Delivery Companies: To-Your-Door Startups

The Startups 100 is the definitive list of UK startups making waves in the UK business scene. It’s current, it’s exciting and it’s relevant to anyone running (or looking to run) a new business.

Startups from across the nation hurried to throw their hat in the ring this year and we’re pleased to say that we can deliver the goods and bring the hottest startups fresh to your door (or screen, depending on how you like your businesses served).

The rise of the delivery startup

We’re all familiar with the concept of ordering a takeaway. So familiar in fact that 3% of Brits order a meal online-to-home every day, and food delivery service Deliveroo report a whopping user base of 45,000 loyal daily users.

With these figures in mind, it looks like we’re no strangers to home delivery here in the UK. Convenience combined with affordability makes the to-your-door option all the more appealing to the modern, time-poor consumer.

From a fresh batch of gin to your doorstep each month, to vegetables, beauty products and even artisan pasta deliveries, we love a subscription service: be it films to our screens or music to our ears; UK spending tipped £2 billion on subscriptions in 2018. It’s clear that modern consumerism starts online and is enjoyed from the comfort of the couch.

These days, there’s nothing unusual about a pizza arriving to your door on the back of a motorbike, but what about a delivery on the less-conventional end of the scale?

Sitting alongside trends such as exciting, new recruitment platforms and startups pioneering diversity, we’ve identified delivery companies as a key business trend from this year’s entries to the Startups 100, and we’re excited to share some of the top picks…

Meet the to-your-door startups disrupting the delivery world

Patch

Satisfying our desire to bring the outside in, Patch is an ever-growing business contributing towards the UK’s flower and indoor plant market, now thought to be worth £2.2bn.

An online garden centre that takes the hassle out of growing leafy lovelies, even in the tightest of spaces. From purchasing to parenting plants, Patch has its customers covered – helping millennials turn cramped urban living spaces into the enviable indoor edens of Instagram.

Online ‘plant parenting’ courses and ‘plant doctors’ on hand via a strong customer service team helped Patch sell over 120,000 plants in 2018, a figure set to double in 2019. Not to mention that Patch’s super simple plant parenting videos have been viewed over half a million times.

With a quirky new approach to horticulture – using memorable names for plant breeds, like Rapunzel, Toby and Rick – the online plant emporium is seeding an urban jungle throughout London by delivering beautiful botany right to their customers’ doors.

Patch is a startup already flourishing into an evergreen enterprise, which is why we’ve planted it at an enviable 16th place in the startups 100 register.

Laundry Heap

From suds to success : Laundryheap provides on-demand laundry and dry-cleaning services throughout London, Birmingham, Manchester, Coventry, Amsterdam, Haarlem, Dublin, Dubai and Sharjah – a model that grants flexibility and convenience for time-strapped consumers.

Transforming an industry that is largely offline, Laundry Heap offers a service that can be booked on the go, anytime, using a smartphone, citywide. Able to provide multiple collection and delivery slots from 9am to 11pm, the business is designed to fit around hectic contemporary lifestyles.

Laundryheap is truly disrupting the traditional laundry industry. It is the only major on-demand laundry company that offers same-day collection at no extra charge, making it a real mover and shaker
Having expanded into nine cities in four countries, with ongoing plans to penetrate 15 new markets in the near future – far from being left out to dry, Laundry Heap is a startup on a fast-spin to success.

Floom

Mother’s day, Valentine’s day, birthdays, celebrations or simply wanting to bring a little bit of beauty into your home – Floom is the floral delivery service that’ll transform your gift-giving and home improvement habits with just the click of a button.

An online floristry website, Floom is changing the flower industry through the power of technology. Following in the footsteps of fin-tech and fem-tech, new kid on the block: floral-tech is causing a stir.
Delivering bespoke bouquets from local, independent florists, Floom brings blooms to your living room without you ever having to leave the settee…

How?
By building software that simplifies the process of finding and purchasing from the best florists in town, letting the florals do the talking and the deserving florists take the credit.

A core principle of the business is to support independent florists, nurturing the industry and accelerating deserving businesses through exposure and online presence.

With a stylish magazine and Instagram to make any floral enthusiast weep, this fresh new startup has spotted a gap in the market that’s ripe for the picking – a deserving member of the Startups 100 bunch.

Red Rickshaw/Feast Box

RedRickshaw/Feast Box’s ecommerce platform is the UK’s largest online Asian grocer, offering fresh produce and spices sourced from all over the world.

A two-pronged fork of delicious, startup ingenuity: Feast Box is the arm of the business responsible for delivering scrumptious, tailor made recipe boxes,
filled with hard-to-come-by ingredients to create a feast fit for a prince.

Red Rickshaw is the wholesaler side of the business, using a B2B structure to bring high-quality ingredients to the chefs with the culinary know-how to make delicious food with quality ingredients.

Taking advantage of an emerging market for Asian goods, Red Rickshaw/Feast Box is expanding into Europe, having established close wholesaler relationships throughout the food industry: from street food market vendors to Michelin-starred restaurants.

Feast Box delivers weeknight-friendly recipe cards along with all the pre-measured fresh ingredients and spices needed to cook them. An ever popular easy-dinner formula we’ve seen before with the likes of HelloFresh and Mindful Chef – except Feast Box dares to do things differently by bringing an Asian fusion twist to the more traditional recipe-box offerings.

This vibrant startup helps customers avoid the supermarket slog and reduce their food waste whilst enjoying a range of delicious recipes each week. Providing something for everyone, the ever-updating menu always contains at least four unique vegan options, bringing a sense of excitement to veganism that goes far beyond a dry falafel wrap.

The Asian food market is worth an estimated £5.7 billion to the UK economy each year, and 76% of people in the UK eat Asian food 3-4 times a week. But it’s an industry plagued with high wastage and many still lack access to the groceries encountered in favourite Asian restaurants.

These are all pain points that RedRickshaw/Feast Box is looking to alleviate by delivering the ingredients customers want, but can’t find in store, right to their door. They are also developing cutting edge software that’ll help keep inventories tight, and stock at the right levels.

Rated “the best recipe box on the market” by the Telegraph, and boasting an ever growing base of loyal customers returning each week to sample new recipes and revisit their favourites, Red Rickshaw/Feast Box is cooking up a storm that we can’t wait to try.

Next Steps

If you’re a delivery startup and need to track your vehicles, check out our article on the best vehicle tracking systems for small businesses.

Or, if you’ve not yet started, but like the idea, have a read of our guide on how to start a courier business!