12. Your Food Collective
Newcastle startup Your Food Collective delivers food grown using regenerative farming to customers’ doors.
Revenue: $1.6 million
Growth: 262.6%
Founders: Cara Cooper (41), Lauren Branson (40)
Head Office: Newcastle
Employees: 15
Industry: Retail and consumer products
Website: https://www.yourfoodcollective.com
Year Founded: 2017
How it started
Cousins Cara Cooper and Lauren Branson were frustrated with the lack of access to good, local fresh food for their kids, and weren’t satisfied with the inconvenience of farmers markets.
They came up with a solution to combine the convenience of supermarket shopping with the freshness of farmers markets, creating Your Food Collective. The business now delivers locally grown food to its customers’ doorsteps, and works with regenerative growers who use farming practices that take care of the environment.
Growth
After making $452,000 in revenue during the 2018-19 financial year, the pandemic accelerated Your Food Collective’s growth substantially. In the 2019-20 financial year, revenue grew to $1.4 million, before increasing again to $1.6 million the following year.
Cooper told SmartCompany COVID-19 forced the business to condense its 12-month growth plan into two weeks, doubling headcount, increasing trading hours and setting up an in-house delivery team.
“With a lot of late nights and some tears, it made us a stronger team,” she said.
Where to next?
In the short term, Your Food Collective will use its recent $1.3 million series A round to grow the business. Raised through equity crowdfunding, the money will be spent on hiring a marketing director and tendering a new technology partner.
The co-founders are forecasting revenue to reach $30 million over the next three years, and would consider a possible trade sale within the next three to five years.
Cooper said being a women-led business has been Your Food Collective’s greatest challenge and its greatest asset. While logistics is traditionally a male-dominated industry, Cooper and Branson have a competitive advantage as both women and mothers.
“Statistics state that only 20% of males take care of the household shopping and cooking, yet males are running food distribution businesses and don’t intimately understand consumers’ needs,” Cooper said.
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