Meet Simmy Dhillon, Founder at Meal Subscription Service: Rice N Spice Meals

We’re RNS and we’re building the UK’s most loved meal subscription service, placing tech, family values & flavour at the heart of what we do. Our ambition is to become a generation’s favourite way to eat well, empowering people that are poor on time but high on life, to eat nutritious & delicious food without disrupting their everyday flow.

We’re healthier than Deliveroo, easier than Hello Fresh, tastier than Pret…and we treat you like family. Nutritious. Delicious. Time-saving dishes.

 
 

Rice n Spice

 

How did you come up with the idea for the company?

 

RNS began in 2017 as a side project in my first year at the University of Bristol. With students regularly ordering the notoriously unhealthy Dominoes pizzas, I saw a gap in the market for a healthy, affordable food delivery service on campus.

My brother Jhai had pursued a football career from an early age and was committed to eating a nutritious diet – this lay the groundwork for my interest in healthy eating, and its benefits. In short, RNS combines my passion for food, health and efficiency.

 

 

How has the company evolved during the pandemic?

 

We’ve been fortunate that the meal delivery service we provide has been much-sought-after throughout the period. With RNS being a DTC, e-commerce business, and given that myself & my brother were already running the business remotely – we were unaffected by the ‘work from home’ policy and stringent closure regulations, as our kitchen team were considered essential workers.

Given the soaring demand for food suppliers & health-related products, we experienced something of an unpredictable boost from the pandemic. In these circumstances, we swiftly expanded our operations and implemented a nationwide delivery service. As a result of such rapid developments, we’ve grown 10x over the last 18 months – allowing myself and my brother to quit our full-time jobs to work on the business, hire some incredible talent and focus on really taking it to the next level. We were also in the privileged position of being able to donate thousands of meals to our local hospital during the worst stages of the pandemic, and we have since instituted a lifetime discount for NHS workers.

 

What can we hope to see from RNS in the future?

 

We’re building the UK’s most *loved* meal subscription service – encompassing the ambition to be bigger, better… etc. But also, focusing on storytelling, sharing the journey and sharing our success. That’s always been a big part of what we’re about, and will continue to be as we grow.

As a family, we’ve got a breadth of life experience, and we’d like to think we’ve got something in common with almost every-(hu)man. We relate to different perspectives, career paths, approaches…  and the struggle to find the time to cook n eat a good, wholesome meal amongst the daily chaos. We strive to support people in the pursuit of their great, whatever that may be; whether passing exams as a student, climbing the corporate ladder as a twenty-something or powering through parenthood. We want to empower the dreamers and doers without disrupting their everyday flow, saving them time and fueling them exclusively with the good stuff, so that they can carry on being great.

This is a huge space (1 billion meals are eaten weekly in the UK), cluttered with a lot of nonsense: fad diets, faffy recipe boxes and flavourless but functional ‘meal prep’. We’re not meal prep. We’re something different. We’re making food make sense, advocating for a sustainable approach to food that centres health as your first foundation, without being health-obsessed. Our ambition is to become the next generation’s favourite way to eat well.

We’re rapidly expanding the team and pushing forward for a high-growth 2022. We’re working on an exciting rebrand, larger premises and greater investment in tech & automation to improve experience for our users.