Robin Ferris, Bankuet: ending food poverty in the UK 🚚🥗

Speaker A: Hi, I'm Craig Turner, host of the Founders for Good podcast. I've spent years working in the Tech for Good space and in that time I've had the privilege of interviewing inspiring impact founders and I want to share those conversations with you. Why? Because these are the people leading the way when it comes to solving the world's most pressing issues, from climate to homelessness, to health to education, and much more. In these conversations, I dig into why these issues exist, possible solutions, how the founder and their business is approaching the problem, and their best kept secrets on how to build a for good company. My hope is that this will inspire you to be part of the solution and do your bit in making the world a better place. Thanks for tuning in to the Founders for Good podcast. Robin Ferriss is the CEO, uh, and founder of Banquet. With the cost of living crisis and inflation, food poverty in the UK is at its worst. This year, 9.3 million people in the UK will experience food insecurity. And in the last year, 1 million people have used food banks for the first time. Volunteering in his local food bank, Robin saw firsthand the challenges that food banks face and how they would struggle to meet the continued increasing demand. Robin wanted to build a tech platform that would make it easy and simple for people to donate whilst making their money go further. And also making sure food banks got the food and items they needed when they needed them. In 2019, Banquet was born with the vision for no one in the UK to go hungry. Since then, they partnered with over 300 food banks across UK and delivered over 2.8 million food and household items to help tackle food poverty. Hey Robin, pleasure to have on the show. How are you?

Speaker B: Hi Craig. Doing well, thank you. Good to see you and thank you so much for having me on.

Speaker A: Of course. Um, so today we're talking about Banquet, um, and the topics of like, food poverty and food banks. Um, and first I just want to explore this space a little bit more by spending some time looking at the problem, I guess from two perspectives. Those that like, need and use food banks and then the actual food banks themselves. Um, so first of all, for those who use food banks, um, I guess a term that we're seeing more and more and hearing a lot in the news is like food poverty. I, um, was wondering if you could start off by explaining or defining what food poverty is and giving some insights into the state of food poverty in the uk, like how many people are living in food poverty?

Speaker B: Yeah, so, um, my name is Robin, I'm the founder and CEO of Banquet. We first describe Banquet as the UK's first zero waste food donation platform. And we're on a mission to um, help food banks get what they need, when they need it, and to make it easier for donors to give. So the high level problem you've mentioned there is that our vision is to tackle um, hunger in the uk. So we want to be in a position where no one um, goes hungry. So food poverty simply means not um, having enough food. So the proliferation of food banks in the UK is because millions of people every year, ah, are going uh, without food.

Speaker A: And I guess um, to kind of paint a picture of the harsh reality of um, what it's like to be in a situation where you do need to rely on food banks. For someone listening to what are the kind of daily decisions or sacrifices families are having to make that are struggling to have enough food.

Speaker B: Yeah. So I suppose the last couple of years brought it to light more than ever before. Right. So, um, during the national lockdowns and Covid rewinding a couple of years, there uh, were about 4 million people needing to go and use food banks through that period of that like 2.3 million, um, of those for children. So people are facing a number of issues which result in them having to use feedback. Right. So if you think um, all the economic issues at the minute that are happening, the cost of living crisis means that um, people just, the numbers at the end of the month just don't stack up for lots of people. So rising food costs has affected us all, um, mortgage or rent payments. You have people in work who are finding themselves having to use a food bank. So these people, there are food banks, um, across the uk, where some are called, you know, eat or heat people. To your point there, right, People are facing the horrible challenge of like, are they going to heat their home or are they going to um, eat. And so people faced with that choice end up using a food bank. And then the other things that have happened in the last 12 months of the impact of the Ukraine crisis, Brexit, um, inflation, all of these things, it's just, it's just getting much worse. In the last year there's research that shows that up to a million people more have used a food bank. For the first time there's already people having to use food banks. But in the last year up to a million people are using a food bank for the first time because they just haven't got enough food. You know, there was people in work, so people in respectable professions like nurses, teachers, uh, and policemen and Women, these people are finding, you see the headlines about these people end up having user feedback. So there's a whole changing demographic, sadly of people that are facing those horrible choices. We've seen an increase, um, in some of the research we did this year in March, the Banquet cost of living survey. This is us recognizing, actually we've got a bit of a voice now with all the food banks that we are representing. And the food banks were telling us that, um, the same more single parent families, um, coming in to use food banks too. So now you mentioned at the call you're a parent, you and your partner are looking after the kids together. There are families where they're not as lucky as you are. Right. So someone's partner isn't around and those families are like, right, that's slight flip. You've got one income, how's it all work? You know, and the cost of living stuff is brutal, isn't it, if you think about it? You know, I've been saying for the last four years, banquet is for this month, I've been saying for the last four years now is the worst time for food banks. You know, and at the height of lockdown, um, that madness that we all experience, that was the peak of it, peak of it all up to that point. And then now the cost of living has affected everyone, hasn't it? But we have everyone listening to this has probably been more affected by the cost of living crisis than maybe they were. Um, in Covid, you know, I've got people in my network, oh, I was better off after, after Covid because I was on furlough and you know, all my expenditure went down and I ended up better off. And then the cost of living, I don't think there's anywhere to hide, is there? It's kind of, it's actually a harsh reality for everybody.

Speaker A: Uh, yeah, it's so true. I mean there's lots of scary stuff you've just shared in there, like all the new people that having to access food banks. But and you said, you know, no matter who you are, like the cost of living has hit, uh, like mortgages, the one that most of my friends talk about, like double tripling the cost straight away on a monthly basis. It just wipes out a lot of any kind of surplus you may have in a month to spend on stuff. Um, uh, if you had to guess and like based on what you've seen in the last few years and what you think will happen next year or two, you expect in the demand and need for food banks. To continue increasing over the next year or two.

