Global restaurant meal kit business rakes in over $10 million in just two years
The COVID-19 pandemic didn’t create too many business opportunities, but for Melbourne brothers Ben and Charlie Carrington it was the seed for a multi-million-dollar business.
The brothers who run the successful Atlas Dining restaurant in South Yarra, a restaurant that offers a rotating menu inspired by a global cuisine each season, launched their new business just two days after Victoria’s first Covid lockdown was announced.
When the first lockdown was announced, Atlas Masterclass, a food delivery service, based on their restaurant’s rotating cuisines was created.
Atlas Masterclass provides ingredients and instructions packed into a box and delivered to the customer’s door.
When it first began the Carringtons wanted to keep the restaurant’s global theme alive and put a call out on Instagram to see if anyone would be interested in weekly cooking classes.
The idea was to provide a meal kit and demonstrate how to prepare a dish.
This would not only allow people to experience Atlas Dining’s menu, but also give them the opportunity to create restaurant quality meals themselves.
Atlas Masterclass was the first local food box delivery service in Victoria.
In the first week, the brothers had delivered 330 meal kits and in the two years since, have raked in a whopping $10 million in revenue.
In just four weeks, they outgrew their kitchen, increased staff from 10 to 75 people and had to move operations to a bigger location.
Fears they wouldn’t be able to pay staff or keep afloat soon dissipated.
“We would send people the ingredients and three nights a week I would be on Instagram live cooking with people at home,” Ben told news.com.au.
“It was a really amazing way to build a community.
“When there is a COVID lockdown and when people have stacks of time, it works brilliantly, especially at that time when a lot of people felt very lonely and had no connection with the community.
“We would have 500 or 600 people watching Instagram lives and people talking between themselves in comments.”
With the quick success of the Victorian operation, it didn’t take long before the brothers were then able to expand to NSW and the ACT, with Ben moving to Sydney.
After a year, they did away with the online videos to provide recipes with the meal kits.
Their food delivery business has now been operating for just short of two years and is now valued at more than $7 million.
“The last two years have been tumultuous for the Australian dining scene,” head chef and co-founder Charlie Carrington said.
“But for us it has been exhilarating as we navigate how to nail an online brand and attract some of Australia’s best chefs and food enthusiasts.”
In August 2021, Atlas Masterclass had its highest sales day when the team made $101,000 in a single 24-hour period.
They even experienced some months with $1 million in turnover.
The Atlas team is expanding and has rebranded to Atlas Weekly, which will offer subscription-based meal plans.
Irit Jackson, 7th March 2022
