City Pantry, the office catering market to facilitate food ordering for staff, corporate events and meetings, has replenished its funding.
The London start-up has raised a new £ 4 million round led by Octopus Investments with the participation of existing investors and Newable Private Investing – capital that it plans to use for its own sake. extend to other British cities over the next 18 months.
Founded by Stuart Sunderland in 2013, City Pantry set out to improve restaurant options open to London businesses. Its market connects local caterers to companies that need quality food delivered to their offices or to cover regular events, meetings and team meals.
When the start-up was launched, Sunderland considered its main competitors as traditional corporate caterers, sandwich shops, pizza delivery locations and, to a lesser extent, new foodservice companies such as Deliveroo and UberEAT.
"While we have all seen the phenomenal growth of online food distribution in B2C in recent years, business food is far behind," he says, noting that relationships with caterers and unique pressures large groups make innovation and progress slower. "
City Pantry now claims to serve more than 20,000 meals a week to employees in more than 500 companies, including Google, Amazon, PayPal, Slack, Spotify and Unilever. The market has hosted 300 popular restaurants and caterers in London.
This, says Sunderland, is evidence that City Pantry is bridging the gap between the type of food options that consumers are accustomed to and what is traditionally available in the world of food and beverage. ;business.
More generally, he says that the company is exploiting a growing demand from employees for "better well-being at work". In turn, employers want to offer more than a good salary.
Grant Paul-Florence, Head of Intermediate Capital at Octopus Investments, echoes this sentiment by saying that City Pantry is "ideally placed to satisfy the growing appetite for high-quality, hassle-free work meals, that organizations increasingly require work to build an attractive business
culture ".
Meanwhile, it was said that the startup has made some significant hires over the last 12 months: Kate Miller (formerly McKinsey, Google and HelloFresh) joined CCO, and Sharon Lee (formerly DHL, Elster Group, SushiDaily) has joined the group COO.