WEALTH September 27, 2025 0 Comments

How Timo Boldt’s Unstoppable Vision at Gousto is Quietly Redefining the Future of Food Delivery—And What It Means for Ambitious Entrepreneurs Everywhere

Ever wondered why despite all the hustle and bustle of modern life, we still crave that perfect home-cooked meal without the endless hassle? Enter Gousto—an audacious disruptor in the UK’s and Northern Ireland’s home-kit meal arena, now boldly stepping onto Irish shores. Led by the visionary Timo Boldt—who swapped the high-octane world of investment banking for the kitchen-table revolution—Gousto isn’t just delivering recipes; it’s redefining convenience without sacrificing taste, health, or budget. With Ireland’s culinary landscape ripe yet relatively untouched by meal kits, Boldt’s ambition to outpace supermarkets and rewire how families eat is nothing short of inspiring. Let’s unpack how this unicorn startup strategizes rapid growth, tackles churn head-on with AI, and aims to transform everyday dinners across the Emerald Isle—all while keeping it affordable and accessible for the masses. Hungry for the full story? LEARN MORE

Gousto is one of the market leaders in home-kit meals in the UK and Northern Ireland. As customers get a taste for their products here, chief executive Timo Boldt talks to George Morahan about the company’s philosophy and ambitions to scale

If you’ve listened to an American podcast in the past several years, you have probably heard adverts for meal kit companies like HelloFresh and Blue Apron, promising time-poor professionals delicious, nutritious meals that are quick and easy to make.

In the UK, the London-headquartered Gousto is one of the market leaders.

Over the past year it started operating in Ireland, launching in Northern Ireland in July 2024 and in the Republic last February.

Research conducted by the firm found that fewer than 60 per cent of Irish consumers are aware of meal kits as a product category, so Ireland as a market is relatively underdeveloped.

Irish people (30 per cent) are also three times more likely than people in Britain (10 per cent) to cook from scratch on a daily basis.

“I think Ireland has a really rich relationship with food and lots of traditions, but whether you live in Germany, the UK, the US or Ireland, families are competitively busy — everyone is running after toddlers, everyone is stressed,” Timo Boldt, cofounder and chief executive of Gousto, tells BusinessPlus.ie.

“I think people are seeking convenience without compromise, and so you don’t want to compromise on taste, budget or health. Forty-five per cent of food in Ireland is ultraprocessed food that takes off life expectancy,” he continues, referencing the findings of a 2017 Journal of Public Health & Nutrition study.

“You want convenience without these kinds of compromises, and that’s what we’re trying to deliver to people.”

Much as Netflix thinks of sleep as its main competitor, Boldt believes Gousto to be more in competition with supermarkets and home cooking than any rival service.

“Most people are cooking every week. Not seven days a week, but Monday to Thursday. Maybe people occasionally get a ready meal or a pizza takeaway or go to a restaurant, but people cook. So fundamentally, the supermarket is the competition,” Boldt says.

“Our simple philosophy is: if we can give you better pricing, faster delivery, better taste, more sustainability, why would you ever go back to supermarkets? We’re trying to make this better and better all the time to win.”

Born and raised in Berlin, Boldt quit his job as a London investment banker to set up Gousto in 2012, aged 26.

The company attained unicorn status in 2022 after securing investment of $150m from SoftBank and was valued at as much as $1.7bn.

However, Boldt acquired shares at a valuation of less than $300m in early 2023 as part of a £50m equity raise, causing upset among smaller shareholders who were cut out of the discounted share sale.

“When economic conditions and funding markets deteriorate quickly as they did in 2022, it is imperative as a management team to act decisively to protect the business for the benefit of all stakeholders,” Boldt says of the situation.

“Our decision to prioritise speed over full shareholder inclusion for what was one of our more modest fund raises secured us the additional investment, which has ultimately underpinned our record financial results for the last two years and our expansion into Ireland.”

Full accounts for 2023 show that Gousto made a trading loss of £71.9m, which was down significantly from a £133.9m loss the previous year.

