Three years ago the co-founders of My Muscle Chef decided to pivot from a food business to a food tech business, a move which saw the business grow to a revenue rate of $200 million.
But back in 2013, the idea for My Muscle Chef started with a pretty straightforward goal, Nishant Menon, who co-founded the business with his brother Tushar Menon, explains.
“I liked going to the gym, I need good nutrition, so I’m going to target high protein meals to everyone who goes to the gym,” he says.
In 2019, the My Muscle Chef team spent around 12 months re-platforming the data and technology layer of the business. Menon says this enabled the business to get a clearer picture of the wants and needs of the customers. And in doing so, that simple founding goal started to change.
“A lot of our customers had goals in terms of achievements — getting personal bests at the gym, or sticking to a diet,” Menon says.
“But their main goal was convenience. Product quality is a given.”
Menon and the team realised it wasn’t just gym junkies and macro counters who want easy, convenient, nutritious meals, lots of other people do too.
“When we started collecting that data, it was more about, why are our customers buying our meals, why is this working for you,” he says.
“It could be anything from going to the gym, feeling better, feeling healthier, or just not wanting to run to Maccas because you were too busy at work and couldn’t organise a meal.”
It was an insight which drove a decision to diversify its product offerings over the next few years. Today, its products don’t just include high protein lunch and dinner ready meals, but protein shakes, snacks like muffins and cookies, and vegan meals.
Menon says ultimately the decision to focus on its data platform, MongoDB, and subsequent diversification strategy, helped My Muscle Chef maintain its growth. By using customer data, the team can see which type of product is popular among a certain type of user, allowing them to then target and upsell to other similar users.
The new strategy has seen My Muscle Chef grow its revenue from $27 million in 2019 to a revenue rate of $200 million today, and the business says repeat customer orders are up 49% year-on-year.
My Muscle Chef co-founder and CTO Nishant Menon. Source: supplied.
The data shift
Menon says this shift in focus allowed My Muscle Chef to scale horizontally, and support the rapid growth the business experienced.
“The investment we made in how we handle data, and the technologies that we use to handle that data, has helped us be nimble in that market.
“I don’t want to say things like invaluable, but it underpins the growth that we see today. We’re now looking at building a new facility, two or three times the size of the facility we have today, doubling down on our investment in Western Sydney.
“The reason we can do all of that, and support not only our growth but the community, is because of the platforms we used, and the diversification strategy that we underwent.”
He says the experience has really underlined to him why it’s important for founders to constantly review the technology and platforms their businesses are built on.
“Look day one, you might not have all the expertise. But it’s very important to keep reviewing that over time. Because it is the difference between shit hitting the fan and then; all of a sudden you can’t take any more orders, or thanking god you have this platform, because everything is handled on its own.”
My Muscle Chef’s chief customer officer Nick Love, who joined the organisation in that role about a year ago, set about understanding the needs of its customers.
He says founders who want to do the same for their business should pull together the following:
- Sales data and customer behaviour;
- Customer opinions via surveys or similar; and
- Insights that you’ve learnt over the course of your organisation’s life.
“We found that for our customers the two main motivators are either to support an outcome, like wanting to put on muscle or lose weight, or convenience,” he says.
“We know that by looking at customer behaviour, talking to customers, making some educated guesses, and by looking at the data.
“And by really understanding the need states of the customer, and overlaying it with where we have permission to play as a brand. The way our brand has broadened, it’s given us permission and authority in what we call total-self fitness.”
It has given the business a neat articulation of the products they offer — convenient, high quality, high protein nutrition. Knowing what motivates its customers doesn’t just shape product offerings, but retail distribution strategy too. In addition to its online plans where you can buy up to 21 meals for a 7 days period, you can now buy its single products in supermarkets and service stations.
“We knew that there’s still a convenience need, even for online customers, who might only want a couple of meals because they’ve run out, or a snack,” Love says.
“And the data we see is significant cross shop from online customers who top up in retail.”
Crossing the bridge
Both Menon and Love laugh when they describe My Muscle Chef as just venturing out onto “the bridge over the valley of death between startup land and scaleup land”.
They agree that to successfully make it across this bridge, founders must learn to let go of some responsibilities, and communicate values in a way that empowers their team.
“If you want to succeed and cross that valley and really get to that next stage, you have to let go,” Menon says.
“When we started, at the very beginning, we did everything from packing a meal to delivering it. We drove three hours to deliver one box because it was destroyed (in the mail). That’s great when you start. But when you move from 10 employees in a room to 300, it doesn’t work that way, and it can’t happen physically.
“As the team grows, communication and values being communicated often are probably the number one things founders should focus on.”
Love notes that every startup founder will have a vision and values, but being able to articulate those values to your employees as you grow, can make an enormous difference.
“With a very clear vision, a very clear strategy and regularly articulated values, you can scale through your people, decision making, and systems,” he says.
“If you give people the right level of autonomy, with enough direction, and let them make decisions through those values, you can do extraordinary things.”
