Meet Martin Holden-White, founder of Grubby
Martin Holden-White is the founder of Grubby - the UK’s first 100% plant-based recipe box subscription service. They’re on a mission to make plant-based cooking more accessible and convenient without costing the earth. Since its 2019 launch, Grubby has amassed over 7,000 customers, delivering over 150,000 orders. Grubby allows subscribers to choose from over 50 recipes, delivered to their door with fresh, pre-measured ingredients needed to cook two or three healthy plant-based meals each week.
What inspired you to launch your business, and what is the end goal?
Grubby came about when I started cooking and eating more plant-based meals myself, about 3-4 years ago. I knew it was better for me and the planet, but I found plant-based cooking super challenging even as someone who grew up working in the food industry. It was hard to make the food taste good in a simple way, recipes online were difficult to follow, and niche ingredients were tricky to find. The whole thing was just really inaccessible. I thought there must be a lot of people like me, not knowing where to start.
For me, the end goal isn’t about being the first vegan recipe kit; it is more about making vegan cooking more accessible to everyone who might otherwise not cook plant-based food. People have been brought up on meat and two veg. That’s the way we are traditionally taught to cook. Grubby flips this narrative on its head.
Being vegan is ultimately a choice, and it’s not for everyone. We are very aware of this as a team of mostly flexitarians. However, we also know that if everyone did things more balanced and included more plants in their diet, the world would be a very different place. What I love about what we do, is that we’re allowing people to cook in different ways and expand their recipe repertoire with new ideas, tips and tricks they can use over and over, not just on Grubby nights!
What does your business offer its target audience?
Grubby delivers delicious plant-based meals nationwide (excluding Northern Ireland and islands). We have over 50 flavour packed recipes to choose from, expanding all the time. In the box, our customer can expect fresh, pre-measured ingredients needed to cook up two or three healthy, plant-based recipes with, on average, a variety of six or more fresh veggies in each box. Our accompanying recipe cards make meat-free cooking simple, with easy to follow steps, cooking times and nutritional information, as well as QR codes to curated Spotify playlists to cook along to whilst prepping. Grubby is for anyone looking for a little more adventure when it comes to plant-based cooking as well as those completely new to vegan cooking.
Sustainability is at our core, so all packaging is 100% recyclable, often compostable, always ethically sourced, and produced in the UK in 95% of cases. We have intentions to be completely plastic-free by 2023, in line with our efforts to reach B-Corp status. We’re determined to use ‘pedal power’ wherever possible, so all our London deliveries are made by bike, and we’re on track for bike deliveries in all major cities across the UK in the not too distant future. Any food waste is also offset through our food waste partners and local food banks to ensure that no Grubby goes to waste.
What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learnt so far as an entrepreneur?
Our lead investor, Rob Hamilton, constantly hammered home about the efficiency of the money we spend, so being wise with our spending choices is the biggest lesson learnt and something as a team we’re hyper-aware of. I think bootstrapping has so many benefits in terms of going through the process of being efficient at the start. The team would probably say I’m quite tight in a business sense, and one of our core values is to make every penny count and considering the impact it will have. I’d say we’re more efficient and customer focused as a result of this.
What keeps you motivated as an entrepreneur when you hit bumps in the road?
We’re always trying to make an impact. At university, I did a project around social enterprise and how businesses can be a force for good. Grubby isn’t a social enterprise, but we want to fall into the category of businesses that make social change in an ethical and responsible way. Reminding ourselves of this contributes to a lot of motivation whenever we encounter hurdles.
When covid came along, we were trying to think of ways to at least keep operating in some capacity, but obviously, we didn’t know how long it was going to last, and it was an unnerving time, that’s for sure. The first thing we did was raise money for charity. We delivered meals to London hospitals for free. At the time, we didn’t really realise, but it was such a feel-good initiative. It was, of course, good PR, but actually, we had a lot of fun doing it.
All the nurses and people working there were so appreciative, and this gave us a real drive. We realised we have a good product and people genuinely like it because we’d go back the following week, and the NHS staff would feedback that they loved the previous week’s boxes. Another of our goals is to deliver a million meals to children in poverty. We’ve already donated over 10,000 meals in our first year through our work with 1morechild, who are doing amazing things in Uganda.
How did you fund the business in the early stages?
I worked on Grubby for a good year before we made our first sale. It was at least a year of research and recipe development on my own before we launched our original quick ‘grab and go’ recipe bags in London offices. We were initially a B2B before we went B2C. We’d only been trialling the initial office Grubby for about three months before covid so there wasn’t much chance to see the results from this original model, albeit it was showing good signs.
One of our biggest funding milestones was when we got the Innovate UK grant for sustainable innovation during the first UK lockdown. It would have been very difficult to get through that period without the grant, as things were pretty touch and go. It was probably the most anxious time for me and the business. We were growing nicely, but money was flying out the door, and our tech was not up to scratch (mainly because we’d built V1 of the website ourselves with zero experience). Everything needed a lot of work, so the grant got us through the next stage. It allowed us to extend our first period of crowdfunding and angel investment.
With Crowdfunding, we originally started with a group of angel investors. About 60% of that £1.15 million round of investment was through angels. So we essentially had this money tied up before we went live on Crowdfunding. This was important because it gave people the confidence that Grubby was solid with great potential, as well as having support from reputable investors like the founder of Skyscanner. It gave us a lot of kudos and got us to the next stage.
How do you set yourself apart from other businesses in your industry?
