The Brook

Idea

Introduction

At The Brook we make exciting, delicious and nutritionally rich meals for a generation of busy, health-conscious people who want to keep their carbon footprint down.

We raised on Seedrs last year, where we hit 100% in our first day and overfunded our target by over 140%. Since then we have ...

• Launched an e-commerce platform and partnered with DPD to test a direct to consumer (D2C) model
• Developed 24 dishes, with retail-ready packaging that is 100% recyclable
• Set up our production kitchen
• Secured our 1st retail listings, including a listing with the Co-op and an international listing on Red Mart in Singapore
• Sourced inventory management software that will allow efficient stock control and accounting as we scale
• Started working with one of the largest pub chains in the UK on developing their vegan menu
• Been awarded 3 Great Taste gold stars and been shortlisted for both a Future Food award and a Great British Food award

Intended impact

Having spent the past 5 years honing our recipes, and serving thousands of customers at our restaurants, we're excited to extend our reach by launching a range of ready-to-eat/cook products, that can be enjoyed anywhere, by anyone, at any time.

Our range will provide support throughout the whole week; from grabbing a quick lunch in the office to throwing an impressive dinner party. We want to show the world that enjoying a diet rich in plant-based foods can be simple, convenient and incredibly delicious. We believe a lot of people are ready to make the switch but find the transition difficult and time-consuming.

In the UK, 9/10 of us eat ready meals and in 2017 we spent a whopping £4.7bn doing so, making ours the largest ready meal market in Europe. With a range of thoroughly 'tried and tested' dishes and a reputation for both great food and great service, we're perfectly positioned to provide high-quality plant-based options in this category, as demand continues to grow.

Substantial accomplishments to date

Our other achievements include:

• More than 5 years experience honing recipes and building a customer base.
• Thousands of customers already served.
• 2018 Time Out award winner: Best Restaurant in Hackney (after only 3 months).
• 10k+ social media followers.
• National press coverage, including the BBC.
• Established relationships with food wholesalers.

Monetisation strategy

In November last year, we launched a simple e-commerce platform and allowed a limited number of customers to order from our Test Kitchen from January – March as we developed the range with their feedback. This was a great success and has enabled us to build a more sophisticated e-commerce platform, with the customer at its core.

On the new platform, customers can go online and ‘fill a box’ with the dishes they love and choose the frequency they’d like their meals to be delivered, so they won’t need to worry about re-ordering every week/month.

Alongside this we are also pursuing conversations within both retail and food services. In retail we have secured listings with Co-op, Dobbies and Fenwick, among others, are have also started selling internationally, in Singapore.

In foodservice we have seen early success and are currently working on the vegan menu for one of the UK's largest pub chains.

Use of proceeds

Due to the speed of our progression, we're raising funds to raise brand awareness, make key hires and support further retail launches.

8% cost of the raise
30% team
37% brand and marketing
25% scaling production