HomeCooks, a meal-prep marketplace, has raised £1.4m in funding from PXN Ventures, Love Ventures, Speedinvest and several angel investors. The funding will be used to accelerate its retail expansion and growth across the UK.
HomeCooks operates a meal-prep marketplace connecting health-conscious consumers with homemade dishes prepared by independent chefs. Customers sign up to a weekly meal plan, partner chefs batch cook meals such as Grilled Chicken Teriyaki or Lean Mean Lasagna, and HomeCooks delivers them. The model centres independent chefs while offering consumers a wide range of global cuisine.
The meal-prep market has expanded significantly in recent years, with HomeCooks now serving more than 60k regular users. The sector remains dominated by brands using centralised kitchens to produce limited menus, which HomeCooks aims to address with its marketplace approach.
Founded by Josh Magidson in 2020, HomeCooks follows previous successes including Eatstudent, which was acquired by Just Eat, and Zing Zing, which grew into the UK’s largest Chinese food delivery chain.
The company plans to use the funding to form new partnerships with supermarkets, having recently launched products in ten Co-op stores across Lincolnshire. This builds on existing retail partnerships with Budgens, farm shops and independent retailers and forms part of a broader strategy to scale across the North of the UK through local chef partnerships.
