Etsy-style marketplace for food creators. Founded by serial entrepreneur; backed by SpeedInvest & Atomico
Business overview
| Location | London, United Kingdom |
|---|---|
| Social media | |
| Website | home-cooks.co.uk/ |
| Sectors | Food & Beverage Digital Mixed B2B/B2C |
| Company number | 12812856 |
| Incorporation date | 14 Aug 2020 |
Investment summary
Business highlights
- Founder with previous exit to Just Eat
- Backed by leading VCs inc SpeedInvest and Atomico
- 600% up on total gross revenues YoY in 2023 so far*
- 50,000+ meal sold in the last year alone
Key features
Idea
Introduction
HomeCooks is the Etsy of food.
We are on a mission to rebuild the UK's broken £12.6bn food delivery industry. For food operators, it relies on low paid labour, poor working conditions and razor thin margins. This translates through to customers with increasingly expensive & unhealthy takeaways.
At HomeCooks, we connect our independent food creators directly to consumers, so they can work flexibly to create the food we love. From our experience, this is one of the most profitable things they can do in the industry.
How it works is simple. Our independent food creators make their very best meals in batches and send them to our warehouse. We simply freeze, store and distribute on their behalf.
The result is that our happy eaters get to benefit from an ever-growing selection of 200+ home cooked meals that cost less than the average meal from mainstream food delivery companies.
Similar businesses in the US have closed large funding rounds: Shef ($90m+ raised in total) & CookUnity ($47m raised).
Substantial accomplishments to date
- £2.5m committed by leading VCs and angels (including SpeedInvest, Atomico, DFF & employee no. 1 at Deliveroo)
- 50,000+ meals sold to a community 6,000+ customers in the last year alone
- 200+ dishes from 100+ chefs
- Currently 600% up on total gross revenues from last year*
- October gross revenue up 74% from August*
- In June, we had 70% retention rates for subscribers after 6 months (subscription services started in January)
- 2k+ five star reviews
- Founder has previous exit to Just Eat
- Nationwide Delivery across the UK
- Began as an MVP on Facebook
- Investment from Islington Council
*Based on unaudited management accounts
Monetisation strategy
As a marketplace, we take a commission from the food creator on every meal sold through our website. Additionally there are also a few charges for the end user (including a delivery fee).
Our model is designed with our food creators in mind: by batch cooking 100+ dishes at a time, our experience shows us that HomeCooks is one of the most profitable ways to produce food in the industry.
If a chef cooks over 130 portions in each batch, then can earn on average £1,000 per batch they send to us (this equates to about 1-2 days worth of work!). For most of our chefs, HomeCooks is the only way they can deliver their food nationwide.
We believe that we can compete across three industries:
- The £12bn UK food delivery industry, by offering cheaper meals with more coverage across the UK. (see Deliveroo, UberEats).
- The $1.5bn UK meal kit industry, by offering higher choice and higher convenience than a meal-kit provider. (see Gousto, Hello Fresh).
- The $15bn Ready to Eat Meal industry, by offering higher choice and, in our opinion, higher quality (see Cook, AllPlants).
Use of proceeds
With this investment round we plan to accelerate the growth of our marketplace.
Specifically we plan to invest in our sales team to bring on more chefs and dishes.
This in turn will help us increase our community and customer base as our cooks are strongly incentivised to direct their own customer bases to the HomeCooks platform.
Our thesis is that chef and dish count drives growth.
Additionally we plan to direct funds towards building our proprietary marketplace technology.
We’re looking to hire a top product and engineering team to develop advanced features, with the aim of optimising the experience for both chefs and eaters.
Our mission is to change the food delivery industry forever.
There really is no place like HomeCooks.
Key Information
Share Class Structure
The Company has two classes of shares: Ordinary Shares and Series Seed Preferred Shares.
All investors in this round, including Seedrs, are receiving Series Seed Preferred Shares. Holders of Series Seed Preferred Shares and Ordinary Shares will receive voting rights and dividend rights. The liquidation preference is set out below.
Liquidation Preference
The Series Seed Preferred Shares carry a 1x non-participating preference on a liquidation, return of capital or exit.
This means that on a liquidation, return of capital or exit, the proceeds will be distributed as follows:
1. First, Series Seed Preferred Shareholders will receive 1x their initial investment amount back;
2. Second, the Ordinary Shareholders will share in the remaining proceeds pro rata.
Provided that if the Series Seed Preferred Shares would be entitled to a greater amount on an as-converted to Ordinary Shares basis where the proceeds are distributed to all such shareholders on a pro rata basis (according to the number of shares held), then the above waterfall will not apply and the proceeds shall be distributed to all shareholders pro rata.
The Series Seed Preferred Shares will convert into Ordinary Shares on a 1:1 basis.
Please note that the preference on the Series Seed Preferred Shares has been drafted to be compatible with EIS relief.
Investor Perks
£100: £10 Investor Discount to redeem on an order
£500: £25 Investor Discount to redeem on an order
£1,000: £25 Investor Discount to redeem on an order
+ A pair of snazzy HomeCooks oven gloves
+ Join our taste testing community for 6 months - exclusive access to try all our new dishes first (at a heavily discounted rate) and help us decide whether they should be made available to the public.
£2,500: £50 Investor Discount to redeem on an order
+ A pair of snazzy HomeCooks oven gloves
+ Join our taste testing community for 12 months - exclusive access to try all our new dishes first (at a heavily discounted rate) and help us decide whether they should be made available to the public.
£5,000: £50 Investor Discount to redeem on an order
+ A pair of snazzy HomeCooks oven gloves
+ A Red HomeCooks t-shirt
+ Exclusive Homemade Brownies
+ Join our taste testing community for 24 months - exclusive access to try all our new dishes first (at a heavily discounted rate) and help us decide whether they should be made available to the public.
£10,000: £100 Investor Discount to redeem on an order
+ A pair of snazzy HomeCooks oven gloves
+ An exclusive black HomeCooks t-shirt
+ More HomeCooks merchandise: A mug, hoody, art, tea towel.
+ Exclusive Homemade Brownies
+ Join our taste testing community for life - exclusive access to try all our new dishes first (at a heavily discounted rate) and help us decide whether they should be made available to the public.
£50,000: £100 Investor Discount to redeem annually on your orders
+ A pair of snazzy HomeCooks oven gloves
+ An exclusive black HomeCooks t-shirt
+ More HomeCooks merchandise: A mug, hoody, art, tea towel.
+ Exclusive Homemade Brownies
+ Join our taste testing community for life - exclusive access to try all our new dishes first (at a heavily discounted rate) and help us decide whether they should be made available to the public.
+ An invite to taste test with the full HomeCooks team in our office
One of our chefs will cook an awesome 3 course meal for you and a partner at your home.
£100,000: £250 Investor Discount to redeem annually on your orders
+ A pair of snazzy HomeCooks oven gloves
+ An exclusive black HomeCooks t-shirt
+ More HomeCooks merchandise: A mug, hoody, art, tea towel.
+ Exclusive Homemade Brownies
+ Join our taste testing community for life - exclusive access to try all our new dishes first (at a heavily discounted rate) and help us decide whether they should be made available to the public.
+ An invite to taste test with the full HomeCooks team in our office
+ One of our chefs will cook an awesome 3 course meal for you and up to 9 other people at your home.
Please note that any discounts, rewards and/or offers listed by a company in its campaign are subject to the terms and conditions applied by that company. It is the company’s responsibility to honour such discounts, rewards and/or offers and Seedrs does not take any responsibility for them.
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