Home-cooked meal delivery platform Cook My Grub has secured £750,000 investment and revealed plans to be operational in a further 10 cities by the end of the year.
The platform allows consumers to purchase food prepared in the kitchens of chefs living in their area, working in a similar way to Deliveroo but for individual home cooks.
Cook My Grub, which is currently available in Reading, Wokingham, Bracknell, Maidenhead, Slough, Windsor, Bourne End and Marlow, said it wanted to “consolidate the home-cooked food market” by providing a “simple and user-friendly structure in an otherwise disorganised sector”.
The app has been used to serve more than 1,300 meals to date, and in the last quarter saw a 300% uplift in orders, and a doubling of its customer base. This week the company exceeded its initial funding target by 150% within four weeks of listing on crowdfunding platform Crowdcube. The money will be used on marketing, expansion into new regions and growing its sales and technology team.
Ten locations are planned to come on to the platform this year, including in West London, Swindon and across the Home Counties.
“The speed at which we’ve secured our funding proves that our simple solution fills a clear gap in the market for diners looking to order authentic home-cooked food from local chefs in a safe and controlled marketplace,” said co-founder Dinesh Patil.
“Not only are we making the genuinely home-cooked food market accessible, Cook My Grub provides a platform for up-and-coming chefs to build their reputation and chase their ambitions to make a living out of cooking. With hospitality being one of the hardest-hit sectors by covid-19, there has never been a greater need for a service such as ours,” added co-founder Shabbir Mookhtiar.
Home chefs, be they amateur or professional, set up virtual restaurants on the platform, setting out when, what and how much they cook. They pay a one-off joining fee of £20 and a commission of 15% (excluding VAT) on every order taken. Deliveries are “managed by Cook My Grub’s own delivery network” the company told The Grocer. Chefs are given advice on writing their menus and how to take attractive product photography.
Users can order on the day or pre-order days or weeks in advance. They pay a variable delivery fee plus 99p administration charge on each order.
Cook My Grub says all listed chefs are registered as food businesses and trained in allergy awareness and Hygiene Level 2. “Additionally, Cook My Grub conducts its own internal hygiene audits and trains all chefs, while supporting them with required local council registrations,” a company spokesman told The Grocer.
Last year the FSA launched a Here To Help campaign, which provided guidance for people starting a food business from home during the pandemic. The authority’s campaign “helped validate the model” a Cook My Grub spokesman told The Grocer, and provided a “credible source of information to simplify their proposal to prospective chefs”.
Figures from the FSA and data from an online registration system used by nearly 200 local authorities show that around 44% of food businesses started since the first lockdown are home-based.
Once registered, businesses stand to be inspected by their local authority. However, the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health (CIEH) said the pandemic had put inspectors “under considerable strain with resources close to breaking point”, forcing them to prioritise businesses posing the biggest risk.
“Many of these new food businesses are small producers with limited reach,” said CIEH president Julie Barratt. “They won’t cause big outbreaks of food poisoning, but there is every chance that they are making people ill.”
For Cook My Grub customers, the additional checks and chef training provided meant they could “enjoy their meal safe in the knowledge that their food has been safely prepared” the company said.
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