London-based catering marketplace City Pantry has raised £4m in a Series A round led by Octopus Investments.
Existing investors and Newable Private Investing also contributed to the cash injection, which will be used to continue growing the company’s operations in London and expand into new cities across the UK over the next two years.
The company, which was founded by Stuart Sunderland in 2013, lets London businesses order food into offices, for events, meetings and team meals. It’s positioning itself as the ‘Deliveroo of business lunches’.
Stuart Sunderland, founder and CEO of City Pantry, said the startup is filling a gap in the market: “While we’ve all seen the phenomenal growth of online food delivery in B2C over the past few years, food to businesses lags significantly behind; legacy relationships with caterers and the unique pressures of ordering for larger groups make innovation and progress slower.
“However we’ve reached a tipping point as we have so much more easy access to incredible food in our everyday lives, we now expect that within our professional lives and companies that care about the quality and variety of what is served have an advantage,” he added.
The firm claims to serve over 20,000 meals every week to the employees of more than 500 companies, including Google, Amazon, PayPal, Slack, Spotify and Unilever. Customers can choose from 300 of London’s restaurants and caterers.
It claims to be tapping into a “growing demand from employees for greater workplace wellbeing” and working under the idea that teams work better together if they eat together, too.
Grant Paul-Florence, head of intermediate capital at Octopus Investments, said: “City Pantry is one of the hottest start-ups in this space, and the team has ambitious plans to revolutionise the way people eat at work.
Matt Truman, CEO and Co-Founder, True, added: “In a short space of time, City Pantry has grown from a start-up within our growth fund’s innovation Hub, to a business delivering phenomenal growth.
“As the company’s first institutional investor, it was clear this was a business set to successfully disrupt an established industry through a well-defined future-facing business strategy and a great team, led by Stuart. City Pantry has huge potential for scale.”
City Pantry was first launched in Brixton as a way to deliver food from Brixton markets to local offices. As the company grew, it opened larger offices in Shoreditch and then London Bridge in 2017 and 2018 respectively.
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