Speaker B: Sadly. Yeah. I mean the cost of living crisis highlights that people in no work in work are no longer able to afford the basics. Right? So you've mentioned that people, if you have a mortgage, you know, the interest rates going from mortgage rates you up to 6 to 7%. You know, that's just astounding. That's just crippling many people, isn't it? Middle class families are like crikey, we can't make this add up at the end of, of the month. All the support the government provided for energy stuff through the winter was great but that's now ended. So you look ahead at this year and you're like, right, crikey, okay, what's going to happen if the government doesn't support people with energy? Um, food banks can't keep up with demand, donations are falling. So that's the other point, right, if you think about a, when I'm sure we can get into this, you know, food banks are uh, reliant on people donating. So if all of us have had, if you wind back to you know, up, uh, until Covid, the way you donate to a food bank is offline and then banquet, you know, we launched eight months before COVID and then people are unable to enable people to donate food online. That's our, you know, that's our, that's what we do. But if you think during furloughs and Covid people are like, actually maybe I have got an extra 20 or 50 quid a month because I'm not going out, I can't go on holiday, I'm not doing anything. But those very same people now like you've mentioned, right, like crikey, my mortgage has just gone up like this to feed my family. It costs this. All of uh, everything I touched cost me more money actually. Maybe I can't afford to donate that X amount to a food bank or a charity per month. So I think it's a double edged sword really of like demand is going up higher than ever before. So some of the other groups we've talked about, right, it's like normal people having to use food banks but then the same folk that perhaps would be able to donate before are like, oh gosh, can we actually do that? I mean, you know that going into it, think about, you know, your own family. Like you're like, okay, if my food bill's gone up like this and your mortgage has gone up, you're like, yeah, probably we can't, maybe we can't do a charitable giving or as much as we did before. So, you know, it's, it's, it's horrible. And you sort of think, you know, some food banks tell us that, uh, you know, when the Ukraine situation happened, um, they would tell us that they saw a lot of sort of Ukrainian families coming to the UK using a food bank. Because the food banks sort of right, are on the front line, you know, so people go, they don't, they can't get, um, public funding or universal credit or anything like that, come to the UK and then food banks kind of support them for a short time as well. So it's, it's already brutal. Um, you know, and many people fall through the gaps. You know, the government provision isn't robust enough in some senses. There are lots of people that do fall through the gaps there. Um, so yeah, it's going to get worse I think, sadly, before it gets better. You know, there are more people now using food banks than ever before. And you think, you know what's going to happen this winter? I think it's going to be horrible.

Speaker A: And you uh, kind of start to share a bit there about the food banks and some of the pressures and things that they face. Um, I was hoping you could pair a picture of actually like what a food bank is and how they work. I think for a lot of us, um, you'll see kind of the food backdrop, food bank drop off points probably in the local supermarket, which I typically use. And then I think hopefully most of the listeners will be people that have probably volunteered at a food bank at some point. Um, but can you just describe a little bit about kind of like what the average food bank looks like, like who's running it, how many people needed to run a food bank, how many people could they be supporting, where the food's coming from, all that kind of good stuff.

Speaker B: Okay, so food, a food bank exists to provide emergency food aid provision. In the UK. There are around 3,000 known food banks. And I say known those food banks would be a part of either the Trestle Trust Network or the Independent Food Aid Network, but there are many others that wouldn't uh, necessarily identify. So there are known food banks in those networks, around 3,000, but in reality there are a couple of thousand more in the uk. So through Covid, for example, many brilliant people set up emergency food banks, um, to help people and wouldn't have had time to officially go through the process of joining one of those institutions. Um, so there are thousands in the uk. How it works is typically in the UK people would go and be referred to a food bank by a food referral service. So that could be, uh, the Department of Work and Pensions, that could be citizens advice, that could be a church, a gp. Some schools are doing this and that's where an individual couple or family have fallen on hard times and therefore get a voucher from a referral or agency. And so that would enable someone to go to a food bank and get basic food provision that ranges from three to seven days depending, uh, on what's available in the food bank. And officially for sort of three, three visits. So if someone lost uh, their job, they're like, okay, I'm between jobs. My intention is to find a job. They may get uh, government, uh, support in the form of universal credit. That's sort of the basic provision that the state provides. And alongside that they may be entitled then to say, okay, you can, you can, you're unemployed, you can use a food bank. So it's the food referral agencies, of which there are about 200 in the UK would be involved in that. Most food banks in the UK operate on that model. So it's the referral model. So the Trestle Trust food banks would say that. So you're on the system, uh, you get other support. And uh, there are a handful of food banks that are non referral, so sort of no questions asked. You can walk in and get food if you wish. Um, but most of them happen on a sort of referral basis. And what a food bank um, has in terms of like stock if you will. So they will have an inventory which is largely similar to what you have would have in your own home. So that would be um, sort of household goods, um, cleaning products, toiletries, obviously food. And you would get given out ambient food largely. So tinned goods, things with a long shelf life for lots of reasons. You know, some food banks aren't able to have refrigeration or freezers. So typically it's ambient goods that an individual couple or family will be given when they're in a food bank. Um, and the donation process is sort of what banquet does. So up until Covid, that was largely offline. So you'd see in a supermarket, probably after you've done your shop, you'd see a collection point for your local supermarket and that's where the food balance would ask for certain things. So, um, we can get onto how banquets started, but that's a problem we exist to solve. Right. So what happens is food banks get given a lot of the wrong things, things because the, the donation channel was offline. And then Banquet is trying to modernize the food bank supply chain to ensure that they get the right thing. So food banks don't get an oversupply of pasta, baked beans and cereal, but they get, uh, perhaps size six nappies or tinned tomato soup. So my, my experience of this, I was volunteering at food banks in London. Um, prior to this, I worked in the music industry and I saw witness the change of, like, CDs to streaming. And when I started volunteering food banks, you know, this is back in 2018, right. I saw the rising headlines of now is the worst time for food banks. More people going hungry than ever before. You know, this year, 9, 9.3 million people in the UK experience food insecurity. So the numbers are just skyrocketing. And I decided to start Banquet to help food banks. So on one level, more and more people are going hungry. If people are going hungry, where do they go to get food? Or they go to a food bank. So I started volunteering at a food bank and I saw this problem in front of my eyes of like, okay, I'm looking at a year's worth of pasta, baked beans and cereal. Not bad things at all. We've all got them in our cupboard. But sort of that's because the donation channel is quite old school. You know, you do your weekly shop in as the Tesco Sainsbury's. You buy stuff for your wife and family. You probably drop a few things in the basket and, you know, I've done a good thing, I'm going home. What that means is for the food bank, they get an oversupply of certain things. So a food bank is looking for a broad range of inventory. Right. So a food parcel is approximately about 30 items. So you'd have tinned tuna in the tin, potatoes, you'd have some carrots, tinned veg, fruit, shower gel, toilet rolls, nappies, if you've got kids, all of that stuff. Right? That's what goes in a food parcel. Probably slightly misleading that say food bank because there are household things as well. Um, and how Banquet helps is that we make sure that the food banks get the right stuff at the right time by taking that donation, uh, process online.

