Harrison Jones won’t be the first Apprentice star to try his hand in the food business, with two other recent contestants launching a fried chicken restaurant and an ice cream parlour earlier this year.
The former office equipment salesman will be hoping his foray into food is more straightforward than the tough start suffered by Alana Spencer, however, with the 2016 winner saying she was “totally mortified” when the Food Standards Agency ordered her to recall her cakes and bars over labelling inaccuracies.
Unlike these three projects, Jones’ soon-to-be-launched business has a strong health focus, delivering balanced, affordable meals to customers ranging from gym-goers to schoolchildren to office workers. Meals will be priced at around £5-5.50 for a portion of 500g, with smaller-sized children’s meals available for £3-3.50.
The service might sound a bit like Deliveroo or Just Eat but there’s an important difference: the meals have been carefully composed for their health benefits and prepared by a former chef at Gordon Ramsay’s Savoy Grill in London, Vingaudas Raulinaitis. “You pick from a list of set dishes; we do two deliveries a day so it’s always fresh; and you get a healthy meal, prepared by a Michelin-star chef, delivered to your door,” says Jones.
Western International wholesaler WT Hill will supply fresh fruit and veg for the meals and fruit shakes, while the company’s branding will be organised by a friend who has helped develop the branding for large retail chains. “Other people who have started gym meal prep companies have started with the food and tried to grow from there,” Jones says, “whereas we’ve started with the brand. We’re looking to promote the business in a few different ways, including advertising on social media.”
The Apprentice star, who went on the show with the ambition of launching the meal prep business, is confident there’s a gap in the market for his new company. “When you type healthy food into Google there isn’t much in the way of delivery options,” he says. “It hasn’t really been pushed much yet, but I think it’s going to increase now, especially since we’re now so focused on the benefits of eating healthily.”
On the website customers will be able to check things like how many calories there are in each meal and how many they should be eating based on their age and sex if they want to lose weight. However, the service isn’t just aimed at weight watchers and gym-goers, it is also targeting schoolchildren and companies that want to feed staff at meetings and events.
“Rather than giving their children a packed lunch or lunch money, parents can order food for their kids from us and it will be delivered direct to the school for them to collect,” explains Jones, adding that transport costs will be affordable since multiple orders can be delivered in one go. “It’s ideal because you know what your children are eating, it’s healthy food, and the PR we’re doing is going to mean that children want to eat it.”
The company’s approach will be to take popular meals that children eat anyway and make them “super healthy”, rather than giving kids food they’ve never heard of before. “They just wouldn’t want to eat it,” Jones says.
The entrepreneur has already spoken to a handful of schools about the idea, with more meetings in the pipeline, and he is confident “it’s going to be big”. “We want to change the way the nation’s eating,” Jones says. “If we can get into schools, then the next generation will be aware of Equals Health and pass it down. That’s how I see us becoming a household name.”
Currently, the business has capacity to prepare and deliver 10,000-15,000 meals a month from its kitchen in Charlton, south-east London, but in time Jones is keen to scale up. The Apprentice star has brought investor Alan Betteridge on board with that goal in mind, explaining that he started his own builders’ merchants and grew the business to a turnover of £50-60 million.
With Equals Health set to be up and running by June, following a star-studded launch party at the beginning of the month, Jones is full of confidence. “We want to become the household name in healthy eating and I’m confident we can do just that,” he says. “I don’t really think anyone’s secured themselves in the healthy meal prep market yet.”
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