Again, like Netflix or any number of tech disruptors, Boldt has a nonchalant attitude to mounting losses in pursuit of rapid growth and market saturation.

Sitting in the bustling lobby of the Dublin hotel where he is staying, Boldt says the company has been free cash flow positive for the past two years, which has facilitated its expansion into Ireland, its first market outside the UK.

“We don’t need to raise money. We’ll burn some money in Ireland, no doubt, but within 12-24 months, this becomes profitable.”

By Gousto’s preferred measures, the company is thriving, with adjusted Ebitda of £42m in 2024, up from £26m the previous year. Revenues increased from £309m to £312m, gross margin grew to a record 55 per cent from 53 per cent, and Ebitda margin rose from 8.3 per cent to 13.5 per cent.

Boldt, with his sweep of blonde hair and sandy stubble, is in town to visit the company’s local facilities.

Wearing a green-and-white striped shirt, navy slacks and slip-on shoes, he’s preparing to meet with Gousto’s Irish team afterwards.

The firm has 20 staff in Ireland across marketing, customer services, food safety, grocery retail and supply chain, and Boldt aims to grow those numbers to 40 “pretty quickly”.

In Northern Ireland, Gousto has captured 40 per cent of the market in its first year.

At the time of our interview, the company has been operating in the Republic for less than three months, so it’s “too early to tell” how successful it has been.

But Boldt says that “people seem to love the proposition”.

He is also encouraged by the referral rate, retention rate and net promoter score (NPS), a key performance indicator that measures how likely users are to refer the service to other people.

Success in year one to Boldt would be all Gousto’s key metrics being “green”, i.e. trending positively.

“And then after three, four, five months, it’s scaling. How efficiently can we scale marketing? So for every pound we invest, do we get a pound back in year one? That would determine success.

“After these two phases, you’re then into revenue and bottom line, but we’re still in phase one, getting everything to green. Ninety per cent is now green, so we’re pushing, we’re starting to push marketing.”

In Ireland, Gousto offers about 150 recipes per month (compared to 500 in the UK) under a flexible subscription model with heavy introductory discounts.

The company has also entered into agreements with local farmers and suppliers and has a fulfilment centre on the outskirts of Dublin.

“We can trade the menu quite dynamically, so if suddenly [the price of] beef is inflating, well, let’s show more chicken stir fry dishes,” Boldt says.

“We can balance our margin much more dynamically than a supermarket, which I think has helped us tremendously, and then we have massively advanced the product since [the cost-of-living crisis].”

As Boldt sees it, the average Gousto user is 35 to 55, female, and has young kids. Customers are not clustered in cities, but scattered nationwide.

They don’t need convenience meals on Monday to Thursday, but when they do, they don’t want to compromise on quality, taste or budget.

“Most people buy on a weekly basis, but you have teachers who only ever opt in when there’s a school holiday.

“Or you’ve got some customers, you know, empty nesters. Whenever the kids come back, they order…so people use it differently,” he explains.

“It’s a subscription, but it’s a soft subscription. You can pause it whenever you want. There’s no lock-up.”

Gousto has heavily discounted meal kits to get as many people as possible to sample them and has “seen some churn in the early stages”.

But Boldt sees that once people have tried the service three or four times, “they become incredibly loyal” and spend thousands with the company.

Churn prediction, or anticipating when people are going to cancel, is one of several areas Gousto has invested in artificial intelligence to develop 17 proprietary tools to date.

One of them suggests what the firm’s product development chefs (based in England and Dublin) should cook based on factors such as shelf life, costs and CO2 emissions.

Another was used to optimise factory layout.

Looking ahead, Gousto is ramping up marketing spend and preparing to launch its app and referral programme.

“What’s really important to me is to be for the masses, not the classes,” Boldt says.

“I want to make make this affordable for regular families, everyone. And so we want to be as inclusive as we can be, building a mass market proposition where you get fresh ingredients from local farms at a decent price point.”