Speaker A: Yeah, no, thank you for talking through all of that. Yeah. So I've volunteered in food banks. I've seen how, like, some of these problems as well. And also doing research for this podcast, like, it just opened your eyes to, um, no one's fault, but just a lot of inefficiencies. In the system because a lot of these food banks kind of, as I'm sort of operate in isolation, so, you know, they don't have a lot of control over what's coming into them. Um, they don't really have connections with other food banks, so they can kind of share stuff around, so it's hard to make it work. Um, so there was like, an obvious problem there that needed to be solved in terms of. I mean, you just kind of explained how Banquet started out and, like, you seen the need for the problem. Um, can you talk through, like, you know, what the first year looked like? So you kind of, you know, you'd worked in food banks, you've seen this problem, you'd seen that, like, obviously needed to be some kind of solution in terms of how you actually went from that to starting to solve it and, like, thinking about, like, what will fix this problem the most. Yeah. What were you doing that first year?

Speaker B: Yeah, so my professional background before joining Banquet is that I worked in the music industry for 10 years and then film and TV. So I'm of the age where I remember, like, the first iPhone coming out. And I was working at Island Records at the time where we broke Amy Winehouse. And in a space of about three years, I went from like, oh, CDs through to streaming. You know, Spotify and everyone listening to this new. We're probably listening to it on Spotify or another, uh, streaming platform. Right. Um, and so I sort of saw not. I'm not a tech person necessarily, even though I'm a tech CEO. I'm not a developer. I can't write code, but I can see the power of technology and how that can address food poverty and improve supply chain. So you just talked about that. Right. Food banks aren't linked together. They haven't necessarily got a view on the right stuff. Technology at a high level. I suppose tech just connects people, doesn't it? You know, we're doing this podcast, um, via a video link. Right. It's just so easy to connect with people. So what Banquet is trying to do, um, the. I. I was in my late 30s. I was sort of thinking, okay, I sort of had a lovely career in entertainment. I was really thankful for that. I live in Hackney in East London. Um, and I'd seen the rising headlines of, like, food bank use, people going hungry. And I thought, well, what am I doing to have to help with about that? So I sent a. I, uh, was doing a different job at the time. I set up a collection point with some mates in Hackney on Hackney, ah, Road in a local co op. And we just took the stuff that we knew the local food bank wanted and then took that to BO Food bank on the platform. And while doing that, and then I started volunteering at Wandsworth Food Bank. And I'm sitting there in the warehouse going, hold on a minute. We've got a year's worth of pasta, baked beans and cereal, but yet we need size six nappies and we need tin tomato soup. You know, I don't have kids. I wouldn't have known necessarily at that point to donate, um, nappies probably could have worked out we needed tin tomato soup. But, you know, based on the fact they needed an average sort of inventory of these things and applying what I'd seen, um, in, in the music industry of like, you know, I remember the times when the ipod ad came out, right? And it's like, oh, we've put a thousand songs in your pocket. And this is the new thing now with streaming platforms. It's like 100 million songs and they're not getting started. So I was like, how do we apply this technology in, uh, a way that can reduce food waste and can apply efficiencies, modernize food supply chain and help more people? Right? So Banquet was born, uh, sort the end of 2018, 2019. I was volunteering Wandsworth Food Bank. We, uh, run our first pilot in July 2019. And at that point we're trying to say, okay, can we get people to switch from donating in a supermarket, uh, collection point. And I suppose startup language would be, you know, you're trying to ascertain switching radio ratios. So can you, with an Uber, for example, can you get people to switch from standing in the street, hailing a black lab to opening their phone and doing it? Or in Banquet's case, you know, a, uh, lofty comparison there. Can you get people to switch from. I'm not comparing us to Uber, but getting my point right, you're trying to work out how many people can we get switch across from donating something in a supermarket after the point of you've done your own shopping to doing that online, right? So you recognize that everything you do is probably on your.

Speaker A: Most.

