Recipe box brand Gousto has mothballed its subscription technology business Bento just over a year since breaking cover on the venture.
Bento offered existing and aspiring subscription-model businesses a full tech platform, as well as artificial intelligence modules and consultancy services, all based on the same technology underpinning Gousto’s own operations.
The ambitions for the spin-off company were lofty, with its chief customer officer Daljit Bamford telling The Grocer last year it could “absolutely could be bigger than Gousto”.
However, after publicly revealing the Bento project in September last year having built it secretly since 2021, Gousto has now moved to shutter it.
“We take calculated risks and had identified a gap in the market for our subscription software, trading under the Bento Tech brand,” a Gousto spokesman told The Grocer. “In this instance the macro-economic headwinds proved too great for our target customer base and like many ventures, despite good early progress Bento didn’t scale as planned.”
“We can only make asymmetric bets if we adopt a disciplined approach, closing down those that aren’t working in order to fully back those demonstrating strong progress,” he added.
Bento’s demise sees the departure of Bamford from the company.
“Sometimes scale-ups have to take risks – and I’m proud of what we tried, what we learned, and the calibre of the team we built,” she posted on LinkedIn.
Mitch Beard, Bento’s chief technology officer, has become head of technical product at Gousto. The company said 17 of Bento’s 20 employees remained within the Gousto business.
Having built its subscription technology in-house, Gousto established Bento to pitch its tech to other merchants, be they existing subscription-based DTC players, or larger retailers looking to offer a subscription model.
“For years [Gousto CEO and founder] Timo [Boldt] has said that Gousto is a tech and data company that loves food, given the investment they’ve made. A question that kept coming up is: You keep talking about this amazing tech and data, have you ever thought about productising it?” Bamford told The Grocer late last year.
Bento is understood to have been working with several merchants under NDA, but named personalised petfood brand Blink as an early adopter.
The move comes after Gousto declared in July as being in the ‘best shape ever’ as it posted a record EBITDA and massively improved operating losses after cutting costs and expanding its offering. Revenues in 2024 nudged £3m higher to £312m, after creeping up by 1% in the previous year, as the recipe box operator shifted focus to the bottom line.
“As we double down on our core dinner business, momentum is strong, with UK growth accelerating and the Ireland launch reinforcing our strategy,” the company spokesperson said.
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