Crowdfunding Australia

Bundlfresh

PublicRetail
  • Type: Retail
  • Total Round Size (min): AUD$400,000
  • Total Round Size (max): AUD$1,000,000
  • Price per share: AUD$1

Shop Local - 5 x Easier!  Multiple vendors - one order - one delivery.

Offer Live

Bundlfresh

Bundle produce from multiple local vendors into a single order and delivery.

  • Fees Paid by Issuer
    : 6% of funds raise
  • Cooling-Off Rights
    : 5 working days
  • Minimum Parcel Size
    : $250

Offer Overview

Key Documents

What is Bundlfresh?

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.

"Our purpose from day one was to make online and home delivery accessible to all local businesses and to make shopping local super convenient for customers. We are really proud of what we have created and what we have achieved to date."

Matt Russell, Founder and CEO

Investment Highlights

  1. Immediate Traction, with Recurring Customer Base

    Since May 2019, more than 120,000 vendor orders have been delivered to nearly 3,000 customers. Sales have accelerated over the last 6 months with $850,000 sales during Q1 FY22 (equating to annualised revenue rate of $3.4m). More than 500 customers have ordered at least 15 times with many ordering more than 100 times and spending in excess of $20,000.Recent Christmas sales were up 81.5% and January - February ‘22 MTD sales are up 101% versus last year. With strong customer satisfaction, high retention and ‘word of mouth’ referrals, our  Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) currently sits at $2,825 and our online conversion rate is 18% compared to the industry average of only 3%. With a proven business model we are ready to replicate this growth across Sydney and other major cities.

  2. A Unique Value Proposition for Customers

    Bundlfresh is Australia’s local fresh food delivery platform giving consumers access to bundle any items from all their local vendors into a single order and delivery. Most grocery delivery startups (locally and internationally) are focused on providing a small sample of standard products available at any major grocery store. We focus on enabling access to any combination of interesting, quality local products in a unique and compelling way.

  3. A Massive Underserved Market

    Fresh Produce is a $50Bn market and Independent (non-supermarket retailers) have ~30% share ($15Bn). With online shopping currently around 12% of Grocery sales and with an expectation of this moving to 15%+ over the next few years, we are focussing on a $2Bn market opportunity.

  4. Huge Growth Potential

    The Northern Beaches pilot market has around 100,000 households and nearly 300,000 residents. This market represents only about 1.5% of the total Australian market. Our revenues to date see us with less than 1% share of the Northern Beaches market. We feel that a share of up to 5% is achievable over time. With almost nothing spent on marketing to date we can accelerate the rate we acquire new customers significantly. 

    Translate that Nationally, and this represents a huge runway for growth. Beyond the opportunity of new territories and acquisition of new customers, we also expect to increase our average order value from today’s mid $140s to around $200 per order as we introduce new categories, new vendors and “new to Bundlfresh” product offers.

  5. Intersecting Two "Mega-Trends"

    Bundlfresh’s unique online platform is positioned perfectly to enjoy the tailwinds of consumers seeking the convenience of online shopping (and delivery) and the “support local'' mega trend. COVID lockdown has seen a whole new group of consumers adopt online shopping for its convenience with a 46% growth in online grocery sales.

  6. Delivering Value to Vendors

    Our mission is to make ‘small and local’ a big advantage. Our research shows that 70% of small independent local operators offer no meaningful on-line and home delivery option for their customers.  Online (with delivery) either doesn’t stack up financially or vendors they don’t have the time, capability or resources. And analysis of the vendors that do, shows that their online and home delivery solutions often create significant friction for customers. High minimum order quantities, delivery only available on certain days and/or high delivery fees. Our service enables all local vendors to efficiently, and affordably access and utilise a ‘frictionless’ online digital sales channel, access new customers and allow existing customers to purchase more often.

  7. Proprietary Technology

    For the efficient management of our day to day logistics and to enable us to scale our systems and data management, proprietary technology has been developed in house. Our technology implements standardised operational processes from a centralised technology stack and enables business units to operate independently of each other. Fully automated order placement solutions integrated with vendor order management systems have significantly reduced operational cost and provide the foundation for vendor partners to scale with us. New features, offering greater shopping convenience, repeat purchase and improved User Interface (UI) and Customer Experience (CX) are in continuous development.

