An interview with Nick Hucker, the CEO of Preoday, one of Forward Fooding’s top 500 Food Tech startups.

Nick Hucker, CEO of Preoday

It’s time to put a face to the name…

We asked our FoodTech500 top-runners to give us a bit of insight into how they started out as a company and their thoughts on the role of technology in Food innovation. Meet Nick, the CEO of Preoday, a B2B pre-ordering platform for integrated e-commerce solutions for businesses serving food and beverages. Let’s see what he had to say.

So tell us a little bit more about you! Where did the idea for your FoodTech company come from?

Nick: Strange as it might sound, the idea for Preoday came from the technology used on the trading floor platforms in the City of London.

Our founder, Andrew White, pulled together a team of financial services technology (FST) experts to make a difference to the food industry. They each shared the realisation that the retail sector was at least 5 years behind fintech in terms of the technology it used, and that food operations were another 5-10 years behind retail. It was time to help it catch up.

Under Andrew’s initial guidance we built a senior management team of experts from the FST space, ones that had experience of delivering mission-critical enterprise platforms to some of the biggest financial services (banks and insurance companies) in the world. Together they created the cloud-based digital ordering platform that would become Preoday. Among that original team was Scott Davidson, ex-Goldman Sachs who remains a key driver of the company and holds the position of CTO.

When developing our technology, we didn’t want to go to market too soon – as we had seen others do – and so spent two years perfecting the platform, eventually going out to clients in 2014. Since that time, the mission of our company has been clear, to help food businesses around the world open new revenue streams, streamline operations and improve relationships with customers through digital ordering. The secondary outcome of this being the ability to thrive when faced with increasing market competition.

 In 2017, Andrew brought me in to deliver upon his vision of expansion and to help the company accelerate along the road to fulfilling its potential. When Andrew passed away in the early part of 2018, I stepped into the role of CEO. As CEO, I have forged partnerships with some of the biggest technology companies in the market and attracted the business of major companies around the world.

How is tech central to your business?

Nick: Preoday is a technology platform first and foremost, it and our amazing customer success team are the key to the success and growth of our business. 

We have an incredible product and development team, constantly enhancing and adding to the platform. Those enhancements are released every two weeks meaning that the technology is constantly improving and never stagnates. The adaptations we make depend on market movements but also the specific requests of our client base. If there’s something they want developed, and it makes sense for the platform, we add it to our roadmap. That development will then be made available to everyone on the platform, not just the company that originally requested it. 

The front-end of our technology is accessed by the end-user – normally that is the consumer. It appears as an app or a web portal. The operators also see the back-end, which included kitchen and order management as well as data analytics. We purposefully have a flexible API which means we integrate with a wide range of complementary technology businesses that can enhance our offering even further. 

Technology is equally important to behind-the-scenes operations at Preoday. We use technology to communicate, to plan and organise and to connect with our clients on a daily basis.

Why do you think it’s important to see the food industry embrace tech?

Nick: The world is changing. With rarely an exception, every industry is digitising to some extent. The food industry needs to do the same, if only to manage its position within the supply chain and to keep up with global needs.

In a world increasingly populated by digital natives, it is technology that is assisting businesses in meeting consumer demand. It’s helping to counteract the strain of agriculture on natural resources and is enabling businesses of all sizes to attract fresh sources of revenue.

To maintain a productive supply chain, from growth to plate, tight collaboration is needed. Whether it’s farmers, marketers or chefs, a digital strategy allows data collection and analysis which feeds into better decision making processes. It improves operations and enhances productivity, and more than that, it leads to the creation of strong, lasting partnerships along the chain. Essential at a time when changing customer tastes are making things more complex.

Quite simply, world markets are moving too fast to rely purely on traditional tools and methods anymore. Change is inevitable and must be embraced if the food industry is going to grow and flourish.

Want to know more? See Preoday’s full profile here.

Congratulations again to Preoday for ranking 6th in the category “Food Safety & Traceability” of the Foodtech 500 list.

To find out who else made it into the FoodTech 500; the top Food Tech companies in the world, click here.

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