Making healthy eating easy for everyone

Participant Food-tech accelerator programme, Just Eat
GBP 200,000 Raised via CrowdCube

Nutrifix

Anyone who’s lived in London knows very well that the city is home to an eclectic food scene that reflects its multicultural social fabric. On the flip side, more than half of London’s adult population is classed as overweight or obese. Even the Mayor of London points out that many Londoners, especially those working late or on the night shift, still find it incredibly hard to find healthy meals that suit their individual nutrition needs. 

Enter Nutrifix, a one-man startup founded by Londoner Joel Burgess, with the mission of providing users with suitable meal recommendations from restaurants in their vicinity. The idea sounds simple enough: Users provide some basic information about themselves at sign-up, and the app uses this information to recommend nearby restaurants which serve food that matches the user’s nutrition requirements.

But there was one problem. As a lone founder, Burgess lacked the technical skills necessary to build an MVP, let alone a fully-fledged app. 

Nutrifix
Nutrifix
“Calcey have been a revelation for our company. Their technical expertise is unquestionable, plus they look to go deeper than the tech and understand the business and its demands and challenges. They are great to work with and I would have no hesitation to recommend them to anyone else looking for a full stack development team.”
Joel Burgess
Founder & CEO
Asela Mahatma Arachchi
“Here at Calcey, we are big fans of Scalable MVPs. It’s a philosophy that allows for quick development and easy scalability, and forces developers to follow best practices from the get-go. Even with Nutrifix, that is why it was so easy for us to ship version two as a fully fledged app with premium features. Looking back, I don’t think we ever had any major technical issues, which is great!”
Asela Mahathma Arachchi
Vice President – Product Engineering

An MVP matures into an app

Ever the resourceful entrepreneur, Burgess had already put together a database that contained the nutrition data of all dishes sold by a number of major restaurant chains in London. All that was left to do was to build an MVP. But, as efforts to work with a team of freelancers in the UK yielded nothing but frustration for Burgess, we stepped in to help after being introduced through a mutual friend.

With MVP in hand, Nutrifix gained acceptance into Just Eat’s first food tech accelerator programme, and went on to raise nearly £200K on Crowdcube. This early success also helped the startup get noticed by popular media outlets such as ForbesWomen’s HealthThe Investment Observer, and the EliteBusiness magazine

From B2C to B2B

Nutrifix is now attempting to parlay its success in the consumer space into the corporate sector, by providing companies with a virtual staff canteen. Through it, employees will be provided a personalised weekly meal plan from local restaurants, which they can then order for collection or delivery. Progress thus far has been very encouraging, and Nutrifix is well on its way to become a major player in the UK’s £28 billion convenience food market.

Nutrifix