  8. Experienced Founders

    Matt previously worked as Warehouse and Distribution Director for ALDI, part of the executive team that launched the German Retailer in Australia, before joining Greens Foods as Supply Chain Director and later Group General Manager. Part of a Management Led Buy-out of Green’s in 2012, Matt was central to the transformation of this Australian Food Manufacturer, including growing revenues from $110m to $240m in a little over 6 years whilst delivering a significant turnaround in profitability. In 2016 an attractive exit was achieved for all shareholders.

    Dan spent 18 years working for Deutsche Bank leading global technology teams responsible for designing and building trade settlement systems, including the Bank’s global FX settlement platform, settling 95% of the Bank’s FX trades and processing over one trillion USD per day. The rollout of this centralised platform across Europe and Asia allowed the Bank to realise cost savings of over EUR 5 million. Dan’s experience in designing and building large scale, high performance technology platforms is a massive advantage to Bundlfresh as it builds out it’s technology infrastructure to support an expanding business.

    Anna is the founder of Prawn Pod, an innovative and successful local seafood business. Her experience as a local food vendor and knowledge of Quality Assurance and Food Safety make her an integral part of this founding team. As a passionate foodie and also a mum with 3 teenage kids, Anna uniquely reflects and understands both our typical Bundlfresh customer and the challenges faced as a local fresh food vendor.

Core Business Model

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.

Growth Strategy

With a validated business model, strong financial performance and a technology and logistics platform ready to scale, 2022 will be a transformative year. To achieve our growth objectives we are focused on strengthening and extending the following pillars of our business.

For more information please see section 2.6 of the Offer Document.

Increased engagement and retention of existing customers

Bundlfresh’s success has largely been built on delivering an exceptional and unique customer experience for nearly 3,000 customers. More than 4850 customers have ordered on at least 15 occasions and 1,000 customers have ordered more than 5 times. 60 customers have already spent over $10,000 on the platform. Retaining and growing this committed customer base is essential.

Currently we have focused on fresh produce and limited grocery, but plan to extend local offers across all dry grocery, alcohol and health and beauty. We expect that by providing interesting and quality local offers in new categories we will logically increase the average size of each bundle. We anticipate an increase from $148 (last 90 day avg.) to greater than $200 by 2024, by making available new vendors, products and categories to bundle. 

We also plan to increase the frequency of purchase. This will be achieved by developing better User Experience (UX), new features and we are investigating the possibilities of Bundlfresh subscriptions or VIP Club options, memberships, special deals and new services. Additionally, we are also confident that as our category and product offer expands, and customers can get more of what they need (from Bundlfresh), they will have less reason to go elsewhere

Geographical expansion and customer acquisition

Our pilot on Sydney’s Northern Beaches is a market covering only 47 suburbs and ~300,000 residents. Our plan over the course of 2022 is to expand into 3 new ‘local areas’ across Sydney, before providing coverage to most of the city by the end of 2023. Initial areas targeted include:

  • Upper North Shore- 120,000 residents 
  • Lower North Shore- 185,000 residents: AND
  • Macquarie Park/Ryde LGAs - 127,000 residents; OR
  • Inner West- 198,000 residents

Following the successful expansion across Sydney, 2024 will see the start of further expansion into other major cities including Melbourne, Brisbane and Canberra with over 20 ‘local business areas’ by 2025.

Vendor acquisition and growth

With each new vendor that is onboarded we acquire (share) some of their existing customers that prefer (and now have the option) for online shopping and home delivery. Approximately 80% of sales are derived from 20% of vendors. These tier 1 and tier 2 local brands drive traffic, convert new customers and increase sales. As we grow and scale to new geographies and within regions, attracting tier 1 and tier 2 local vendors is critical. As part of this raise, funds will be dedicated to increasing our business development team focused on our vendor acquisition strategy.

The smaller, less known local brands are also critically important. The ability to find these ‘local gems’ on our platform is a real point of difference to all other online offers and reinforces our principal mission of making online accessible to all local independent food businesses.

Customer acquisition

Our primary channel for customer acquisition has been through word of mouth referrals. 

With strong customer satisfaction, high retention, our Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) sits at $2,825 and our online conversion rate is 18% compared to the industry average of only 3%. We have achieved our growth with minimal paid marketing activities, with our Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) <$15. Up until the end 2021, only $30k had been spent on paid marketing and nothing on PR. 

We expect that as the impacts of COVID settle over the course of 2022 that our CAC will increase to ~$30. Approximately 25% of the capital raised via this Offer will go towards paid customer acquisition activities (PR, Facebook Ads, Google Ads) and includes a digital marketing gGrowth expert to manage the strategy and execution. Our target is to acquire an additional 3,300 customers over the course of 2022.

