69. Feedr

Founders: Riya Grover and Lyz Swanton
Founded: January 2016
Website: www.teamfeedr.com

Back in 2015, city workers Riya Grover and Lyz Swanton found it “shockingly” difficult to find both healthy and delicious food whilst they were working despite an abundance of food vendors in London.

They decided it was time to bring workplace meals into the 21st century, making them healthier and more easily accessible.

With Grover having spent time in the US where a lot of innovation had already taken place around workplace food, the pair were inspired to start Feedr in January 2016.

An online marketplace connecting delicious and healthy artisan food vendors with corporates and their hungry employees, Feedr targets companies of between five and 1,000 employees that typically don’t have their own in-house canteens.

The business takes a commission from the vendors and doesn’t mark up prices for the customer, with a small delivery charge applied to group orders.

More than 250 customers have used the marketplace to date including Central Working, Chanel, DHL, Etsy, eve Sleep, Hearst Publishing, Nike and Thoughtworks.

Feedr works closely with its vendors in every part of the process including meal design, packaging, and pricing, helping to create and offering that’s tailored to the office environment. It also provides a virtual canteen service, allowing users to pick and purchase meals from a daily rotating menu of healthy options in their own office.

Additionally, the start-up has a charitable arm. It donates one healthy meal to a school in India for every meal ordered and wants to continually improve its business model to decrease waste and achieve a lower carbon footprint as it scales.

Feedr hopes to hit a run rate of 500,000 meals per year and have its virtual canteens in over 50 companies in London over the next 12 months.

It’s eventual aim? “To revitalise the way we eat at work by giving businesses and their employees instant access to a unique community of food vendors, who make great food, have transparent supply chains, use simple, clean and honest ingredients and provide eco-friendly packaging.”