A Tyneside recipe box start-up could soon be launching its chef-led meals in supermarkets, on the back of a £200,000 crowdfund campaign. Joshy Jin, a Newcastle University graduate, established Team Valley-based WowzaBox during the pandemic to fill a gap in the market for customers wanting to enjoy restaurant-standard food at home. Mr Jin spent two years refining his business plan before launching in 2022, with his team of staff preparing the ingredients before they are packed and distributed across the UK. Now the authentic Chinese recipe box business is planning to expand its product offering, which will create new opportunities and jobs, having grown turnover to more than £675,000 in just over a year. Mr Jin is working with crowdfunding platform Seedrs to attract investors to enable it to expand the firm’s services, increase production volumes and eventually secure new premises to boost capacity for future growth. He plans to double the workforce from five to 10 staff, while also investing in new automation technology. Part of the investment will also be used to create a line of meals and ingredients for supermarkets – a move that needs specialist equipment to meet the requirements of potential supermarket customers. Mr Jin said: “We are confident that the crowdfunding will help us scale our operations to increase productions through investment in people, facilities and technology. The recipe box market is worth around £1.4bn in the
UK, and we have carved a real niche in the recipe box market, which customers are really responding to. “No other business offers authentic restaurant quality Chinese ingredients, especially those that are prepared in such a way that cuts the cooking time for customers to around 10 minutes. We also believe that there is a gap in the market for branded premium offerings in the fresh Chinese food category and we are making the first steps to being able to produce a range that would be available through supermarkets. “We have had early discussions with a number of local retailers and with an investment in R&D and production capabilities we will be able to offer the public something unique in both recipe box form and from a supermarket.”