Speaker B: Most people listening to this are either digital natives or up on their technology, right? So I use my mobile phone for a lot of things, so I, um, I want to be digital first. So, you know, when we're taking stuff from a collection point on Hackney Road down to Bay Food bank via my flat to sort it, I was like, why isn't there an online Food bank. Why can't I donate these things? Every entrepreneur or, um, startup fund will be thinking about that problem. Technology makes my life easy, right? On so many things. Why can't I donate to a food bank the right stuff at the right time. Why can you not make it easy for me to give? So our first pilot was in July 2019, and um, that was with Wandsworth Food Bank. By the end of 2019, we had 10 food banks on the platform. Eight months after launching, we, um, a little thing called Covid happened. And by that point we'd done, we'd done enough, right? You look back, anyone launching anything will tell you it all comes down to timing. And for Banquet, we'd done eight months in, we'd done enough to like do a pilot, a prototype, an mvp, whatever you want to do, like work out what we're trying to do. So we say as a company that our, uh, mission is to get food banks what they need when they need it, and to make it easy for donors to give. So the two parts of the are the logistics stuff we've talked on of like, you know, you've been in a food bank, you can see they're getting, haven't really got control of what donations are coming in because it comes from largely up until Covid, it was the, uh, four years ago, the donation channel was largely offline. It was random collections in a supermarket, church or school, someone walks something in. It's a bit, bit chaotic. Then Covid happened and the world went online, didn't it? If you think, roll back to those times, like everyone started using Zoom, everything went digital. If you didn't have a digital strategy as a company, you might not even exist anymore. For us as a tiny, uh, startup, you know, we started 2020 with just me and a laptop and one friend volunteering as a developer. So to answer your question about what was the first year like, it was utterly mad, right? So we did our first, uh, pilot on 2nd of July, was piloting our technology with Twitter, with Wandsworth Food Bank. So can we get people? These are the things we need on Twitter. Link to this page on Banquet and we could see what people donating. There are various iterations of our technology. How Banquet works now is that food banks request the things they need from us in advance, like a grocery shop that you, you would do for your family. Um, donors go onto the platform and donate 10, 20, 50 or 100 quid on a one off or monthly basis. So you might say, okay, you said you live near one Uniform Windsor. Um, Food bank one of the ones on a platform, you might say, right, we'll get, we'll give £20amonth to Windsor Food Bank. And that would mean whenever they wish to use those funds, um, they can on the right things. But you, you as a donor have always donated the right thing. So you donate 20 quid. They would log into our platform and say, right, please send us, um, toilet rolls and olive oil and we go and buy those in bulk and we deliver them directly to a food bank. So an offline donation might be, you know, the donor has to know what the food bank actually needs. Um, quantity could be, is a separate issue. Perhaps you might say, okay, here's a tin of baked beans and one thing of olive oil and you bought that at retail price and you put it in the basket in Tesco. You might be informed that might be the right thing. But often, often that's not the immediate need of a food bank. So anyone listening to this, you know, if you're donating offline, you know, do, do give pasta, baked beans, but check with the, uh, the food, but that's what they need. So they do need those things. But it's often other things that are more pressing. So in our platform, for example, every week we see people log in food banks say, oh, we need UHT milk and we need tinned tuna and we need tin me and we need toilet rolls. Right. So I wouldn't have known necessarily before this to donate UHT milk because I have a fridge. Most people listening to this have a fridge. Food banks don't have refrigeration and freezers, so it's often UHT milk, which is long life and doesn't need refrigeration. The other notes is like, I was in a food bank in South London and um, some ladies would donate tampons, but ladies and of a different faith group wouldn't use tampons. They want sanitary towels. So you have a pile of tampons there, but actually something else is needed. And then, you know, there's six different types of nappy types. And when you get into it, you're like, oh, actually the needs of a food bank are actually quite unique. So that's how we do it. So 20, 20, 19, uh, we had 10 food banks on the platform by the end of that year when Covid hit. I'll never forget this period, you know, February to March, 2020, donations via the platform went up by over 5,000% month on month. You know, we'd started that year thinking like, anyone running a startup or or social impact company would like. We want to grow this year. This is, can we, can we buy the end of the year? We started with 10 food banks. Perhaps we could support 50 by the end of the year. By the end of that year we had 100 food banks on the platform. It was generally a bit of a blur for me from sort of March till July, August time, um, we had an incredible amount of goodwill. So people bearing in mind this is donations from the general public, um, during sort of those lockdown periods we raised and spent £1.5 million on food. We started sending out bulk shipments every single week throughout the pandemic. So our first bulk Delivery was in April 2020 at uh, Hammersmith and Fulham's temporary, uh, home of Kensington Olympia. So if anyone doesn't know where that is, that's a huge exhibition centre in London. This one food bank, to give you an idea of the scale, went from feeding 150 people a week to 1500 people a week. Because of COVID it was like a military operation. So we then made one of our first big bulk deliveries where we sent in over 20 uh, thousand pounds worth of stock. We leveraged our uh, buying power with big suppliers. So in lockdown we started working with Morrisons, with Sainsbury's, with big food suppliers. So our value proposition is such that when people donate we deliver more than a pound's worth of food because we're buying wholesale. We're unlocking bulk delivery. So if you think for your own consumption you're having a party or a gathering, you'd buy multi packs of things, wouldn't you? You buy, buy 2 for 14 the price, whatever it is, right? We're doing that at, at scale. So that first year was, you know, truly insane. We had hundreds of people step forward to volunteer for us, which was just amazing to receive that gift. You know, we'd started that year with a business plan and with a sort of, you know, uh, wall chart of like right these are all the different departments of banquet. You know they've got a join team here. I've got social media, got marketing, got this. But it's essentially the tasks that those teams would do but with my name by it. And then in that period it was truly remarkable, people just stepped forward uh, to volunteer. You know, we're a social impact company M most of the food banks, we support our charities. You know, we ourselves aren't a uh, a charity but people were very happy to step forward and help us. In the period April to May 2020 we had about 165 people step forward to volunteer. Right. So it's like being gifted. The Avengers to come and help you. So, uh, many people that are still with us helping on a voluntary basis and we have a very small team because we're, you know, we've come a long way very quickly, but we've got a very sort of tight revenue structure for ourselves because our heart is to help food banks. So that first year is truly remarkable. I don't think I ever forget it. Um, and then in July, July 2023, we celebrate, uh, four years of banquet. Um, we've seen now nearly £3 million donated by the platform. We support over 260 food banks across the UK and Ireland. We are now in 96 regions. We have fed nearly 100,000 people for a week. We've sent out 2.8 million items. Each one is exactly what our food bank needs. Um, it's been, yeah, it's been a thrilling adventure to say the least, but sadly it's going to get worse. So there's sort of always in this position where, you know, we don't, we're having an incredible impact, but the need is so high and that sometimes that becomes a, can become a bit overwhelming. You know, when you read these stats every day and these reports of like, you know, one in five people are struggling to pay the bills, 9.2 million people are, uh, going hungry. Millions of children every year, you know, holiday hunger, every school holiday, every Easter, you just see it, you know, the food banks absorbing that demand.

Speaker A: A little break from the show. If you're listening and thinking, I'd, uh, love to work for a company like this, the good news is you can go and visit www.jobsforgoodio where they only have four good companies on their platform, ranging from social justice to food waste to climate change and much more. You can filter jobs by impact area, preferred way of working skillsets, and find the perfect company and position for you. So if you do one thing today, check out www.jobsforgood.IO. now, back to the podcast. I mean, it's an incredible journey that you've been on. And, um, yeah, I mean, you can look at it that way, but you can also look at it. If Banquet didn't exist, then, then we'd be in a much, much worse place. Because, like, it. And that's why I love speaking to people like yourself and like learning a bit about the business model and the problem you're solving. Because, like a lot of time there is a way to solve problems and a Lot of time. Tech can, can offer quite a simple solution to a, ah, really complex problem. And what you've done is like really smart, but also quite simple at the same time. Like you're, you're helping people actually making it easy for easier for people to donate. They don't actually have to go and travel to a supermarket and go pick up stuff off shelves. But also what's being donated is more effective. They're having a bigger impact because the money's going further. But also it's actually exactly what food banks need, not what the person thinks that a food bank might need. And fix a lot of problems with the food bank. Like, it's incredible, um, but so simple. You, like, hear it and you're like, why is this not existing like 10 years ago? But then, you know, tech's come a long way.

