Robin Ferris, CEO and founder
I could never have imagined, when I started out a rudimentary food collection point with some friends in 2018, that Bankuet would become the force it is now.
At the time, I was working in a tech startup and reading bleak news articles about more people being in poverty and struggling to get food. After a period of inefficiently bringing food from the local Co-op Hackney to my flat for sorting, I had a lightbulb moment.
“Why isn’t there an online food bank - something that gets products to food banks and makes it easy for people to donate?”
I had worked in the entertainment industry, and seen record companies and film companies reshaped entirely by consumer technology. I wondered why, when there’s a tool to make every other part of life easier, there wasn’t something to make food bank donations simpler. What is it, after all, but a variation on online shopping?
So I set about trying to make the act of giving more efficient. I was nervous at first - all my friends were settling down - but I haven’t really had time to stop and think since.
I started 2019 on a social impact accelerator programme and by July, I was headed to the first pilot.
It was basic. We went shopping, armed with a food bank’s shopping list and funds from donations. The list was crucial because all those stories you hear about them having too much pasta and baked beans are true. Some have got three years’ worth of pasta, but no baby food or tampons.
The aim of the pilot was just to test whether it could work. We had members of the public who might be savvy on Snapchat and use Uber without thinking twice, but might not know what a food bank needs. Could we connect them to food banks that have traditionally relied purely on the time and physical efforts of volunteers?
It worked and the Bankuet bundle, which was added to the pilot at the last minute, was a hit. By the end of the year, 95% of our donations came via the Bundle.
We started out with one food bank in Wandsworth and by the end of the year, we had 10 on board and we’d shipped more than 15,000 items. What started out as my mates and I physically taking products to food banks had turned into online shopping orders, supported by the logistics networks of the big supermarkets.
Then 2020 and the coronavirus came along and everything sped up in a way I could not have imagined. Donations in March were up by more than 5000%. On one day, we had more donations than we did for the entire month of December.
People have been very generous and it has been overwhelming. It’s been equally incredible having over 100 kind volunteers step forward to help us.
Covid-19 created some difficulties, but we’ve been able to stick to our plan, just going at a much faster pace. We can now leverage the economies of scale offered by wholesalers, and work with many more organisations to make sure food banks maximise efficiency and minimise waste.
Last year, I thought that if there was an emergency like Grenfell, we would be set up to help - but years down the line. I never imagined that mere months later, we would be in the eye of the storm, feeding thousands of people a month.
It’s testament to the generosity of our donors that we’ve been able to continue doing what we originally set out to do, even heading into this at a million miles an hour.
Looking for ways to help?
Bankuet helps get food banks what they need, when they need it.