Foodifox delivers $11 lunches to heated lockers in busy office foyers
While foyer cafes have been a mainstay of city office buildings for decades, many have become casualties of COVID-19, leaving ground-floor real estate begging.
An entrepreneurial company, Foodifox, wants to make use of these dormant spaces and transform them into food-filled thermal storage areas to feed hungry office workers as they return to the workplace.
Using a mix of technologies – an app, QR codes and thermal lockers – Foodifox is currently placing banks of lockers in the foyers of commercial office buildings across the Melbourne CBD.
Workers can place their lunch orders by 10am via the app, and then Foodifox chefs and drivers will cook to order and deliver the meals to the storage area ahead of lunchtime each day, when the customers use their QR codes to open the heated lockers.
According to Roy Morgan chief executive Michele Levine, the COVID-19 pandemic has provided a huge boost to meal delivery services, with over 5.5 million Australians now using a service like Uber Eats, Menulog, Deliveroo or DoorDash to order a meal.
“The usage of meal delivery services is also almost twice as likely in Australia’s capital cities (31.6 per cent) than country regions (16.6 per cent) and it is no surprise to see that 36.1 per cent of Melburnians have used the services – far ahead of any other city,” she said.
It was this food delivery service boom that led Melbourne-based Foodifox chief executive Shawn Yi to co-found an end-to-end food production and delivery service that offered a point of difference.
“A few friends with a love of food came together in mid-2019 and we were talking about our family and community, and I was asking, ‘How can we create an environment or a platform to share food and recipes with the greater community?” Mr Yi said.
“We started to talk about what could be the new model, and whether there could be a different way to share food. We observed that 297,000 people come to Melbourne to work every single day [in non-lockdown times] and so we decided to start with lunch solutions for workplaces.”
Now with more than 20 locations in Melbourne and plans to expand interstate, Mr Yi said his model was COVID-friendly because the same driver conducted the contactless deliveries each day.
“Our own driver picks up the lunches at 11 o’clock and within an hour, that driver will be able to deliver to between four and six locations. It’s more like a postman model where each neighbourhood has one postman,” he said.
Another key difference between Foodifox and other meal delivery services is its fixed rate of $11 per lunch, including delivery.
Mr Yi said this budget-friendly price was achieved by only offering two meal options each day (one meat-based and one vegetarian dish, Monday to Friday), thereby allowing more efficient use of ingredients and minimal wastage.
“Lunch needs to be quick, simple, flavoursome and affordable,” Mr Yi said.
“With only one or two meals a day we can focus on the quality, and every day we change the menu. If you open the app, you might see that today is Thai, tomorrow is Korean and then Wednesday is always a Western style of cuisine. We have Spanish, Swedish, modern Australian, Italian, Japanese and Chinese meals. There are about 150 dishes in our library.”
Mr Yi also noted that offering limited meal options helped busy professionals who experienced decision fatigue when faced with the endless options offered by other food delivery services.
Monika Suda, sales and marketing manager for CLIK Collective, a co-working space in Melbourne, said they incorporated Foodifox lockers into their shared workspaces at Kensington and Moorabbin.
“Everyone’s a fan,” Ms Suda said. “Our community greatly appreciates their lunch just appearing at 12 noon. It’s super convenient and attractive for those who are busy or don’t feel comfortable heading out of the office.”
Ms Suda said they had a few dozen regulars who used the Foodifox service.
“Members love the concept, menu and convenience,” Ms Suda said. “It’s delicious food for $11 a serve, including yum options for vegetarians and meat-eaters alike.”
Foodifox currently services buildings in Melbourne’s CBD, Southbank, St Kilda Road, Port Melbourne, Docklands, Richmond, Abbotsford and Flemington. The heated lockers are installed and maintained by the Foodifox team in both new and existing buildings.
Mr Yi said he was confident that the Foodifox model would be well received when workers returned to the office after the latest lockdown, and is offering building owners and managers the lockers for free for the first six months.
“For a big corporate building, they see the lockers as cheaper than the couch they put in their lobby,” Mr Yi said. “And beyond the locker, they see Foodifox as offering a quality alternative and a high standard of food.”
