A food delivery service described as “an Ocado for independent shops” has closed after nine years.
Hubbub, founded by former human rights barrister Marisa Leaf, specialised in delivering from local bakers, butchers and greengrocers. It was successful but struggled to survive in the cut-throat home shopping market.
Ms Leaf wrote to customers: “Despite believing ours is the most profitable — or, more accurately, the least unprofitable —model of its type, ultimately we simply couldn’t grow big enough fast enough to be sustainable.”
Oxford graduate Ms Leaf, 38, gave up her legal career to launch the service in 2008, teaching herself to drive in 10 days to do the first delivery rounds in her boyfriend’s Mini. Today, she said: “I feel we have made a difference and what we have done over the past nine years is pretty amazing. If only more customers had given us a go or decided to do more orders than they did then we wouldn’t be where we are. Ultimately our message just couldn’t cut through when the supermarkets are all over the airwaves all the time.”
Hubbub will make its final deliveries tomorrow. Its closure comes eight months after Amazon launched its own grocery delivery service, Amazon Fresh, which has tie-ups with 50 London independent food suppliers.
Originally based in Islington, Hubbub expanded across much of London to employ 17 staff plus a fleet of delivery drivers. It had plans to move into 65 cities across Europe. But the firm’s last set of accounts, filed last July, reveal it had made a loss of almost £1 million in the previous tax year.
Ms Leaf said two large funding deals had fallen through “at the eleventh hour” last summer.
