Food has always been a huge part of our life. Pre-lockdown we loved cooking for friends, and then during lockdown Ana started posting her food in Portuguese on Instagram to share with her friends back in Brazil, which became surprisingly popular.
When lockdown began, Ana was working at a large consulting firm, while I was leading on strategy at an EdTech start-up. Like a lot of people, it served as a catalyst for reflecting on what we wanted to do professionally.
For the past few years, we’d been making a big shift in our shopping behaviour to support small businesses wherever possible. But 'shopping small' online was a frustrating process – the existing platforms for discovering great artisans simply passed your order onto each individual vendor, so we would be having to pay for and receive multiple shipments for just one order.
We spoke to a lot of people who, like us, increasingly wanted to shop small, so earlier this year we took the plunge and founded Pantree to allow them to do just that, without having to compromise on convenience.
Pantree hosts a curated selection of all things food & kitchen - from chocolates to negronis, our partner vendors are real people dedicated to producing the very best version of their product. Shoppers can buy from as many of these artisans as they like, and still enjoying speedy delivery to their door in 24-48 hours. This is possible thanks to our unique fulfilment model – customers are purchasing direct from the vendor, but we take care of storage, delivery (which is carbon-neutral) and all aspects of customer service.
We founded Pantree to demonstrate a new, sustainable model for online shopping. We launched in August of this year and have already been joined by many of the UK’s most award-winning, innovative and sustainable artisan businesses such as Farmison, Small Beer and Charlie & Ivy's.