Speaker B: The power of technology is amazing. Big tech has had a lot of bad press, hasn't it, of like all these evil companies. But if it wasn't for familiar technology that we're applying in ua, then Bangkok wouldn't exist and we wouldn't have be able to help, uh, people. So, you know, our mission statement there, you've literally listed it back to me, right? Make it easy for me to help. When I was, when I was at the beginning, I was like, I'm, um, happy to pick this stuff up and I'm sorting it, I'm taking it to the food bank. You're not actually, I'm quite lazy. Make it easy for me to do something. Think about the things you use on your phone every day. You know, Monzo, uh, Delivero, you know, whatever it is, Airbnb, anything you're doing, WhatsApp, all of these different things. Any fully commercial company would be like, right, make it really easy, make it really simple, make it look good. And I'll probably do that. If you walk down the street and ask most people, do they want to donate to a food bank? Most people say, yeah, you know, we're a nation of good intentions, right? But then when it comes to it, you're like, oh, I've got to pick the kids up, I've got to do a shop, I'm doing some work, you know, so we enable food banks to execute on that collective goodwill. And that's the thing I suppose would add growth was turbocharged by Covid, inevitably. So up and up until Covid, right, the only way you could donate to a food bank was offline, was, you know, you're literally doing your weekend, your weekend shop. You drop it in the food bank, some people do occasionally walk stuff in. But then for us it was like, you know, it brought technology, widespread adoption across many sectors, wasn't it? Most M companies like, right, we've got a remote working policy now everyone's on zoom. For us it was like, well, we're already bringing about that change. There are lots of not complexities, but in Bangkok there's kind of two sides to it, right? So most donors, um, are probably more tech savvy, more generally than perhaps most food banks. So there are some food banks that are very forward thinking, are very open to change and are very up, uh, for embracing technology. There are others that aren't, um, as forward thinking. Food banks generally, um, do amazing things, but probably as a charity and probably because people didn't think they'd exist for such a long time. They haven't necessarily put technology at the center of their organizations. It's separate for lots of reasons. Right. It's sort of been an emergency response, a makeshift thing. Let's make this work. And then 15, 20 years later, after the first food bank in the UK, the digital transformation is now being almost forced upon people because of COVID right? So for me sitting here, I was working the music industry for 10 years, probably all the sectors to be disrupted. That was quite an easy one, wasn't it? Of like, I remember the days of Amazon where they'd list a CD on the website and there's the track listing and someone gets posted the cd, right? And there's a pre order and you could track what's happening. And then they've added every category in the world. You know, now it's become the everything store. You know, everyone, everyone on here would obviously know the Amazon story, but I was sitting there in those days going, oh, okay, I can see how familiar technology is just making my life easier. And then with digital stuff we're like, right, you can minimize food waste. If you can minimize food waste, you can feed more people. Um, and then the collective buying power, you know, if you said, oh, I'll buy five pounds worth of food, it's great that people do that offline and people should do that if that's the right thing. But we're saying actually we can get up to 30% more stuff and it's the right stuff. You know, some food banks, we're sending them thousands of pounds worth of food every week, every single week. Other food banks, we send them stuff once a month. A donor can donate from wherever they are. So for a food bank, we help them increase donations so we looked at some numbers that said in 2020, right, the average gift for online for food, poverty and hunger was 14 pounds per month. But via banquet that was 29 pounds. So we make it easier for a food bank and be like, oh cool, I don't have to be a tech wizard. I can join banquet. We have central sort of fore fundraising. We have a brand brilliant social media team. We're reaching all these new donors for people. We reduce waste because a food bank never receives pasta and make beans unless they've asked us for it, right? So it's actually they. We send a lot of orange juice, we send uht milk, send tin tuna, send toilet rolls so that, that's. They only get that stuff. And then for us, we also send it directly to them. So they. Not only for a donor. You can, anyone listening to this can donate from wherever you are and the food bank will then hold that cash and then we turn into the right food and send it as required. So it's like home delivery for yourself. You know, you often. I'm, um, sure a lot of people on here do a grocery shop or bought something online. You order at your convenience, don't you? And it gets delivered to you at your convenience, where you're, if you're at home or your office, we're saying fine, let's do that. Then let's flip that the other way of going. Let's make it as easy to get something food for myself. Either that I'm going to cook or I'm going to order in. Why don't we just turn that around and go, uh, okay, I want to make it that easy. So we've applied the aesthetic and the brand values and the execution that you'd find for any, you know, commercial brand. You know, when we started Banquet, I was looking at brands like Patagonia, Apple, Google and Nike because frankly, they're the ones that get your attention. It doesn't matter how noble your cause is, of which there are many. I was like, that's what we're looking at. Uh, that's what we need to, we need to be that good because if we're not, we're not going to catch anyone's attention. Um, and then the modernization of the supply chain behind it go in. We work with big partners. We've had a lot of support and help from Ocado. Um, we've worked very close with Morrisons and Sainsbury's. But so if you think about the infrastructure that we have, we say zero ways. We're light, touch we are a consignment based dropship model. So that means that we don't have our own warehouses, we don't have our own trucks. We leverage existing infrastructure. So you know, we would send on a weekly basis a large amount of orders. So we gather everyone's money. Food banks tell us what they want, we batch create in bulk load of orders. We then send them to the retailers at uh, head office and those trucks are shipped from across uh, the country. So the technology enables that but also a robust supply chain which already exists. So if you're listening to this and you're in Manchester or in Dundee, you know we're not sending a truck from London. That would come from a local distribution center which we can tap into. So collective buying power which the crowdsourcing model enables. Uh, the technology. Right. Means unless an individual donor is going to spend a lot or donate a lot of money, they're probably not going to be able to access that network. But via Banquet, we open up huge economies of scale for food banks. So uh, Food bank knows actually we will work with Banquet because we've got nearly 300 food banks. So then our buying power increases and we can get better deals with retailers and get better support and stock. We know every single week what a food bank needs in real time. Every week they tell us we're then putting that further down the line to our suppliers saying right, these are the top 10 items that we're, we require make sure they're in stock. So then we minimize shrinkage. So that means that when someone orders, like when you order something online you probably all had it on grocery. No, this has been changed for this. You try and minimize it. That's what we're doing at scale.

Speaker A: Yeah, no, it's so, it's so, so smart. And um, I guess coming back to the point earlier about kind of like trying to meet this increase in demand though obviously this is one part, big part of it which is like um, the kind of the, I guess if you look at the kind of user journey and conversion like you've made it as simple as possible, removed all barriers to people being able to donate and also making it as efficient as possible in terms of that system of the food actually then ending up in the food banks. But all that needs to happen like you need kind of the top of the funnel conversion point which is like the actually getting the donations in the, in the first place and getting more donations each year to, to meet up with the demand. Uh, what, what are you doing from that point? Like what's when it comes to pr, brand awareness marketing. Like, what are some of the things that you do and what some of the more, I guess, effective things you do to raise the profile of Banquet and make sure that, you know, the donations are always coming in and increasing. Hopefully.

Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, you touched on one of our biggest, uh, challenges there, which is, uh, raising awareness of the problem, um, and our solution. Right. So during COVID and lockdowns, almost every single week there was a headline about food banks. And everyone went into a beautiful mindset in some ways of like, oh, I want to help others. There's a need now, right? Food bank use and hunger is a, is a bigger problem than it was at the heart of COVID right? So there are an estimated 14.5 million people in the UK living in poverty. And there, uh, are 4 million people. 4 million of that is children. Right? So that's Joseph Rounds, which stats for in the last year. So 14.5 million people getting cut through in terms of brand marketing and PR is a huge priority for us because when people realized in Covid how horrible the problem was, people's beautiful response was, I'm going to donate and I'm going to help. So for now we've had an incredible amount of support. We've, um, been fortunate to have a, uh, Commons agency in London that's helped us on a pro bono basis in terms of our marketing and our primary. We've had a lot of, uh, national, um, radio and press coverage which has been incredible. So I suppose Banquet and we've touched on this a little bit of like if Banquet is a good news story within, um, within the chaos, right. So we're working towards a UK where there are actually are no food banks. That's what we'd love. And we think we're crazy enough to think that's possible and there is enough food for people, but it comes down to distribution. So when, when, when the COVID uh, situation hit, right, what happened is the, the food supply chain just went, just crumbled because people overbought. There's always enough food in the uk, but the distribution of it just wasn't effective enough. So our biggest challenge is, is raising the awareness, keeping it front of mind for people because then we can be more effective. You know, Banquet has come the heck of a long way very quickly, but we're only getting started. So the achievements of the team are to be celebrated. You know, 10 food banks in 2019 to close to 300 now. Nearly 3 million pounds donated by the platform. Sometimes I Read these numbers. I'm like, oh my goodness. We have an incredible team that have executed on this which has been amazing. Um, getting more awareness and cut through, working with a, uh, multitude of influencers over the time has been amazing. You know, I suppose there's lots of different things within this about perhaps donor, Donor fatigue, cost of living stuff has hit everyone, hasn't it? Of like, you know, people like, oh, I can't donate anymore. You know, Banquet will uh, work and be effective at scale where it's everyone giving a little bit. So if everyone here was giving 20 quid a month, of course it's brilliant when more generous donors give loads. So our highest single one off donation by an individual is £10,000, which is amazing. But actually if everyone just gave, you know, a fiver a week, 20 quid a month, we'd have enough food to, to feed millions of people. So. But we need to continue to innovate. You know, we've, we've done some simple things very well, but we're just, we're literally just getting started. And what I think we can achieve,

Speaker A: definitely, and, and one thing I wanted to come back to you mentioned earlier in passing was that, um, Banquet isn't a charity, which I think if people heard what you do, they probably assume that you would be. I just wonder if you could explain a bit about kind of like, I think you're a limited company, right, like why you've gone for that structure, what that allows you to do over. If you had gone down like the charity route and I guess like how Banquet then makes money.

Speaker B: Yes, at the very beginning it was a sort of, um, as more the light bulb moment, I suppose was like, why isn't there an online food bank? Why can't I give food to those people that need it? Then the mechanism for doing that is helping your food become more effective. And so whilst we're a charitable heart, we're essentially, we are a tech company. We're tech for good. So we've got technology that we're making for the donor. So you, as a donor, we do make it easier for you to do that. That's what we would refer to as our donor product. Suppose we're a digital product company on one level. So that means the donor product is, you know, you can go onto your phone and you can donate to any food bank you, you wish or make a general donation, um, however you want. Most people use their mobile phone and then we have the food bank software which we um, create for food banks. So that, that is our own proprietary tech that's truly unique. We're the first of our kind now. We are the UK's first zero waste food donation platform. And so the mindset was well that's, that's a tech company. Whilst we have a charitable heart, I suppose we're trying to do a good thing. Banquet will only make a lot of money if we've helped a lot of people. So probably to our detriment, we charged 7.5% of the donations that we bring in to um, help um, cover our costs. Even though our company as I mentioned in uh, lockdown, we've been very clear about that people are happy to donate their time and skills because we're a social impact company. Um, yes, it's kind of also, if we had been a charity I suppose we would be inviting people to donate to us when actually we don't want to do that. We want to say you're a donor, we want you to donate to a food bank because that helps someone. So possibly to our detriment in terms of what money we've received for ourselves. But actually that is the heart of what we're doing. Our mission is to get food banks what they need when they need it and make it easier for you to give as a donor to a food bank. Your point about simplicity? That's what we're doing. You go onto the website, it's like actually we want you to give to a food bank and if we're effective at doing that and we onboard lots of food banks and we drive lots of donations then we'll get the reward for doing that. We're a long way off making uh, yeah, we're becoming sustainable. So if there are thousands and thousands of food banks banquets, revenue of course will would increase but we'd need to resource a team to get there. So we have a very small team. So we have myself and one other who are uh, full time have a number of sort of freelancers and um, contractors working on sort of part time. A number of people are able to do uh, support us on a pro bono basis which is incredible. So yeah, I think I'm comfortable. I think we are a tech company. We're tech for good. I mean the high level one would I suppose would be just giving, wouldn't it? You know they have enabled people to give hundreds of millions of pounds to charity and they, and they take a fee for doing it. I suppose we're sort of saying, well actually whilst we are collecting money we're turning that into food and there's Clear value, uh, across there which we're releasing. So you as a donor, you know you can, you can buy stuff at wholesale price if you want to spend hundreds and hundreds of pounds a month. But not only have we made it easier, we've made your impact way more effective. So a donor can the ease of, from your mobile phone, always donating the right stuff and ah, more of the right stuff to someone else. So you know we live in the age of convenience, don't you? Anyone doing anything in the online space, any whatever organization you're doing, make it easy for me to get involved with what you're doing. So banquet makes a huge impact for uh, for the donor?

Speaker A: Yeah, no, I think it's my favorite impact business model is like the full purpose and for profit because I think it means as a business you're more resilient, hopefully profitable so you can stand on like your own two feet if you need to and other things down the line. But also actually if you tie for like every pound that we make, it equates to this amount of positive impact in the world. Whatever problem you're solving, that's a win win. That's a scalable business model and scalable impact model. Um, which for me is like the way you want to be.

