Andy Murray helped a healthy eating startup that delivers food to the Beckhams to raise £1 million

Victoria and David Beckham
Victoria and David Beckham

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Food delivery service Mindful Chef has raised £1 million in crowdfunding on the Seedrs platform with help from sports stars including Wimbledon champion Andy Murray, Olympian gold medallist Victoria Pendleton, and rugby world cup winner Will Greenwood.

The company, which delivers food to the Beckham family and a number of sports stars, was initially looking to raise £400,000 but it was forced to end the one-month campaign after just 12 days due to overwhelming demand.

Launched in 2015, Mindful Chef delivers gluten-free, organic produce with no refined carbohydrates. Customers choose the recipes and Mindful Chef sources the ingredients before delivering them to people's homes for them to cook.

"We are delighted to have overfunded in such a short period of time," said Giles Humphries, cofounder at Mindful Chef, in a statement. "The demand has been phenomenal; this is huge validation of the business and has left the whole team energised about what the future holds. We are looking forward to bringing healthy eating to thousands more households across the UK."

Mindful Chef, which is competing with the likes of Hello Fresh, Gousto, and Amazon Fresh, said it plans to use the funding to increase marketing spend and build a mobile app.

The startup touted numbers from US analyst firm Technomic that suggest recipe boxes could eventually account for up to $5 billion (£3.7 billion) of the $1.2 trillion (£911 billion) grocery and restaurant market.

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