Our latest London food-to-go insights & meet up session – key takeaways

The best of what's new in food-to-go under one roof. That's the goal of our insights and meet up sessions.

And last month we held our bi-annual food-to-go insights and meet up session in London. We've been running this session for two years now, designed to bring the food-to-go community together to share learnings and best practice, as well as to create new contacts. The session is run by Gavin Rothwell and Matt Cundrick, but special guests provide the gold dust - this time in the form of STACH's MD Mike Boks and Noah's CEO and Founder Daniel Baven.

In case you couldn't make the session, here are our key takeouts:

Food retailers retain a massive opportunity in developing counter-led food-to-go, but need to provide the right support and focus.

Matt provided a great study for us of how Keells in Sri Lanka have created an impactful, differentiated and profitable proposition in  this space. Operational effectiveness combined with counter-led impact (plus to be fair, implementing many more of our food-to-go ground rules). Gavin also spoke about some fantastic US examples here. In terms of meeting a wide breadth of food and drink missions effectively, he highlighted what could be his store of the year so far in Metropolitan Market, Seattle. He also spoke about how Hispanic supermarkets in California - and how they're pushing ever deeper into food-to-go and wider hospitality - in the case of Mercado Gonzalez by Northgate Market opening a new concept incorporating a fully fledged food hall. Our first guiding principle here is to start with the right P&L targets - most successful food-to-go concepts would have disappeared in their early years of business had they been working to retail P&Ls and KPIs.

Creating a differentiated food-to-go concept that’s primed to scale internationally

STACH currently operates around 20 locations in the Netherlands. But it's also just opened in Paris and has lofty ambitions for growth. It's a differentiated hybrid food-to-go/ convenience concept that we've had the pleasure of taking many safari groups to in Amsterdam and Utrecht. So we were delighted to welcome Mike Boks, MD of STACH to tell us more. He explained the STACH ethos, speaking about how they’re targeting different – and emerging – missions, as well as how they’re targeting Gen Z spend. The business places a lot of focus on being on top of and embracing new trends, as such it’s a great format to visit and also – if you’re an innovative supplier – then talk to Mike about being part of their success..

Bringing better food-to-go to more locations and enabling better selling across the full range in those outlets

Businesses like Noahs are already shaping the future of food-to-go. CEO and Founder Daniel Baven talked us through their evolution, explaining Noahs' aims to be the Spotify of food. The three tier platform they bring is impressive, comprising of their technology platform, their brand platform and the multi-brand kitchens. This is already causing significant waves in the Danish market, not least through their collaboration with Q8, which is now being extended to cover 75 locations across Belgium and Luxembourg. They're already working with a wide range of partners in Denmark and have huge potential to expand further.

Don't neglect your food-to-go growth toolkit

Overall the pace of development feels to be accelerating in 2025 in food-to-go. Businesses are making significant choices around their future proposition development, identifying where they should twist and where they should stick, and to be fair there’s a lot of areas where businesses are looking to twist to open up new revenue streams. We spoke about new concept development from the likes of Starbucks, Costa and Pret, the continuing rise and evolution of bowls, how sandwiches are being reinvented, how tech is supporting more efficient solutions and how operators can benefit. Matt and Gavin are now talking to a number of operators and suppliers around supporting the growth of their individual food-to-go toolkit, get in touch if you want to find out more.

An optimistic outlook for those who are prepared

The summary of our conversations this year about the market overall in one word? Mixed. And maintaining success can be tough even for the strongest operators, if they’re slow to respond to evolving customer needs. But there are many very positive fundamentals in place. Our reinvention of the 4 Ps of marketing for food-to-go is very much designed as a platform to help businesses prosper in this environment. Proposition, product, people and property are key levers that we use to evaluate and support businesses through our work.

Like this article? Then we think you'll like this article, covering food-to-go trends in London , as well. Take it further and deepen your understanding of the potential opportunities by booking a place or two on our London food-to-go safari on Wednesday 23 September. We're also in Dublin on Thursday 13 November.

Don't like to share? We can set up a safari for you and your team, get in touch with Gavin  to find out more.

Want to stay on the ball? Send Gavin an email to receive our weekly retail and food-to-go update.

Want to talk? Then get in touch with Matt or get in touch with Gavin?