Speaker B: Exactly. If we're not effective at what we say we're going to do then we won't make any money for ourselves. So it's like we're almost incentivized to do that of like, okay, well we will become as, we will make it as easy as we can for you to donate because when you donate we take our tiny percentage of it. Right. If we onboard more food banks and more people today then we can, we want to be sustainable because then that means more money goes to the charities and more money helps more people. Right. So I think it's, it's the right way for us. We're a technical tech company. We can continue to innovate, we're fully independent.

Speaker A: Yeah. Um, one question for you. Coming back to your point about you know, full time, part time people, volunteers, um, it's a lot of different people to kind of like coordinate and juggle. And when I look to the business and like the open roles you have, like they're all over the uk. It's not like you're all kind of based around, around the same kind of area. You're really spread out. How do you run an operation? Because obviously you've created loads of efficiencies through the platform and what you're doing for your customers, the donors and the food banks. But internally, how do you manage that if you've constantly got different volunteers coming in, you have some people part time. Just from an operational perspective, how do you make sure that it's as efficient as possible internally?

Speaker B: Uh, yeah, that's a good question. It's certainly a challenging few years. We had some incredible people, um, whom um, have been part of the Banquet story. There's a, a lady called uh, Leanne here, she'll probably get a bit of a shout out. So she personally onboarded 165 people in the space of about six weeks in lockdown. So there are lots of ideas coming out of my mind about, oh, wouldn't it be good if we had a team of people doing this? Oh, how about we do this? We had amazing people, sort of, it's miraculous in some ways had so many people step forward, they'd seen the brand. So um, a testament to uh, Naomi Ellis and Geraldine and Mary and Catherine who have built and continue to talk about our brand in amazing ways. So I suppose people resonated with what we're doing and we had so many people step forward. We're fully set up to be remote, to be fully digital. So back in the end of 2019 we were already using Slack, we're already using um, Zoom, we're already using packages like Notion, we're already good to go. So that um, our model then lends itself to widespread mass digital workforce I suppose. So we didn't obviously think at the beginning of 2020, all right, there'll be 200 people working at Banquet in the next couple of m months. Of course we didn't but I suppose the model of working that we'd set up and we're bootstrapping a startups, it wasn't like we have an office. I happen to work in a co working space now because I suppose a lot of people. Yeah, in Covid I was like there's only so much I can work at home. So I, I choose to go and work in a co working space which is around the corner for me, uh, in Hackney. But the rest of the team is fully remote. So the other, other full time person, Lawrence, he chooses to work at home in London. We catch up every six or seven weeks in, in person, more on the relational side. But everyone else is fully remote which means um, we can have um, a huge impact and I suppose that opens up lots of different opportunities to um, to, to recruit loads of different people because it means that no one has to be in London People can just open up their laptop and they can start helping from wherever they are. So I suppose banquet lends itself to people that are more digitally savvy, I suppose, you know, but that means a broad range of people from a broad range of skill sets. So when, when we erupted in Covid, I found myself, you know, I'm 43, but I found myself with m. People who are way more experience coming forward in their careers saying, I've got some time. I love what you're doing. How can I help? So for me personally, that's amazing. Leaning on more experienced people. And sometimes it can be lonely, uh, running, running something like this. But I'm thankful for an amazing, um, senior team around me. And then you have loads of people who are in their 20s. Like, at one point we had, you know, three or four people per social media challenge. And you sort of go on this journey when you're a founder, right of. And maybe me personally, of, like, struggling perfectionism of everything's got to be perfect. And I sort of had to make these decisions within covert if, like, if I don't let go of stuff. Bearing in mind I was the bottleneck for everything, right? So onboarding, new feedback. I was doing that, making an order for feedback. I was doing that. My dad was helping do that at the beginning, you know, so all this stuff happened and I was like, if I don't get out the way of this and give other people passwords for things and trust them and give them the confidence for them to go and do their best work, then we're not going to be able to do it. So it's. On one sense, it was scary. I suppose in Covid, it grew so quickly that were like, okay, let's just help people and nothing is perfect. We didn't have. We had enough going on to know what we wanted to do. We had a functional website. We talked to some suppliers. We kind of done enough where we knew kind of what we were doing, but we weren't so set in our ways that, oh, this has to be done like this. So so many things changed so quickly. It was, it was remarkable. And that's thanks to so many people that have been part of that. You know, so many people stepping forward to help with what was in their hands. Of like, right, I can do digital marketing. Can I help you? Yes, absolutely. You go and do that. I'm good at this. I want to go and do this. And we sort of. I had to let go of a lot of things and just trust that people would do it and I think it's, you know, lots of people within banquet still haven't met so we're going to try and do some uh, team drinks in a few months time but some people generally have been helping us for a couple of years still haven't met because dotted all about the country. So I think you know, remote first and whatever buzzwords you want to throw in by virtue of what we do, we are that and it's, it's always so humbling and amazing where people go, I love what you're doing, I want to help. So you know, my sincere thanks to everybody who is currently part of the team and has been because we wouldn't have been able to do it without you. And imagine starting there at the beginning of 2020 going here's my day. If only had all these people here and then being gifted that it's just amazing. Uh, it's amazing I went from you know a solo entrepreneur to suddenly we're having team calls in different departments with 30 people on each call. It's certainly been the growth curve of my life, that's for sure. Like starting a business, you think it's uh, that is very challenging on one level it's one of the hardest things I've ever done. But it's been a personal growth curve like no other at that time in lockdown up until now it hasn't, it's, it's forever. It's something that will always be with me forever. And you know, I'm so proud of and thankful that everyone has been involved in what we've been able to achieve.

Speaker A: No, it is so powerful and that's why I love working in this space. Um, because I think people like yourself, but also companies like yourself and when you have a really powerful mission it will naturally attract great people. Great people want to be using their skills and time to do good in the world. Um, and I think it's only going to increase in terms of that's the way like the talent market is going, is going to be working um, in impact. Um, um, in terms of last couple of questions from me, um, I know you mentioned like the long term goal which one of my questions was like you know success for you would be where there are no longer food banks in the uk. They're just not required in terms of like what you're doing over the next year or two to, to work towards that. Like is it. It sounds like it's very much a UK focused like plan. What, what are some of the big things you, you've got planned within the company over the next year or two.

