A family-owned business that focuses on healthy and sustainable high-end frozen meals is seeking investment to expand its presence in the billion-pound ready meal market.
Berkshire-based The Transformation Chef, which produces a range of over 30 “premium restaurant standard” ready meals, is setting up a seed investment round to scale up its operations.
The company’s products, which are available for delivery throughout mainland UK, are gluten, dairy and refined sugar-free. All of the lines are produced by hand at The Transformation Chef’s kitchen in West Berkshire and packaged in “fully sustainable” and recyclable materials.
The Transformation Chef was originally founded by husband-and-wife duo Rachel and Chris Connor in 2018. It counts former Tesco and Boots buying manager Karen Green, former senior commercial manager at Virgin Media Alexis Liming, and tech entrepreneur Linden Holliday as members of its leadership team.
Now, the small business is looking to raise a minimum of £125,000 in a crowdfunding campaign to ramp up operations – with the funding set to go towards new frozen storage space and packaging capability, as well as additional marketing and brand-building activities.
Read more: Ready meals 2021: Brits demand ‘restaurant quality’
Co-founder Chris Connor said: “The UK ready and frozen meal market is huge and now experiencing further post-Covid growth, so we feel this is the perfect time to take The Transformation Chef to a higher level.
“The crowdfunding round will help us scale the business and increase our presence in the market by supporting investment in additional equipment, marketing activities and staff.
“It also provides an opportunity for anyone who shares our values to join our journey to build a high quality, healthy food brand which is fully committed to sustainability across all of its operations.”
Other environmentally conscious initiatives that are part of the company’s operations include procuring food and ingredients directly from source, directing food waste towards sustainable energy projects, and carbon offsetting all of its delivery miles.
The Transformation Chef, which hopes to increase its current team to 16 members over the next year, expects sales to rise to £1.5m next year, and to nearly £5m per year by 2023/24.
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