This week marks 5 years of BOL. Although, due to the current lockdown we haven’t been able to celebrate in style, we are still thrilled to have made it to this milestone. The team thought that now would be a great time to take you through the amazing journey we have experienced so far.
BOL was born in 2015. Our founder, Paul Brown, along with a small crack team of ex-Innocent employees launched the business with the vision to make it easy for busy people to eat well – without compromising on taste, health and quality. Year one is always exciting, full of lessons… and hair cuts we will probably look back and laugh about in a few more years to come, but we knew it was the beginning of what was going to be a very exciting journey. We donated all of our first year’s profits to Action Against Hunger, a charity who we continue to work with to this day.
Our range all started with our humble Veg Pots - that believe it or not contained meat, fish and dairy.
In 2017, we made the decision to drop all recipes containing meat and fish from the portfolio. In doing so, the business halved in size overnight with an immediate decline in sales.
Ever since launch, year on year, we have bought new products to market. Our ‘shake it to make it’ Salad Jars hit the stores in 2017, followed by our 100% plant powered ‘Super Soups’ and ‘Dinner Boxes’ across 2018 and 2019 respectively.
In 2018 we made the decision to completely ditch dairy, making all of our products 100% plant based. The main driver behind this decision was that we wanted to be part of the solution, not the problem. With that, our new mission was born ‘To inspire the world to eat more plants’ – and we haven’t looked back since. The transition wasn’t easy for the business – however, thanks to all the amazing people who support us daily we bounced back and are delighted that to date we have made over 32.2 million portions of veg… and we don’t plan on stopping there.
Trying to be a business that is a force for good has been part of our DNA from the beginning that is why, in January’19 we also launched the first piece of bagasse packaging into the UK grocery world that is 95% plastic free. All our other packaging is up-cyclable and perfect to use around the house, especially through times like these. We encourage you to take part in our #DontWasteCreate campaign by sending us your snaps and sharing your ideas of how to use your BOL pots.
Another extremely exciting milestone for us, is that in 2019, we launched the BOL forest which will offset all of Team BOL’s personal and professional carbon footprint each year. We are growing tree’s that will last over a century and we can’t wait to watch it flourish over time.
Even though 2020 has got off to a peculiar start and we are not all together in The Veg Pad, learning and innovating to make sure we are always bringing you exciting new flavours and dishes is still at the top of our list of priorities. We promise that the team are still working on some very exciting innovations to bring to you in the second half of 2020…keep your eyes peeled for something epic.
COVID-19 has been an extremely tough period for all, of which, the BOL fam have all tried to do their bit to give back to the communities around us. Over the past few months, we have donated over 8,000 meals to the most vulnerable and key workers during these tough times and will continue to do so moving forward.
With the grocery world turned on its head, we had to seek out other ways in which we could get you your daily dose of veg without having to leave the house. That brings us to our most recent initiative to date, DeliveraBOL - same day London delivery of all your favourite BOL products. For those of you asking when we will be expanding our delivery to national…stay tuned.
Now that is a wrap folks, we could have kept going but thought it was best to keep it (fairly) short and sweet. To mark the occasion, tonight we will be throwing a virtual BOL quiz for the team so we can all raise a glass to how far we have come. This wouldn’t have been possible without the endless support of all our BOL fans so to everyone who has been a part of our journey so far, we wanted to say a massive thank you, you all rock.
We must dash now, as there is a big quiz to revise for…
Stay safe, eat plants, love life and stay tuned for what the next five years have in store.