Databricks delivers on Gousto growth plans

London, September 30, 2020: Databricks, the data and AI company, today announced that it is helping Gousto deliver on its strategic goal of maiden profitability in 2020. Additionally, the partnership provides the foundation for tripling capacity and adding 1000 jobs by 2022 whilst ensuring the business operates with 0% food waste.

Gousto has developed proprietary algorithms that optimise the speed of box packing, maximising pick accuracy and minimising food waste. The algorithms run across the more than 50 weekly recipes that offer customers choices; from Joe Wicks Lean in 15 and family classics to an expanding range of meat-free plant-based options.

Gousto has established a market-leading position in the UK recipe box market by utilising data and technology to deliver quality and choice directly to our customers. By working with Databricks they are able to move our technology platform up a gear to further propel our growth - offering next day delivery and individual meal customisation.

“Databricks is more than just a data-pipeline. It’s a platform that brings data engineering, data analytics and data science closer together, with a huge potential to make our journey to data strategy more efficient and collaborative. We have reduced the time it takes to develop new ideas from days to minutes and increased the availability and accuracy of our data to all the teams.” commented Shaun Pearce, CTO at Gousto.

Gousto has moved from daily batch updates to near-real-time streaming data, utilising AutoLoader and Delta Lake. The robust and scalable Data Platform provided by Databricks enabled Gousto to respond to the explosion of demand at the start of lockdown and by exceeding customer expectation to maintain record sales even with the progressive easing of lockdown restrictions.

“We are on a mission to help organisations solve the toughest problems. Gousto was already at an advanced stage with their analytics and they had a clear vision of the path ahead. Together we have been able to build a cost-efficient data platform that can deliver their goals today and also set them up for the next phase of their growth, all fuelled by data-driven decisions.” said David Wyatt, SVP EMEA, Databricks.

Source: Nielsen data for the four weeks to 16 May for 2019 and 2020

About Databricks

Databricks is the data and AI company. Thousands of organizations worldwide — including Comcast, Condé Nast, Nationwide and H&M — rely on Databricks’ open and unified platform for data engineering, machine learning and analytics. Databricks is venture-backed and headquartered in San Francisco, with offices around the globe. Founded by the original creators of Apache Spark™, Delta Lake and MLflow, Databricks is on a mission to help data teams solve the world’s toughest problems. To learn more, follow Databricks on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

About Gousto

Founded in 2012, Gousto pioneered the recipe box offering in the UK. Conceived whilst working long hours in the finance industry, Founder and CEO Timo Boldt, identified a need for convenient, easy to cook, high quality meals at home, that reduced food waste. Timo realised that the optimal solution required a regular delivery service direct to people’s homes with all of the ingredients provided and already measured out, with easy to follow recipe cards. At the age of 26 Timo quit his job to found Gousto.

Initially funded from his own savings and then followed up with a friends and family round, Gousto has since gone through four funding rounds, raising over £130m from leading investors including Perwyn Private Equity, Canaccord Genuity, Unilever Ventures, BGF, MMC Ventures and Joe Wicks – who in addition to being an investor and brand ambassador, also has his own Joe Wicks ‘Lean in 15’ range of recipes on the Gousto site.

Gousto has achieved rapid growth with sales increasing six fold between 2016 and 2019. Gousto’s financial success has been recognised in the Sunday Times Tech Track 100 ranking of Britain’s fastest growing private companies in both 2018 and 2019. In 2020, Gousto was ranked 257 in the FTs list of Europe's 1,000 fastest growing Companies.

Gousto’s differentiation to peers lies in its over 100 strong tech team and its focus on data and artificial intelligence, which power all its operations including its automated fulfilment centre Spalding, Lincolnshire and enable its market leading customer proposition – the most recipe choice, at the lowest price, delivered in the shortest lead time. Its intelligent use of data has facilitated the creation of the first recipe box recommendation engine – ‘the Spotify for food’.

Press Contact:
Keyana Corliss
Head of Global Communications
[email protected]