NEWS.

Expansion in client base and staff for online meal delivery service

07th Apr 2022

An online meal delivery service has expanded its client base across the UK, and have created four new jobs after working with Supply Chain North East.

MealChef based in Cramlington offers low-cost nutritional meal services for families that struggle to know what to cook on a day-to-day basis. The service looks to offer all the ingredients for three meals a day with recipe cards at a price that is affordable for the average family, which would result in people being able to eat more healthily, and potentially save money on their food/shopping bills.

They contacted Supply Chain North East to help the business launch its digital marketing strategy with the aim of promoting and expanding the company's trade as well as increasing brand awareness. Co-founder of the business, Graeme Stewart said:

“Both Chris and myself  found the process relatively straightforward and found Andy to be of great assistance. The grant support from RTC was of huge assistance to our company at launch.’’

The project was set out to assist MealChef in developing a social media strategy, across all platforms, in addition to developing blog content for the business. As well as ensuring their search engine optimisation (SEO) was developed to attract visitors to the website. As a result, an email strategy has been created to assist MealChef to reach their target market which is families between the ages of 30 and 50 years old, while also obtaining new clients.

MealChef now has multiple clients across the UK and has recently been successfully featured in both That’s Life and Pick Me Up magazine. The business has grown far quicker than anticipated and is on course to break all the financial targets they set for itself this year. The retention rate for customers is around 40% which is double the industry norm for the likes of Gusto, etc. who work at a rate of 20% retention.

The company has overcome many challenges very quickly, particularly in this highly competitive sector. Their offer was well researched and defined prior to launch so that they knew if there was space in the market for MealChef. With the ever-increasing cost of living MealChef and the services that it provides will become ever more important in the upcoming months.

Andy Brown, a business advisor for Supply Chain North East, commented:

“MealChef is an innovative platform offering an affordable, healthy meal planning and delivery service for families across the UK. The non-subscription service allows customers to pick weeks when they might be busy and know meal making might be stressful and helps them plan health meals for all the family which in turn cuts down on food wastage.’’

Supply Chain North East brings together four key partners to work with over 800 businesses through to 2021, supporting them to identify opportunities in new and existing markets. An integral part of the North East Strategic Economic Plan, that has a vision to create 100,000 more and better jobs between 2014 and 2024., Supply Chain North East is delivered across the region by RTC North, Generator, North East Automotive Alliance (NEAA) and North East Process Industry Cluster (NEPIC).

Supply Chain North East is a multimillion programme aimed at revolutionising the way SMEs diversify their offering and embrace new markets. The programme has received more than £3m of funding from the England European Regional Development Fund, which is part of the European Structural and Investment Funds Growth Programme 2014-2020.

Return to list