Bundlfresh wins BBIP

Congratulations to Matt Russell and Dan Palmer from Bundlfresh for their win in the Boosting Business Innovation Program.

They have been named the local innovation district winner of challenge 2, focussed on Economic Recovery, launching an economic resilience solution that reduces the impact of COVID-19 on the people of NSW.

Both founders were able to bring their own set of skills to create this successful start-up.

The company was founded after Matt, who owns a seafood business with his wife, couldn’t provide low-cost home delivery. When realising he was not the only small, local enterprise struggling with this issue, Bundlfresh was born. 12-months after launching, Matt knew he needed the input and support of a partner. “If you can find a co-founder that’s aligned on the mission, it’s a much easier burden to bear. The whole experience has been, not only more rewarding, but also much better balanced on a whole range of personal and professional levels. To share the wins and the struggles is much more sustainable with a partner by your side.” That is when Dan came into the picture. Together they help local, fresh food businesses, for who online ordering and home delivery is too costly and complicated to provide. They’re growing a network of local businesses and providing the link straight to the customer’s doorstep.

They currently operate in the Northern Beaches, but thanks to their BBIP grant funding, they’ll be able to grow, investing more in business development, technology and e-commerce, which will help the company expand to larger areas in Sydney before going national. “The selling of bundles is just the starting point of revenue models for us,” says Matt. “The key thing for us is to continue to build out the technology and that takes priority over customer acquisition right now. We’re striving to get a real competitive advantage in in what has become a very competitive space of food and meal delivery solutions.”

The Boosting Business Innovation Program is an initiative by the NSW government that invests in small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs) and supports collaboration between business communities and NSW research organisations. SMEs in New South Wales currently represent around 33.2% of the Australian total and make a significant contribution to our economy.

When asked what the biggest lesson was when launching the start-up: “You’ve got to come into it with your eyes wide open. Nothing worth doing that’s really going to make a difference happens easily. There’s a huge amount of work and a huge amount of investment physically, mentally, and financially”.

At the Incubator we are thrilled to hear success stories of start-ups that we’ve had the pleasure of helping when it mattered. We could not be prouder of the Bundlfresh team and all they have accomplished, and we’ll continue to support them any way we can. “The Incubator is a physical space, but a lot of the value is beyond just a desk,” says Matt, “it continues to be a rich vein of both leads and reference material and network connections and the ability to be able to tap into the relevant resources at the relevant times has a positive balance for us and we’ve been able to benchmark different things at different times.”