Speaker B: Yeah. We'll continue to grow and, and continue to foster that spirit of innovation and collaboration. So you've mentioned on that. It's really true. We've had incredibly high caliber people want to help what we're doing. That's always been the heart of Banquet when we started. Right. Collaboration. Let's work with big businesses who have a brilliant supply chain of supplying food to people. Why would you want to do. Why would you want to create ourselves? Right. It would just use that. Let's work with governments. Let's work really closely with food banks. Let's really work closely with brilliant people who want to do stuff. Because if we do that together, we'll have amazing things happen. Um, you know, the thing to remember is that in the UK there are now more McDonald's than there are food banks. So think about that. You can see if a McDonald's on the, on every flipping corner. We could probably, um, go into other territories. If you think about what Banquet is, if you took, you know, five steps back, Banquet could say, well, we've actually just run a pilot here in the uk so we have looked at other territories. That's something that, uh, in years to come, I suspect would, we would want to explore with partners. If anyone's listening to this and wants a conversation about that, we'd be looking for strategic partners. Maybe some of the team would be able to do that. So if you think about Banquet's ability to execute is not based upon where they're the most hungry people. We would need an addressable, um, donor base and the infrastructure by which we can execute. So the uk, lots of people, high phone, high. You know, we're a wealthy country. There's high smartphone, Internet penetration. But there's always a but. There's also a robust supply chain of food retailers and suppliers. So actually for Banquet, it wouldn't be, let's go and expand to Bangladesh or sub Saharan Africa because we wouldn't be able to, because we need partnerships in order to execute that. But we might say actually a country like America, where sadly that is also one of the wealthiest countries in the world, but that also has a horrible food problem as well in the lockdowns. And now you could see there's more. There are 500 food banks, for example, just in the state of New York. So you think about what Banquet has pioneered here in the uk, you could probably see there's two people like us having a conversation probably in New York, uh, going, okay, how do we Help a local food banks, the home of uber, uh, high concentrated people. So on one level lots of people that are able to donate. On another, sadly, lots of people that need food. But the infrastructure to uh, execute is there, isn't it? You know, it's Target and Walmart in America. So however doing that my team will shoot me. Suggesting we're going to do that anytime soon is probably unrealistic. We've just started in the uk. You know, nearly a million people in the last year used a food bank for the first time. We, I think we're just getting started here. You know, we're approaching 300 food banks uh, here. We have other plans, um, to make our impact even greater this year and beyond. So we want to get to the point where we perhaps have 2000 food banks using banquet and all of the things then that we've discuss. We can further reduce waste, we can buy more food and we can feed more people. So I think whilst we've come an incredible distance and it's to be celebrated, you know, there's, there's, there's a great amount to climb here in the UK at the minute. Um, but yeah, we'd love to talk to anyone who wants to be part of our story here. Please get in touch. Or if you're uh, listening from another territory and what we're doing resonates, then we'd love to have a conversation as well.

Speaker A: 100. Then I think probably got time for one last question, so I'm going to skip to one of the, of the last ones I had which was, um, I noticed earlier this year you had the opportunity, I think to meet the monarch. Uh, you met King Charles, I believe. Just wondered if you could explain a little bit about kind of how that came about, what the experience was like. Was it a very quick handshake or did you get a chance to speak to him at all?

Speaker B: No, I did. So I kindly got invited to a special advent service, um, at the back end of last year, which was hosted by the Archbishop of Canterbury. And it later transpired that His Majesty would be there. So it's a huge honor and one that I will never forget. And yes, I did have a, a chance to have a little chat to him. Um, when I met him, he said he'd heard of Banquet and I replied that's. He said, I've heard of Banquet Robin. What a brilliant idea. To which I replied, thank you, Majesty. Tried not to get too excited. He's very passionate about solving uh, food poverty. So he's made some very Kind donations to other organizations. He made a very kind donation to food banks via our platform. And he also brought some very specific donations, um, to the service which we then gave to food banks on our platform. So he has his own food range. I'm sure people are aware. So we had this surreal moment where our team was emailing the palace, uh, telling them exactly what was, uh, required because we have that data. And so, yeah, arrived, um, at King's Cross Church in London where, where I'm part of the, the community, to find three specific bags of donations from His Majesty only moments before meeting the, uh, man himself. So I, I, yes, it was a complete honor. Love meeting him. I was struck by how genuine he was. I felt like I got a bit more air time with him because he did care about what we're doing. That zero waste resonated with him. He's aware of what the model does. And, yeah, we're very thankful for the kind donation that he made which enabled us to buy, uh, food for food banks on the platform.

Speaker A: Yeah, such, such an incredible moment. Not that you need any validation like that, but I don't think it's much higher in terms of, um, the monarch of a country recognizing the good work you're doing and contributing to it. And, um, come back to some of the points earlier. That must be great as well from like a PR and awareness perspective to have, like, someone like that endorsing what you're doing. So, yeah, yeah, that must be a massive moment.

Speaker B: It was huge. It's 1m that I'll never forget. Um, and yeah, I suppose I am just the front man on behalf of many brilliant people that are part of the Banquet story. They know who they are. And so, yeah, it's a huge honor and testament to a lot of people's work and energy. Right. So you've seen what we achieve and there's so many people behind the scenes that, um, make that happen.

Speaker A: 100%. Cool. Well, Robin, I think that's probably our time up. But just to kind of close things out, I guess, for anyone listening that's able to like, please go to the Banquet website. I'll put the link in the, uh, show notes, but it's www.banquet.co.uk givenow um, to donate, um, in terms of following Banquet and the good work you're doing on socials, Robin, where are you most active? Active.

Speaker B: We're, uh, on all the platforms, so on Instagram, we're at Banquet. That's P A N K U E T. On Twitter, we are Banquet UK and we're on Facebook. Please do. Uh, give us a. Follow, give us a. Like, give us a share. If you're able to donate. As Craig said there, it's Banquet. B A N k u e t.co.uk forward slash, give. Now, uh, please, uh, if you're able to donate, do. But if you're not, that's okay. Please, just, uh, spread the word is equally of importance as well.

Speaker A: There you go. Awesome. Well, Robin, look, it's been such a pleasure. Thanks again for agreeing to come on the show and, um, honestly, wish you all the best and look forward to seeing what Banquet did next couple of years. Cool.

Speaker B: Lovely to meet you and thank you so much for inviting me on. I really enjoyed it.

Speaker A: That's it for today's episode. Thanks for listening. And if you haven't done so already, please subscribe and leave a review. Better yet, tell a friend about the show. The more people we can get involved, the more hope we have for making the world a better place. This episode was brought to you by Craig Turner, produced by Jabril El Sahami, and sponsored by Jobs for Good. Until next time.