69. STOCKED: soups and stews, stored in your ice cube tray

Founders: Sam Moss and Charlie Gilpin
Year founded: 2020
Website: stockedfood.com 

For some, ‘frozen food’ is a dirty phrase that conjures up images of turkey twizzlers and smiley potatoes. STOCKED is here to change your perception of the frozen food market. 

Founder Sam Moss was living a hectic city lifestyle as a consultant, and was struggling to pre-plan his meals. Growing increasingly frustrated with piles of tupperware and wasted ziploc bags, his mum mentioned to him that she used to freeze his food into ice cube trays as a baby.

This was Moss’s epiphany moment, and the birth of STOCKED. Moss began preparing his food in frozen blocks. He realised that it saves space, uses less plastic, is faster to heat up and is super flexible. An idea that good can’t be contained in one person’s freezer. 

STOCKED is simple. You choose your meals, its chefs cook and freeze them into blocks, and they’re delivered to your door.

Moss and his co-founder Charlie Gilpin, are on a mission to fix the convenience food industry. Ready meals can be unhealthy and restrictive. The current trend of recipe box meals can result in unnecessary waste, from excess packaging and uneaten food. 

In fact, a staggering 70% of food waste in the UK comes from our very own homes, with uneaten leftovers resulting in more binned food than all of the supermarkets combined. 

At Startups we hate to see waste, both environmental and to your bank account. That’s why our judging panel really responded to the potential in STOCKED’s distinctively flexible block-based portions.

Moss and Gilpin see STOCKED becoming the go-to option for quality frozen food, and predict you’ll soon be seeing it in a range of shops. That prediction is proving correct. In December, STOCKED launched into retail for the very first time with Ocado.

Considering it won investment from Steven Bartlett after appearing on their childhood-favourite show Dragon’s Den, we’re also willing to back STOCKED on this hope. 

STOCKED’s one-of-a-kind approach to block based frozen meals certainly melted our judges hearts. The frozen blocks are low in carbs and packed with potential, whether you’re time-constrained professional or feeding a young family. Half of the startup’s range is vegan to boot, so they cater to everyone. We see a hot future for this cold concept!