How Huel built an AI first company culture with n8n

Huel is a global nutrition company that has grown from a small UK direct-to-consumer brand into a 350-person business operating across multiple markets. Over the past decade, its technology and data function scaled from just two people to a 50-person team covering IT operations, InfoSec, software engineering, and BI.

Ollie Scheers joined eight years ago when Huel had only 25 employees and has led much of that tech evolution. As CTO, his mandate expanded from building core infrastructure and data capabilities to launching a dedicated AI and automation team, internally known as the "A-Team." Its mission is clear: maximize the value of n8n across the organization through automation, training, governance, and monitoring.

Historically, Huel followed a best-of-breed philosophy, preferring to buy rather than build. But as AI matured and n8n entered the stack, that mindset shifted. n8n made it realistic for non-technical employees to build and maintain processes that would previously have required external vendors.

The challenge of embedding AI into business operations

Overcoming the limits of standalone AI tools and disconnected systems

Despite early adoption of tools like ChatGPT, Huel found that standalone AI assistants had clear limitations. People across the company were comfortable prompting and conversing with AI, but the value remained siloed within each individual tool. There was no way to connect AI capabilities to the systems and processes people relied on every day, from data pipelines and operational reporting to content workflows and finance tasks.

Cutting SaaS costs and increasing flexibility

Integration was the real hurdle. Huel needed a platform that could connect AI with the dozens of SaaS tools the business relied on, without introducing additional complexity. Many of their existing tools were expensive and highly specialized, effective at solving isolated problems but rigid as needs evolved.

The objective was not just to connect systems. It was to consolidate capabilities, streamline workflows, and reduce dependence on single-purpose software. At the same time, teams needed flexibility, the ability to adapt, experiment, and build without being constrained by fragmented tools.

Creating a culture where AI adoption extends beyond a handful of power users

There was also a cultural challenge. Huel wanted to implement a forward-thinking, AI-first company culture, one where every employee had access to the latest AI tools and could rethink how they work. That meant finding a platform accessible enough for non-technical people while still powerful enough for complex, enterprise-grade workflows. The company needed broad adoption, not just a handful of power users.

From experimentation to enterprise-wide adoption

Validating the platform before scaling

Huel signed with n8n nine months ago and moved quickly to the Enterprise Edition after an initial evaluation. The team selected five straightforward use cases, each designed to test whether n8n could handle different types of work across the business.

"We just focused on understanding if n8n would handle what we needed," Ollie explained. "And we very quickly realized there's not much we couldn't automate with it."

Within the first six months, Huel had 75 live workflows in n8n. That number has since grown to nearly 200. The workflows span an impressive range of use cases. There are AI assistants embedded in Slack that help teams with legal questions and invoice queries. There are workflows that pull data from one system, run AI-based analysis, and post results into another. Individual employees have built personal AI assistants that manage their calendars and inboxes. And the team has recently developed a suite of custom internal tools, including a creative studio, a customer sentiment analysis tool, and a workflow management platform, built entirely on n8n and Airtable.

Scaling adoption through a centralized AI team and distributed champions

Huel's approach to adoption has been deliberate and structured. The centralized AI and automation team of three full-time members acts as the hub, handling complex builds, governance, and monitoring. But the real engine of growth is the company's "AI Champions" model. These are tech-savvy employees embedded in different departments who have become n8n super users and now spend a significant portion of their time automating work for their teams.

The story of Craig, Huel's SEO manager, captures this perfectly. "He became an n8n super user over a weekend," Ollie recalled. "He automated so much of his work that he now spends three to four days a week working with the AI and automation team, automating processes across digital marketing and content." The same pattern has emerged in finance, where another super user now dedicates roughly 90% of their time to automation.

Reinforcing momentum with recurring training and showcases

To scale knowledge across the organization, Huel runs "AI Thursdays," short 30-minute training sessions open to the entire company. Every two weeks, an all-company meeting features an AI showcase where someone demonstrates a workflow built in n8n: "Suddenly everyone starts thinking, maybe I could use n8n to make my own work easier.", said Ollie.

Enabling governance and security without slowing innovation

Governance has been a priority from the start. The centralized team uses the n8n API and Airtable to monitor all workflows, enforce approval gates, and ensure compliance. If someone uses a webhook URL, an alert is automatically sent to the InfoSec team for review. With n8n's recent release of custom project roles, Huel plans to further tighten access controls while maintaining the open, citizen-development culture it has cultivated. "We want as many people building, but we want them building in a safe way," Ollie said.

The impact: more than £100,000 saved and a transformed company culture

In just nine months, using n8n has delivered significant impact across Huel's business, saving more than 1,000 hours of manual work. The platform has also enabled Huel to cancel approximately £100,000 worth of annual software licenses by replacing several SaaS tools with custom-built n8n workflows.

Perhaps more importantly, n8n has fundamentally changed how people at Huel think about their work. Employees who once spent their days on repetitive operational tasks have been freed to focus on strategic, higher-value activities. Some, like the SEO manager, have effectively transformed their roles entirely, shifting from domain-specific execution to full-time automation and AI work.

The company now has over 100 employees actively using n8n, with that number growing as more people attend training sessions and see what their colleagues are building. n8n has become a core part of Huel's technology stack, not just as an automation tool, but as the layer that connects AI to the rest of the business.