Is This The Future Of Healthy Snacking At Work?

LONDON, United Kingdom — British startup Healthy Nibbles has launched an unmanned retail concept aimed at providing healthy and sustainable food choices in the workplace.

The tech-enabled innovation, which also aims to address the need for relevant, customisable concepts, delivered in a socially distanced environment, comes at a time when businesses are being forced to think differently about the delivery of health and wellness offerings.

With increased flexibility and distancing measures resulting in changes to occupancy levels across the majority of offices and co-working spaces in the UK and other countries globally, Healthy Nibbles says it has been working closely with businesses to solve this new challenge.

“Flexibility and health are going to be key drivers in any F&B solution, both in the short and longer-term, as cities, businesses and homes continue to undergo a seismic shift in response to COVID-19,” Healthy Nibbles founder Sara Roberts told Welltodo.

“Different sectors are feeling the effects in different ways; growth, reduction and entire workforces moving to longer-term home working. It is our role to offer flexible solutions that respond to these changes, such as delivering to homes, supporting co-working facilities, facilitating the changing needs of larger organisations as they reduce the number of employees in their offices, and so on.”

 Through its new unmanned retail concept, which utilizes technology, data and insights, Healthy Nibbles says it has created an intelligent solution that can quickly adapt to these types of changes in a cost-effective and sustainable way. 

The units, which operate like mini-markets, bring together the best in self-service convenience technologies, design-led build and healthy food brands across chilled, frozen and ambient, to deliver high-quality food 24 hours a day.

 Remote monitoring capabilities, meanwhile, enable the tracking and monitoring of stock levels, so that refreshes can be carried out on a required basis. This means each unit can be easily tailored to suit specific environments, as well as individual employees, whilst limiting waste.

To put nutritional wellbeing at the forefront of the customer experience, the company is also committed to working with impact-driven brands such as Mindful Chef and Modern Standard coffee, to deliver thoughtful, healthy meals that fuel health and performance, Roberts revealed.

“All of our brands have also been benchmarked against 15+ UK and international nutritional standards, as well as being benchmarked against the B Corp impact assessment,” she added.

And the strategy seems to be paying off. Despite the disruption caused by COVID-19, Roberts says the brand has experienced an 87% increase in revenue, compared to the same period last year, as well as securing clients including the BBC, Lacoste, Vitality, Transport for London, The Office Group and Three Mobile — demonstrating the continued demand for healthy snacking.

With workplace wellbeing evolving from being a location-specific concept towards a more community-driven model, this presents another huge opportunity for brands like Healthy Nibbles, and Roberts believes it can play a key role in that evolution.

“I believe workplace wellness will assume its rightful position as a seat at the board table, moving away from a fragmented and siloed discipline to one that underpins business, with nutrition, mental health, overall wellness, sustainability and impact all forming key components in governance and reporting,” she told Welltodo.

Thanks to its use of data and analytics, a seamless client and end-user experience and unrivalled insight into consumer behaviour, Healthy Nibbles is primed to leverage that shift.