A startup which delivers food from local caterers directly to offices in the City has raised £4m to expand across the UK.
City Pantry, which already serves clients such as Amazon, Google, Spotify and Unilever, currently serves over 20,000 meals every week to the employees of more than 500 companies.
Octopus Investments led the latest round, along with existing investors and the Newable Private Investing (formerly London Business Angels) platform which introduces high-net-worth clients to investment opportunities.
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“While weve all seen the phenomenal growth of online food delivery in business-to-consumer 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," said City Pantry's founder Stuart Sunderland.
“However weve 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."
Sunderland founded City Pantry in Brixton in 2013, initially delivering food from Brixton Market to local offices. Demand grew rapidly and the business soon had larger offices in Shoreditch and then London Bridge.
The inspiration came to Sunderland during his previous career in the financial sector, where he would often spend lunchtimes eating at his desk. He was convinced that company culture could be improved by teams eating together, and so decided to make that happen.
City Pantry received its first institutional investor backing from True, a London-based retail and consumer startup incubator run by former bankers.
"In a short space of time, City Pantry has grown from a startup within our growth funds innovation hub to a business delivering phenomenal growth," said True's chief executive Matt Truman. "City Pantry has huge potential for scale."
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