barratt, date of birth September 1976, and shows he was appointed director of Grenade (UK) Limited in August 2009 and Grenade Holdings Limited in February 2014, resigning from both on 10 May 2024.

Barratt left school during A-levels and worked in a Birmingham gym before building Fusion, a sports-nutrition importing and distribution business, which he later sold. In 2010, he and Juliet Barratt launched Grenade from a small budget and built it from sports supplements into a mainstream functional-snacking brand. Grenade’s Carb Killa protein bar became a leading UK high-protein bar, and the company expanded through gyms, convenience, grocery, petrol forecourts, e-commerce, and international distribution.

Grenade raised institutional capital from Grovepoint and Lion Capital before Mondelēz International acquired a significant majority interest in March 2021. Mondelēz said Alan Barratt and the senior team would continue to run the business from the UK and retain minority equity. By June 2025, City A.M. reported Barratt was no longer CEO but remained heavily involved with Grenade.

As an investor, Barratt appears to focus on founder-led health, fitness, and consumer brands where his operating experience in product, brand, retail distribution, and exits is directly relevant. He is publicly described as an angel investor, Virgin StartUp mentor, and Flight Fund partner/affiliate, and has backed Neutonic and ThruDark.

• Barratt’s stated investing filter emphasizes founders and practical outcomes: a 2026 HUNGRY/Snipd episode summarizes his six criteria as “backable founders, personal buy-in, low time demand, fun mission, sensible valuation and a clear exit path.”
• He looks for products with real consumer pull rather than trend-chasing. On Neutonic, he said he had known Chris Williamson and James Smith since 2019 and shared their focus on health, fitness, entrepreneurship, and “developing great products that consumers can trust.”
• He values operators and investors who add more than money. In the HUNGRY episode, he argued founders should choose investors for capability, not just cash, citing the governance and scaling support Grenade received from Grovepoint.
• His operating lens is strongly retail-led: product quality, category positioning, margins per facing, rate-of-sale data, distribution channel strategy, and the ability to make a niche product mainstream.
• Sector fit is clearest in health, wellbeing, fitness, functional drinks, protein/snacking, premium consumer brands, and founder-led apparel or performance brands.