London based City Pantry was founded by Stuart Sunderland in 2013 to improve the catering options available to companies in London. Its marketplace connects caterers to businesses that need quality food delivered to their offices or to cover events, meetings and regular team meals. The company currently claims to service more than 1,000 monthly corporate customers per month. The acquisition is designed to enable consumer-focused Just Eat to expand into the UK corporate catering market by leveraging City Pantry’s brand and technology.
Newable’s Scale Up Fund 1 and other Newable private investors participated in a £1.8m funding round in January 2018. Alongside this investment, Newable has provided office space facilities to the company. Since this investment was made, City Pantry has grown its customer base, turnover and team substantially. Just Eat has acquired the company for an initial cash consideration of £16m.
Stuart Sunderland, CEO and founder, City Pantry
Today’s acquisition by a FTSE 100 listed company is testament to the belief, dedication and hard work of the entire City Pantry team and supporters over the years. I am very grateful to all the investors that have backed the business since its inception.
Michael Walsh, Newable Ventures Managing Director, comments, “we have been very impressed with City Pantry’s growth over the past 18 months. The company has been very focused on creating a highly disruptive corporate catering marketplace and this has made it such an attractive acquisition opportunity for Just Eat. I am delighted that our investors, including our Scale Up Fund 1, have been able to actively support the company and benefit from a successful exit. Whilst the exit has been made within 3 years and may have an impact on EIS relief available to investors, it is a very good example of how liquidity events can happen relatively quickly in the early stage investment space.”
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