My Food Bag offers customers and staff first dibs for shares in the company

Thursday, 14 January 2021

Chef and My Food Bag co-founder Nadia Lim has managed to work harder than ever during lockdown, producing a whole TV series on a smartphone with her husband.

My Food Bag is asking its customers and staff if they are interested in buying shares in the company.

The meal kit delivery company emailed its 315,000 customers and staff on Friday, offering priority allocation in an initial public offering (IPO), while it decides whether to list publicly in the first half of this year.

My Food Bag chief executive Kevin Bowler said if the business listed it would do so on both the New Zealand and Australian stock markets.

Bowler said this was the next milestone for the company, which had delivered more than 84 million meals across its four brands, My Food Bag, Bargain Box, Fresh Start and Made, since it launched in 2013.

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The meal kit delivery company is gauging interest from customers and staff about whether they would consider buying shares in the company.

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My Food Bag co-founders Cecilia and James Robinson still own part of the company, and last year started a new healthcare business.

Customers who subscribed to the service before March 1 could also participate in the priority registration process.

Registering an indication of interest did not commit potential investors to buy the shares.

Hamilton Hindin Green investment adviser Jeremy Sullivan said offering staff shares was good for a company because workers tended to be more engaged and stayed longer.

However, if the company offered shares that were escrowed for a short term, like three years, then it could be a poor investment, he said.

Sullivan said shareholders could either make a return through dividends, or from capital gains by selling the shares at a higher price than they bought them.

But My Food Bag had not announced how the IPO will be structured.

The company had 13 shareholders, including companies and trusts, and was still partly owned by co-founders James Robinson, Cecilia Robinson, Theresa Gattung and Nadia Lim.

The Robinsons started their own healthcare clinic last year.