Written by Alex Bredeen
Fuel Ventures invest £3 million in Peckwater Brands
We are absolutely thrilled to announce that Peckwater Brands have raised a £3 million seed round. Peckwater Brands has grown very quickly with 20% month-on-month over the past year. It will also be expanding its operations into the US and plans to set up a base in Australia and New Zealand as it grows at pace.
What is Peckwater Brands?
Peckwater Brands offers delivery franchises to kitchen operators. The startup helps neighbourhood restaurants to sell virtual food brands on delivery platforms from their existing kitchens and top up their revenues.
Peckwater Brands work alongside existing brands, providing kitchen operators with fully-serviced food concepts. This includes branding, platform listings, suppliers, recipes, packaging, staff training, and technology. This allows them to diversify revenue streams and generate extra value from their kitchen and staff. You run the kitchen, we do the rest.
Who are the team?
Friends Leo, 32, and Sam, 32, met while studying for a BA in Geography at the University of Oxford (2008-11).
Sam was previously UK&I General Manager at Karma Kitchen (the $252mill funded dark kitchen operator), after he left his previous role as Head of Innovation at Uber Eats UK&I (also previously Head of Commercial Operations and Emerging Channels).
Leo was previously Associate Director at Fairgrove Partners, providing transaction support and growth strategy for private equity firms and their portfolio companies, and Head of Strategy and Insight at Ingenuity, a specialist consultancy to the marketing industry.
Peckwater currently has a mix of owned and licensed brands spanning several categories including chicken (Seoul Chikin, Flip the Bird, Wham Bam Wings, Katsu), burgers (Dukes, Proper Tasty) and a shared brand with Unilever (a vegan offer called Ding Dog which uses Unilever’s ‘Vegetarian Butcher’ product range). Other brands are Chicken Sees A Salad and Say Queso. All are available to restaurants in the UK and the US, and are sold on delivery platforms including Deliveroo, UberEats and Just Eat.
Leo Bradshaw, co-founder and CEO, said:
“The hospitality industry is ripe for disruption — Peckwater Brands combines great food with technology to revolutionise our partners’ food delivery offer.
“Our brands get us through the door, but what we gain is exclusive access to a small business owner — our technology then sits at the heart of their business, and from there we can service all their future needs, from waste management to working capital.
“The revenue that we deliver for our partners is transformational for their businesses. Our partners are earning enough to open new sites and expand their operations.”
Sam Martin, co-founder and COO, said:
“Our aim is to be bigger than Domino’s, but if we’ve done our jobs right you’ll never have heard of us.
“We don’t believe that dark kitchens are the future of the food industry. The virtual brand model is superior in all the ways that matter: lower investment for partners, better for local high-streets and communities, and easier to scale.
“Dark kitchens give food delivery a bad name - we’re hoping that through our virtual brands we can restore consumers’ confidence in food delivery.
“When you’re running a virtual brand you have to put twice as much effort into creating a high-quality, respectable product — the real test is whether consumers trust our brands and re-order from them. You can’t make this model work if you’re endlessly re-branding to hide a bad product.”
Mark Pearson, managing partner at Fuel Ventures, said:
“We've seen huge growth in the food delivery market, and are excited by Peckwater’s approach which brings technology and scalability to the space. We’re pleased to be backing a strong management team that shares our level of ambition.”
In the coming year it is set to hire for additional roles across their sales, operations, and brand development functions as it continues to disrupt the food-for-now and food delivery space