Recipe box firm Gousto expects to report first annual profit in 2020
Recipe box company Gousto announced today that it expects to turn a profit for the first time this year due to a surge in demand created by the coronavirus pandemic.
Gousto, which reported an operating loss of £12.5m in 2019, said it expects to announce a “significant, maiden profit” in 2020.
Revenues for the first six months of this year have already surpassed the £83m of sales reported for the whole of 2019 due to the coronavirus lockdown.
Total online sales in the UK are up 115 per cent year on year, with the shift to online deliveries “expected to be permanent”, Gousto said.
At the height of lockdown, which began in March, visits to Gousto’s website were 10 times higher than usual.
This morning Gousto also announced plans this morning to triple its capacity by 2022 as it accelerates its expansion plans.
The meal kit delivery firm will hire an extra 1,000 people across the business by 2022 and is preparing to open three new fulfillment centres.
Gousto founder and chief executive Timo Boldt said: “The UK recipe box market has come of age with the recent lockdown accelerating structural trends which were already firmly underway.
“We have maintained record sales, even with the progressive easing of lockdown restrictions and view this shift as part of a wider permanent redrawing of the grocery landscape.
Overnight our market has opened up to a far larger audience, with new customers won over by the variety of meals, convenience of fresh ingredients delivered directly to your door and the ease of creating a delicious home-cooked dinner.”
In April Gousto announced it had secured £33m in new funding from investors including celebrity fitness coach Joe Wicks.
The funding round was led by Perwyn, BGF, and MMC Ventures and Wicks, taking the total funds raised to more than £130m in the last eight years.