Meet Ben Patten, Founder at Sustainable Supermarket: Good Club

Good Club is the sustainable supermarket of the future. We’re building a zero-waste, circular grocery retailer that delivers to your door.

Right now, we have over 3,000 store cupboard products in our range, with everything from household-name brands like Oatly to our own zero-waste range of nearly 100 products. We deliver these to your door every month through the courier networks, and then come back to collect the packaging the next day, so that you can decant everything into your own storage jars.

We now have over 7,000 members who pay our annual subscription that gets them free deliveries and collections, significant discounts off RRP, and access to sustainable products across our whole range. And we’re growing fast!
 
 
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How did you come up with the idea for the company?

 
Good Club originally started as a company called Food Clubs, where we helped local communities bulk buy from wholesalers and then distribute the delivery between everyone.

Through that, it was so clear how passionate people were about getting access to affordable, sustainable groceries and so we worked to make that as easy as possible, using technology to make the whole process as seamless as possible. And Good Club was born!
 

 

How has the company evolved during the pandemic?

 
Unsurprisingly we saw huge growth at the beginning of the pandemic, as everyone suddenly looked for alternatives to traipsing around a big supermarket in person. Over the course of the 18 months, we grew more than 20x but what’s been most interesting is how people’s habits have changed permanently as a result of the pandemic.

We’re seeing our customers really get into the flow of doing a bulk monthly shop, which means they’re able to buy sustainably and affordably, and we expect that to continue even as we start to open up society.
 

What can we hope to see from Good Club in the future?

 
Our mission is to help everyone live more sustainably. So we’ve got a long way to go! This year, we’re focused on continuing to grow as fast as possible, as well as improving our operations so that we can offer everyone things like next-day delivery and an even wider range of Zero Waste products.

Then we want to continue expanding our range, finding new and innovative ways to reduce waste (like oat milk tablets that you dissolve in water!) and also thinking about what Good Club doing fresh and frozen food would look like, all while continually reducing our prices to ensure our customers get the best deal possible. It’s going to be busy!