How Greens and More cashed in on its subscriptions format and launched a new vertical during the pandemic
In 2019 Preeti Sinha founded Greens and More as a WhatsApp group to sell homemade salads. Now, it’s a full-fledged health startup with QSRs and a cloud kitchen.
Preeti Sinha returned to India after a stint in the US. After two pregnancies, she had not returned to her normal weight, and health became a concern.
Deciding to take matters into her own hands, she began following a combination of diet and exercise and lost 15 kg in a few months.
“Wellness is 80 percent nutrition and 20 percent exercise. Knowing this, I switched to local produce and a diet full of vegetables, fruits, nuts, and greens — all partly cooked to retain the maximum nutrition,” she says.
While researching healthy options, she found that when it came to functional food items in retail stores, there was very little in the fresh food space.
Seeing a potential for the right product, in 2019, she launched Greens and More, a WhatsApp group offering fresh salads to her community in Hyderabad.
“I first prepared a salad and approached a group of fitness enthusiasts to taste it and give feedback. I created a WhatsApp group of interested customers and started selling different types of salads,” she recalls.
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Launching a company
After a pilot of eight months, Preeti registered the company and roped in nutritionists and health experts to fine-tune the salads according to taste and nutritious value.
“We contacted farmers to grow produce naturally, and hired the best chefs to bring in taste and appeal, followed by outsourcing logistics for timely deliveries. In no time, the team was set and operations kicked off,” she says.
Greens and More’s core offering are green meals (salads) designed according to lifestyle goals (weight loss, inch loss, visceral fat, post-workout, low carb intake, high fibre, pregnancy, nursing, diabetes, thyroid, or even fertility).
In July 2019, Preeti opened her first QSR (Quick Service Restaurant) at Salarpuria Sattva in Hyderabad, which was followed by another QSR at the Wells Fargo headquarters, as well as a dine-in flagship café.
“While our salads were popular, we also modified other dishes to make them healthy – like wheat pasta, wheat spaghetti, and wheat-based pizza,” Preeti says.
Fighting the pandemic
When COVID-19 struck, the QSRs and the dine-in café had to be shut down and Preeti reverted to the original subscriptions model, and saw an increase in demand. She also started gmfresh.in, a website that offers salad kits and small serving services of fresh ingredients for those who want to whip up something on their own.
During this time, Greens and More also began operating its cloud kitchen on Swiggy and Zomato, even becoming a “trusted partner” with the former.
Preeti works extensively with WhatsApp in different aspects of her business. Besides a group for subscriptions, she has also integrated WhatsApp into the GMFresh website.
“The moment someone abandons a cart on GMFresh, a WhatsApp message with a discount code immediately goes out to bring the customer back to shop. In our Instagram and Facebook posts, we also provide a WhatsApp link, and answer all our queries through it,” she says.
Preeti is looking forward to her QSRs opening again soon, and also launching one at the Microsoft headquarters in Hyderabad once the situation returns to normal.
“We are also looking at franchisees and hope to expand to Bengaluru soon,” she adds.