Ex-bankers have a taste for success

chain. It will help us scale the company.”

That process to prepare ready-to-cook meal kits starts with Goodfood’s inhouse chefs who each week prepare a series of recipes. The ingredients — the vegetables and/or meats, fish and spices — are put in a box, and then shipped out from its Montreal distribution centre.

“We represent a large portion of our members’ weekly grocery bill,” said Ferrari, when noting that members join, and pay $65 to $150 for four weekday dinners. (There are no deliveries on Wednesday.)

The two are a “good fit,” Ferrari says, because “we understand how business can be a force for good in the communities they serve.”

As part of the investment, Goodfood will now donate one meal to a child in need for each food box purchased. It expects to deliver 75,000 meals this year.

When Ferrari and Cuggy became partners almost three-and-a-half years back, the plan was to create a search fund, a form of organization that had been popular in the U.S. for many years, but relatively new in Canada.

Their fund was known as MTL Capital and the idea was to raise enough capital from institutional investors — enough to keep the lights on — while the two searched for a target.

Once the target was identified, the search fund with the help of the institutional backers, which provided the necessary capital, would make the acquisition and the individuals would then run it.

Ferrari and Cuggy tried that approach but switched gears because the terms of making an acquisition became too great. So they repaid what was left to the original backers and started Goodfood. “We got to know the food space, uncovered some interesting opportunities, but realized if we wanted to be disruptive in the grocery industry, we had to start from scratch.”

In Ferrari’s view, basing a business on meals being cooked at home (with supplied ingredients) rather than elsewhere and then delivered, makes sense because there are similar economics (the so-called price points are the same) but consumers perceive a difference.

“Society has never been more focused than it is today on food,” he said. “You need to have a passion for food and technology,” says former investment banker-turned-entrepreneur Jonathan Ferrari of Goodfood, which provides the ingredients — and the recipes — for individuals or families to cook at home.