Bundlfresh is an Australian online marketplace allowing consumers to bundle produce from their favourite local stores into a single order and delivery.  Butchers, Bakers, Greengrocers, Delis and more.

As large grocery chains invested heavily into online shopping and convenience, many smaller independent, local retailers have been unable to participate meaningfully in this digital channel. The process of buying from all your favourite local stores still remains a time consuming activity with multiple stops, shorter opening hours and finding a parking spot, just some of the challenges. Many consumers love shopping locally, but also love (and need) the convenience of online and home delivery more.

Witnessing this problem firsthand, founders Matt, Anna and Dan came together in 2019 with their wealth of expertise across food, retail, logistics and technology to create Bundlfresh on Sydney’s Northern Beaches.

Bundlfresh currently serves 47 suburbs and has seen immediate traction. Most notably, an annual growth rate (CAGR) of more than 300% over the past two years driven largely by word of mouth referrals. With a proven business model and strong customer demand, we are now looking to extend the service across Greater Sydney followed by expansion to other major Australian cities. In parallel, new products and categories will be introduced to provide the broadest range of local products, and quality vendors.

The Bundlfresh platform is a two-sided marketplace connecting local grocery and food vendors with customers looking to purchase premium, specialty and local produce from their favourite retailers. 

Customers use the Bundlfresh (mobile friendly) website the same way they would other online grocery sites, selecting and purchasing their items by either filtering on categories or vendors. Checkout is straightforward and simple, and whilst their selections may be from multiple vendors, from the customer’s perspective, there is a single payment (checkout process). When placing the order the customer selects their delivery date and time.

Each customer order placed is then automatically split and forwarded to the respective vendors. The vendor receives a purchase order and a picklist consisting of the items they supply within each bundle. They then prepare the orders for that day and make available for either pickup or delivery to the Bundlfresh warehouse at an agreed time. Bundlfresh then consolidates all the vendor orders into the customer’s single ‘bundled’ order.

Revenue is generated from each customer order that flows through the platform making a margin on all items sold. Bundlfresh has pre-agreed prices with each vendor, at a level below the retail price that the vendor sets and controls. For some vendors the Bundfresh sell price is the same as in the store, for others there is a premium to what the product sells for in store. Put simply both the customer and the vendor pay in part for the service. Today the Gross Margin sits at ~22%, but as new products, categories and vendors are introduced and the sales mix of bundles evolves, it is expected gross margins will be closer to 30%.

The vendor side of the marketplace currently consists of around 65 bakers, greengrocers, butchers, seafood, delis and more. During onboarding vendors are integrated with the platform. The system can support the most sophisticated vendors with API enabled integration into vendor order management systems or is simple and flexible enough for a vendor with only email access to participate. The majority of these vendors have no (or very limited) online sales or delivery capability. For those that do, our service is an additional complementary digital sales channel.

For more information please see section 2.5 of the Offer Document.

The Bundlfresh brand stands for ‘Local, Specialty and Premium’. A truly authentic and purpose driven brand with local communities at its heart.

Since launching in 2019, Bundlfresh has delivered to nearly 3,000 unique customers acquired largely through word of mouth referrals. The company has only spent around $30k on marketing and advertising. Prioritising instead, on building out the service and product proposition whilst managing the growth generated from the COVID lockdowns. Pleasingly, with strong customer satisfaction, high retention and ‘word of mouth referrals’, our Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) sits at $2,825 and our online conversion rate is 18% compared to the industry average of only 3%. Validation of product / market fit.

As we expand into new territories, we will increase marketing spend to capture new customers and accelerate organic advocacy. We have already contracted a digital growth expert to focus on paid social media and search. We will also use a PR agency to build awareness of our service, the Bundlfresh brand and to drive traffic to the platform. We have earmarked ~25% of the funds raised from this round to be allocated into these modes of marketing.

Email Direct Marketing (EDMs) keep us constantly connected to our community and is the biggest driver for generating revenue. Our metrics for this mode of marketing are off the charts and highlight the strength of the brand and the incredibly high level of engagement we have with our community.

With every new vendor, we connect and convert more new customers. This network effect will be accelerated with focused recruitment of more local vendors within each territory. Bundlfresh is able to be introduced to new customers in new areas via the existing local brands that customers already support, know and trust. Numerous existing vendors have linked their own websites directly to Bundlfresh to enable their customers to easily access our service. This has provided one of the most successful sources of new customers.

For more information please see section 2.7 of the Offer Document.

Grocery in Australia is a $123Bn industry. Approximately 50% of the consumer spend is on fresh produce including meat, seafood, bread, milk, fruit and vegetables. Whilst Coles and Woolworths command close to 70% of total consumer grocery spend in Australia, across the fresh produce categories listed above they only account for approximately 45% of the market. Consumers are more likely to choose to patronise local fruit & vegetable retailers, butchers, bakeries and delicatessens for such items.

Data also suggests that 38% of consumers buy groceries once a week, with an additional 21% shopping twice a week. On the other end of the spectrum, nearly 10% are shopping much less often at only once a fortnight. Less than 14% of the market buy groceries more than twice a week.

As most of us have experienced, the last two years have seen us spending increasingly more time and money shopping online across both grocery and non-grocery. COVID lockdown has seen a whole new group of consumers adopt online shopping for its convenience with a 46% growth in online grocery sales. Whilst this growth rate may taper in the immediate post-lockdown world, the broader shift to online will continue to accelerate.

Our research shows that 70% of small independent local operators offer no meaningful on-line and home delivery option for their customers. It either doesn’t stack up financially or they don’t have the time, capability or resources.

For more information please see section 2.5 of the Offer Document.

Community is at the core of everything we do. We are establishing a vibrant network of local vendors who produce and procure incredible local food. We are building our Bundlfresh crew who share and reflect our values. And we serve wonderful customers who love what we do and why we do it! We therefore chose to raise funds through equity crowdfunding to give our team, customers and vendors - our community, a chance to participate in this journey. 

Having our community as co-owners is a perfect way to share the value we are creating as we strengthen and support local food vendors across the country.