Fundamentally, we are the only authentically 100% plant-based recipe box, and I do think that carries a lot of weight. It’s a question that we’re asked a lot. What makes you stand out? What’s your USP? We’ve got a long way to go, but we want to be seen as the authority in plant-based cooking. People get our recipe kits because they see that we’re the experts. Yes, there are others with good plant-based recipes, but ultimately it’s not their focus. With us, it’s the only thing we’re doing, our only focus, and it’s always going to be that, along with having a much more sustainable proposition they can trust in. We’ve seen lots of people and customers come to us because they see that too.
That aspect of having fun in the kitchen is also very much what we’re about. We’re constantly thinking of ways, besides our cook along with Spotify playlists, to make that kitchen experience really fun.
What plans do you have for Grubby over the next two years?
We were recently certified as a ‘Green Small Business’, which means that we’re making a real effort to reduce our carbon footprint and looking at the whole way that we deal with sustainability and environmental issues within the company. We have an environmental plan in place around everything that we do, and it’s a big focus for us, not only over the next two years but with all plans going forward.
When it comes to being carbon neutral or negative, it’s a murky world. There’s obviously lots of buying of carbon credits and big companies that claim to be carbon neutral. They are because they buy carbon credits that are essentially offsetting carbon used in the company. B-Corp and others are keen that it’s not just about offsetting. We could use diesel vehicles across the UK to deliver our boxes and just offset that with carbon credits and plant a load of tress in the Amazon rainforest like the big boys and girls, fine. But it’s not actually addressing the problem. To address it properly, we need to deal with it at the source.
I never want Grubby to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes and say that we’re carbon neutral and just offset our carbon. We deliver all our London boxes by bike, which obviously emits no carbon at all. Our nationwide deliveries are with DPD, a carbon-neutral company but we want to even better and grow our bicycle deliveries in more cities, and increased deliveries in these areas will allow us to do that by trunking the boxes to those cities, but they would then be delivered by bike which saves a vast amount of Co2! This differs from others who trunk stock to a city and then distribute by vehicles. Just one example of dealing with it at the source.
How did you fund the launch of your business and what creative strategies did you use to execute a minimal cash flow?
The biggest challenge was definitely the first stage of growth and figuring out how to get people to know about you and getting suppliers to care enough to bother supplying you. It’s not just about getting the word out about your business. It’s getting the word out to suppliers too. You cant make orders because of their minimum order quantities of tens of thousands of pounds worth of product. Agencies also don’t want to work with you because you’re too small and don’t have any cash, so the first stage is such a grind for any business.
Unsurprisingly suppliers question why they should work with you when you’re only ordering ten aubergines a week. So the supermarket becomes the next best thing! We were running around London, getting produce anywhere we could, as well as the challenge of getting the word out to customers. So to get things off the ground, you really do need that investment. But the caveat is that you can’t get investment without making traction. So there’s this difficult juxtaposition.
When we became a B2B, we never saw any spike in orders as we didn’t have any awareness. We had no authority, and we were only in one borough of London. It was a manual effort to get Grubby off the ground - knocking on doors, delivering flyers and telling people about Grubby during lockdown for about six weeks. So, in some ways, we were really fortunate with the timing of the pandemic. But one thing we never saw was a big spike or jump in orders. It was steady but growing nicely. In our first week, we did seven deliveries. Most of them were mates! The second week, orders doubled, and every week, we saw solid increase in orders.
How does technological advancement speak to the strategic direction of your business?
Tech is one of the biggest challenges with growth. You have to invest in tech when the company is growing, and it’s not cheap! We realised early on that if you want to even play at the table, you’ve got to have a decent tech stack. Users expect good technology and usability, with a slick app and a super-fast website. A lot of thought and resourcing goes into achieving that. We probably underestimated how important tech is. We’re a food business at the end of the day, but it is a big part of it. People’s expectations of technology are so high now.
We have some exciting tech plans in the pipeline that played a big part in us being awarded the Innovate UK sustainable grant from the government following a series of applications showing what we’re doing with sustainability and tech solutions.
What are your top tips for entrepreneurs wanting to get their business out there?
Networking events are great, but you can definitely have too many of them. Being picky about what you engage with is key. I was often guilty of saying yes to too many things and ultimately not getting the important things done, so definitely be picky about what you engage with.
There’s always that guilt factor, but if a task is not that important at that moment of time, you have to focus on the thing that is.
Try and embrace the uncertainty - especially at the start; every day is scary because you don’t have any structure, and you’re just crashing around trying to figure out how to get things done quickly.
Do one thing well and then focus on the next task. It’s so easy to try and tackle everything at once and just do an average job at all of them.
If you’re feeling low, talk to someone. Don’t bottle it up.
Take the positives wherever you can, and take time to celebrate when things go well! All you can do is learn from the endless mistakes you’ll no doubt make. Lastly, Google is your friend - it has a lot of the answers, but knowledgeable people often have better answers, so don’t be afraid to ask for help.
Do you prioritise self-care as an entrepreneur?
Absolutely; however, it’s a real learning process. In the beginning, I definitely burnt out. Later down the line, I eventually realised that you do need to take time out and use some of the weekends to recharge. Productivity lacks so much without a break, so I’m a bit more regimented around finishing on time, not staying up until the early hours working. I’m definitely not 9-5, but I do try to be more focused.
There is always going to be a period of time where you’re flogging yourself. It naturally does happen in the early stages of starting a business, which is probably why people do burn out in the first year to 18 months. But it got to a point where I knew I had to take a break. For me, that came when we closed the first part of the investment round. I went to Edinburgh and totally switched off as I realised I was getting irritable and struggling to focus. It’s about recognising this and acknowledging when you need to take time for yourself. Something I do a lot is exercise, and I love team sport and play hockey at weekends. It’s a great way to de-stress.
