When I get asked about my ‘typical day’ I often sigh, as there really is no such thing. Constantly on the go, the common denominator is that I am always time poor and more than likely eating out and on the go. I’ve been known to walk and talk down Regent’s Street with a salad in hand or stream through tube stops shovelling a spoonfuls of Hawaiian poke into my mouth. With eating out as the rule not the exception, with every-growing frequency I try to look to healthily and a new app called Nutrifix has precisely the same idea. Users enter their personal nutrition needs and goals at the outset (low sugar, high protein etc) and then the app presents the best meal choice at each high street chain you frequent. Since it’s inception, the app has gone from strength to strength. In November 2016, Nutrifix was one of the first start-ups to join the Just Eat Food Tech Accelerator programme, which saw Just Eat commit a £20,000 investment into the business as well as a 10-week intensive mentoring scheme. Next, in March 2017, the team launched a crowdfunding round on Crowdcube, which raised £200,000. Fast-forward to mid 2018, and Nutrifix now has over 5,000 users and has acquired data for almost 5,000 meals from over 9,000 locations and 90 vendors. We caught up with the app’s young founder Joel Burgess to understand how he got here and where he plans to take the app.
1. For those who haven’t used the app – what are the metrics you use to determine/define your client’s goals from the outset?
To allow the app to make personalised meal recommendations, we ask how active a user is, their fitness goals, any dietary preferences and their physical information (height, weight and age). Using this information, we apply an algorithm to score every meal according to how closely it hits the user’s daily targets, as well as how much sugar, fibre and saturated fat it contains. The higher the Nutrifix score, the better!
2. Working with so many restaurants and “fast food” chains across London, what are the trends you’re noticing in menus and client shopping habits?
The trend for eating out and on the go is increasing, and restaurants are embracing consumers’ demands to keep up. We believe that the majority of people want to eat healthier when they eat out on an average day. That being said, there seems to be a lot of confusion and frustration concerning healthy eating, and consumers increasingly want to know the nutritional information of the food they eat so that they can make informed decisions for themselves. Vendors that enable this will fare well. Forty percent of our users have a dietary preference, with dairy-free and gluten-free being the most common. However, from user interviews we have noticed that most people who purchase free-from food do so for the perceived health benefits, rather than actual allergies. We believe this trend for flexible dieting will increase, and restaurants that provide variety and options for personalisation will thrive.
3. What is your ambition for the app?
Our mission is to provide full transparency of what’s in high street food, and to help the nation eat healthily. We are not here to dictate whether or not someone should eat the odd slice of cake. What’s important is that people should know what they’re eating, so they can make informed decisions.
Looking forward, Nutrifix hits three growing trends: personal nutrition, wellness, and eating out. The growth in the wellness and convenience food sector will drive demand. However, it is up to our product innovation to make personalised nutrition a reality and to consistently deliver a WOW experience so we become an everyday essential for people wanting to live a healthier life. We are particularly excited about the improvements in tracking and the affordability of DNA testing, which will put Nutrifix in a unique position to make highly personalised nutrition a reality.
4. In a saturated marketplace, what does this app offer that wasn’t already readily available?
There is nothing in the market like Nutrifix, as current nutrition apps are either retrospective or require hours of planning, which when living a busy hectic life, can be difficult or impossible. Nutrifix is designed to be quick and easy, and comes at the perfect time when there is a growing trend for eating on the go. Nutrifix allows you to know, instantly, what’s the healthiest thing on the menu to match your nutritional needs in thousands of locations. And we think that’s pretty groundbreaking in itself. It empowers users to make healthy and informed decisions wherever they are, and whatever they fancy to eat. Plus with our partnership with Deliveroo, our users can even have their meal delivered.
5. How did you get the idea for Nutrifix and how has the concept changed from your original idea to what we see now in the marketplace?
I started Nutrifix to “scratch my own itch”. I was a fit and healthy teenager; I loved sports, particularly rugby. I even managed to get paid for it, but as I moved into my twenties injuries put an end to my professional sporting ambitions. By that time I was working for a property company in London, scoping locations for restaurants across London. It was fun, but I was always on the move, with little time to make my own food. With that came a little more extra weight, and before I knew it I was 30 years old and no longer the fit and healthy person I’d always been!
I tried to follow numerous diets, with limited success. I was constantly eating on the go, with minimal time to read labels, and struggled knowing what to eat. So I put together a detailed list of the best things to eat when out and about. What to order at Pret, Wagamamas, Eat… they were all there: thousands of meals, rated according to what was best for my nutritional needs. People then started paying me to do nutritional lists for them! That’s when the seeds of Nutrifix were sewn: what if I turned the list into an app, that anyone could access on the go, to help them find healthy food tailored to their nutritional needs. The idea quickly became a mission. Fast forward one year, and Nutrifix was born; from my scrappy list, to a fully formed app loaded with nutritional data, able to empower thousands of people to eat healthier.
6. What insights did you gain from the Just Eat mentoring scheme?
The Just Eat incubator was invaluable to us. At the point of starting the scheme, we were building our beta app and trying to solve every problem under the bracket of healthy eating. Just Eat introduced us to the ‘lean startup’ approach of build, measure and learn. This forced us to launch our product earlier than planned, and subsequently allowed us to understand and narrow our value proposition far sooner than had we not.
7. Talk me through a typical day, what time do you get up? Is it mostly in meetings? Developing the tech? How closely do you work with your restaurant partners?
No two days are the same as an early stage startup founder. But I always start my day the same – in the gym. For me it’s the only time I have to escape the world and the only time I am not thinking about Nutrifix. Exercising before checking emails or my mobile allows me to start the day with a clear head. In the early stages of Nutrifix, I worked on every part of the business – running our social media, marketing, product development and meeting and speaking with all our restaurant partners. However, on the back of a recent fundraise, we have recruited a head of marketing, a marketing executive and a business development and sales manager. This has meant I now focus much more on the product and exploring partnership opportunities, as well as ensuring everyone is aligned with my vision. As the number of users continues to grow, I expect to work more and more with restaurants because our data will become increasingly valuable and our insights will allow our partners to tailor their menus according to our user trends – resulting in a healthier high street.
8. How many users are signed up now? What about restaurants? What’s your ambition for those numbers?
At the time of writing, we are just five days into our launch and we already have over 1,000 active users. Our ambition is for 50,000 monthly active users by the end of 2018. We have recruited over 90 restaurants on to the app, giving us coverage of over 10,000 outlets in the UK. Our focus for 2018 will be London and we want to double that number. Once we have proved the concept, we will expect to launch internationally, focussing on busy cities with a booming health industry, such as New York and Sydney.