Continuously improving the Bundlfresh platform

The ability to scale our technology infrastructure will be central to our growth plans. The architecture of our technology has been designed to support multiple, independently operating business units across a single, centralised technology platform built upon highly scalable and robust cloud-based hardware.

In doing so, we can roll out new business units with minimal additional cost, as we eliminate the need to duplicate software and hardware infrastructure across new units. Ongoing maintenance costs are also significantly reduced through the development and support of a single, centralised platform.

To further enhance this multi-region capability, funding from this raise will be used to develop new features and services within the platform that increase process automation and improve process efficiency for our teams and vendor partners.

Further investment in our site will deliver greater shopping convenience for customers and increase repeat purchase through the introduction of new services such as ‘order-by-text’ and monthly subscriptions.

Truly understanding our customers will also be critical for driving growth. To achieve this we will be investing in data analytics capabilities to identify new behaviours and shopping patterns that can enhance the platform's services.

Improve margins

We expect an improvement in the Gross Margin % as we scale. Currently the margin sits at ~22%. Our target by 2025 is to reach 30%. Improvements will come from two main drivers:

  • Introduction of higher margin dry grocery and alcohol; and
  • White label offers

Both will improve the margin mix within the Bundles and don't rely on adversely adjusting the buying arrangements with local vendors. New dry grocery offers will be at higher margins whilst remaining ‘market price’ competitive. 

White label offers, or in-house brands, will be necessary to provide offers where range gaps can’t be provided by local suppliers. When launching the business we needed to have a full service greengrocer offer so we created the brand ‘Northern Beaches Green Grocer’. This has proved to be hugely successful. Not only is it one of the most popular offers on Bundlfresh, it also delivers margins well in excess of 30% and also allows us to control freshness and quality in an important category. 

In addition, we will work closely with our vendor community to find new ways to create value for all parties. This may include new distribution opportunities for our vendor networks. Opportunities such  as “The best of the Northern Beaches” Hampers.

Marketing Strategy

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.

Market Opportunity

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.

Why Equity Crowdfunding?

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.

Key Team Members

Team Member

Matthew Russell

Co-Founder & CEO

Matt is the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of High Street to My Street Pty Ltd, having started the business in 2019. Matt previously worked as Warehouse and Distribution Director for ALDI, part of the executive team that launched the German Retailer in Australia, before joining Greens Foods as Supply Chain Manager and later Group General Manager.

Team Member

Daniel Palmer

Co-Founder & CTO

Dan is the co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of High Street to My Street Pty Ltd having joined Matt and Anna to launch the business in late 2019.  Dan has 20 years experience in Investment Banking including 18 Years at Deutsche Bank building and designing large scale, global trade settlement platforms based out of their London, New York and Sydney offices.

Team Member

Anna Russell

Co-Founder & General Manager

Anna is a co-founder and General Manager of High Street To My Street and the founder of The Prawn Pod, an innovative and successful local seafood business. Her experience as a local food vendor and knowledge of Quality Assurance and Food Safety make her an integral part to this founding team. As a vendor herself, she provides invaluable insight into how the Bundlfresh platform and service can be optimised to solve the challenges that many small businesses face. She also reflects a typical Bundlfresh customer as a busy working mum, providing a genuine perspective on the customer problems we are solving.

Financial Information

For more information please see Section 2.12 of the Offer Document.

Use of Funds

For more information please see Section 3.2 of the Offer Document.

Key Risks

For more information please see Section 2.14 in the Offer Document.

Expansion Risk

Bundlfresh currently only operates across 47 suburbs across the Northern Beaches of Sydney. As we expand across Sydney in 2022 there are a range of operational risks that are introduced across technology, logistics, delivery and service quality. If these risks are not managed appropriately it could cause brand and reputation damage which may impact future revenue.

Competition Risk

Bundlfresh currently has no direct competition from platforms operating in the same regions. Whilst there is general competition in the last mile grocery delivery sector, Bundlfresh provides a unique value proposition. Nonetheless, competitors could enter the sector which could lead to downwards pressure on margins and impact customer acquisition and retention

Technology Risk

Bundlfresh uses third party cloud based solutions for its online store and vendor management platforms. If these underlying services and platforms fail due to a technical error or unforeseen circumstances this will impact Bundlfresh’s ability to process customer orders and affect customer and vendor confidence.

Macro Risks

Bundlfresh growth has been driven in part by changes in consumer grocery purchasing decisions and the shift online. As the world enters a post-Covid reality, it is possible that growth may slow as individuals return to in-person shopping.