Hi there! We’re Jo & Ming, two foodies passionate about sustainability, and the co-founders of CauliBox.
We are on a mission to empower the foodservice industry to eliminate single-use food packaging through a reuse system that eases operations and cuts costs.
Sustainability & Impact
→ We are driven by a sustainability mission: reducing global waste with reusable food & drink packaging. Positive impact is at the heart of everything we do.
Innovation & Creativity
→ We're here to disrupt the status quo. We get creative to achieve our goals and believe in the role we play. We explore unconventional methods, test new approaches, and aren't afraid to DIY.
Smarts & Technology
→ We are driven by a sustainability mission: reducing global waste with reusable food & drink packaging. Positive impact is at the heart of everything we do.
Reliability & Collaboration
→ We are a small collaborative team, connected to the businesses we serve to offer our partners and users an honest and reliable solution. We do not accuse, we empower. We are approachable and accessible.
Our story
Cauli Ltd. was founded in 2019 by Jo & Ming, two foodies who enjoyed the vibrant street food scene around their offices in London and saw the constant piling up of food packaging in their street and office bins. Even restaurants who had started using compostable packaging were lacking the infrastructure to ensure their packaging would not end up in landfill with general waste. They soon found out that around 11 billion pieces of packaging waste are produced every year from food-on-the-go; the delicious takeaways they loved came with a hefty environmental price. Realizing there was no available solution, they decided to take the matter into their own hands.
They started grabbing after-work drinks and meeting for weekend brainstorming sessions to design the solution. Countless hours of ideas later, they had it! Armed with 20 lunch boxes, a clipboard and the dream of London's first reusable lunchbox scheme, they marched over to a food market to recruit members for the first trial. From there, a 10-person trial snowballed into a 250-strong membership scheme with over 10 participating vendors in an extended trial with Westminster City Council, looking to expand to all street markets in the borough. That was in 2019!
Cauli has since grown into a robust tech-enabled reusable food and drink packaging solution for workplace and event dining, earning recognition and awards along the way. In just two and a half years, we pioneered QR scanning in Europe for reusable borrows and returns. We now provide reusables-as-a-service for some of the world's largest offices, serving over 10,000 active users. We've forged over 20 partnerships, including staff restaurants at Societe Generale and other financial institutions in Canary Wharf, as well as various NHS Trust hospitals. Our clients receive impact stats to help them meet net zero goals, while providing their employees with a sustainability perk that increases individual awareness and engagement.
