Food Disco

Idea

Introduction

Residents of large, new, professionally managed developments in a thick 'doughnut' around the world’s city centres can’t get the takeaway food they want.

From 2008 to 2019, studies show that nearly $1.3tn has been invested in multifamily developments built specifically for rental, providing an estimated 16m dwellings in the UK, Europe and USA.

These developments are often built in fringe areas around dense city centres. Takeaway options are often remote, likely to be limited in choice/quality, often subject to high delivery fees and long delivery times.

Food Disco brings inspired restaurants and street food traders to the heart of these communities. Enabled by our purpose-built technology platform, our signature rotating network of food partners prepare fresh meals onsite at the development, exclusively for residents. Customers order online, our food partner cooks and residents collect. At certain larger developments, we deliver – typically in a few minutes time.

We’re doing this in a currently untapped market that we estimate to be over £1 billion in the UK alone.

Substantial accomplishments to date

PROOF OF CONCEPT
We have successfully trialled Food Disco’s service at two premier developments in London and five in Manchester.

97% of survey respondents are happy with Food Disco, 99% would recommend Food Disco to their neighbour, 100% want Food Disco back on an ongoing basis.

Month-on-month sales commission growth in May and June was respectively 54% and 84% across five trading sites in London and Manchester.

Data suggests the average repeat customer will order from us an estimated 3.1x more frequently than JustEat's.

On average, we feed an estimated 18% of residents per event at our most mature site.

OUR TECHNOLOGY
We are putting the finishing touches on a ground-up rebuild of our platform that will streamline online customer ordering, digital event marketing, food partner support and back-office administration.

SOLID PIPELINE
Our clients include well-known Build to Rent players including Allsop, Folio London, Grainger, Greystar, Invesco, JLL, Legal & General, Moda Living, Salboy and urbanbubble.

Blackhorse Mills is our most mature London site, where we typically host four days of trading each week.

We have concluded a successful eight-week pilot at Royal Albert Wharf and are gearing up for full service. We are completing pre-pilot activities at Stratford Halo and The Well House.

In Manchester, we recently launched Anaconda Cut, GreenGate, Burlington Square and LOCAL Blackfriars. Multi-day events are being scheduled at Deansgate Square.

Folio London, Invesco and Legal & General's property manager, urbanbubble, have expressed an interest in Food Disco’s service at all of their UK residential developments. We are currently scheduling initial pilots to evaluate this potential demand.

ESTABLISHED NETWORK OF FOOD PARTNERS
Food Disco actively seeks out up-and-coming, ambitious food partners, providing them with a new channel to grow their sales, build brand awareness and help get their business off the ground.

Our expanding network of independent traders includes some of the most exciting names in UK street food.

Monetisation strategy

Unit level gross margin at our most mature site is currently in excess of 85%.

COMMISSION
Food Disco charges a 15% commission to our food partners. We do not apply a fixed fee, reducing our traders’ downside risk. Our commission-only structure shows independent traders that Food Disco is incentivised to make every event a success.

We are also testing a tiered structure, charging less for smaller events and more for larger ones. Under this structure, food partners can profitably host events at smaller developments, increasing Food Disco's addressable market size.

SERVICE FEE
Online orders will incur a 2.5% fee charged to the consumer, covering payment processing costs and eliminating this fee for our food partners.

DELIVERY CHARGE
While click+collect is our preferred ordering channel, in large, spread out developments where deliveries are necessary, a fee of £2 per order charged to the customer will cover the cost of a lean delivery team.

Use of proceeds

This round of investment will build out our team, accelerate product development and support growth to an expected 47 sites.

The following chart breaks down our forecasted uses of cash:

New hires will bolster our team’s capabilities across business development, technology, new product development and operations:

- 1x Managing Director / Head of Operations - Our CEO’s ‘right hand person’. Direct responsibilities include business process development, oversight of site roll-out and event execution across all geographies. The role will also support our CEO with distinct near term potential to double up on business development and wider business management efforts

- 1x Technology - We will bring our current developer in house, allowing us to seamlessly move forward with iterations and improvements to the platform

- 2x Operations Managers (1x in London, 1x in Manchester) - Food partner recruiting, event programming and event management

- 1x Salesperson - Commission-based salesperson responsible for growing our client pipeline