wefifo

WeFiFo CEO and co-founder Seni Glaister (right) is looking to work with the Waitrose supper club initiative

John Lewis has awarded £200,000 to two startups that will work to improve delivery and host dining experiences at Waitrose.

Logistics company Exaactly and WeFiFo - dubbed the ‘AirBnb of the kitchen table’ - won the funding as part of John Lewis’ annual accelerator programme, Jlab.

John Lewis will provide £100,000 of the funding and the rest will come from L Marks, an innovation specialist that is a partner of the Jlab programme.

The startups will now begin integrating with the John Lewis and Waitrose businesses.

WeFiFo, a site that joins up local dinner party hosts with paying customers, will look to host “dining experiences across John Lewis and Waitrose branches” and offer bespoke events to customers who “share the same love of food”.

The business will also use Exaactly, an online platform that saves detailed delivery instructions and preferences in one place, to improve its delivery service.

During the 12-week trials, Exaactly “successfully” worked with the Waitrose grocery fleet and third-party courier service Yodel, and John Lewis will now look to use the business to “help guarantee first-time customer delivery success”.

Exaactly CEO and co-founder Bea Warner said working with the retailer had helped it make “the final mile of delivery even more straightforward”.

WeFiFo said winning the backing of John Lewis was its “most significant milestone” since founding the company. “We used our time with Jlab to cement strong foundations and we will now build on these as we enlist the help of the partnership in our search for and celebration of the country’s most talented home cooks,” said CEO and co-founder of WeFiFo Seni Glaister.

Jlab is an annual programme to find startups that could be the next disruptors in the industry. This year marked the first time Waitrose got involved in the initiative, which saw more than 300 businesses pitch to a judging panel made up of experts from both John Lewis and Waitrose. The five shortlisted startups spent 12 weeks working in the business before the final two were announced.

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