Meet Matt Ephgrave, Managing Director at Just Eat For Business

Just Eat for Business is the UK’s leading workplace catering marketplace. Launched as City Pantry in 2014, we connect offices and corporate customers to restaurants and caterers across the UK. Our offering ranges from meeting food, team lunches and gift hampers, reaching those in the office and at home. Ultimately, our aim is to make people’s working lives better and ensure that our customers are happy and well. This ethos remains at the core of what we do.

Recently, we rebranded from City Pantry to Just Eat for Business. Already part of the Just Eat Group, we saw an exciting opportunity to leverage Just Eat’s scale to support the office catering marketplace at a time when the world begins to reopen and people begin to return to the office. We now feed over 30,000 people at over 600 companies every week and the platform is available across the UK, delivering meals to suit every appetite and budget.
 
 
Just Eat rebrands corporate ordering arm City Pantry as Just Eat for  Business
 

How has the company evolved during the pandemic?

 
Pre-pandemic, 95% of our revenue came from office deliveries. Of course once the pandemic hit, many were forced to work from home. Like others in the hospitality world, we had to pivot to stay ahead and were fortunate to work with some amazing vendors who were able to quickly adapt with us.

We knew that our customers were searching for a way to recreate the office experience at home during this difficult time so decided to launch our Pantry Packages service, which allows companies to order their favourite treats directly to their team’s home, recreating the office experience remotely. Working with our vendors, we were able to create some exciting new products for our customers, including letterbox pizza kits, virtual wine tasting and baking packages.

We also launched our Teams@home gift cards, powered by Just Eat, removing the need to expense meals whilst working remotely and giving people the freedom to choose what they actually want, rather than relying on generic sandwich spreads to satisfy everyone’s tastes.

Throughout the various lockdowns, we also started to notice a change in our customer habits, as many turned to sweet treats over a healthy spread to keep spirits high, so we introduced a number of new vendors including Peggy Porschen and Wenzels to our platform to make sure we had a range of offerings to suit.
 

 

What can we hope to see from Just Eat for Business in the future?

 
The role of the office continues to change day by day, and we believe it’s vital for businesses like us to adapt and cater for a new hybrid workforce. With this in mind, we are continually working on how we can provide quality catering to our businesses in innovative ways, reaching our customers at home and in the workplace.

We are also continuing our mission to be a sustainable business. In 2020, we made 3,500+ emission free deliveries through our partners, e-cargo bike delivery service Pedal me and Urb-it the walking courier, and reached 60,000 customers using our ‘new eco-friendly packaging filter’, something we will continue to push in the future. We’re also working on further integrations with the Just Eat product where customers will be able to access business orders through the Just Eat website so watch this space!