Startup Profile: Gousto

  • Gousto is a recipe box company founded by Timo Boldt in 2012. 
  • They offer prepared ingredient boxes delivered to your door, along with simple to follow recipe cards.
  • Gousto deliver over 1.5 million meals a month to customers and is seeing 170 per cent year-on-year growth

 

About Gousto

Gousto is a subscription-based service offering deliveries of fresh ingredients in weekly, fortnightly or monthly packages. The Gousto site features over 30 recipes for you to choose from each week with options for personalisation. The popular AI recipe recommendation tool helps customers in half of all orders. With families making up two-thirds of all customers, Gousto might also provide busy families with a practical alternative to the weekly supermarket shop.

Before entering the meal kit industry, founder Timo Boldt worked in finance, leading a busy London life. With little time to do the supermarket shopping, he aimed to find an easy and healthy alternative way to cook and eat at home. He quit his finance job and launched Gousto using £75,000 of his savings.

Boldt saw great promise in the meal kit industry, which is now estimated to be worth £1 billion a year in the UK alone and is forecast to increase twofold over the next decade. 2019 saw £18 million raised in funding for the company, including backing from Instagram health influencer ‘The Body Coach’ Joe Wicks. This saw the total funds raised by Gousto reach £75million since being founded in 2012.

 

 

Gousto says it will continue to put the majority of its investment towards technology to accelerate growth. 

Gousto Pledge Sustainability

Image result for gousto sustainability

 

Gousto helps to prevent wasteful leftovers by delivering pre-portioned fresh ingredients matched to each recipe. The business also uses technology to combat food waste within its supply chain. Computer algorithms predict demand for each recipe, limiting waste to a minimal.

The company succeeded in its 2019 goal of cutting the plastic in its boxes in half. They have now pledged to make all Gousto-branded packaging reusable, recyclable or compostable by the end of 2022. This year will also see the introduction of the new 100% recyclable Eco Chill Boxes. These insulation boxes are made of recycled paper, saving another 74.5 tonnes of plastic.

 

Gousto Voted Best Recipe Kit Service

The Independent, the Guardian, the Metro and Time Out London have all voted Gousto as the best recipe kit service.

The company has achieved many awards including Retail Business of the Year at the 2015 Startups awards, the Angel-VC Deal of the Year at the 2015 UK Business Angels Association Awards and the Everline Future50 at the 2014 Real Business Awards.

In October 2016, Gousto’s co-founder Timo Boldt was awarded IGD’s ‘Young Entrepreneur of the Year’ award.