‘Luckily I had an all right boss’: Flight Centre worker uses office mailroom to kickstart $1.5 million company

Conor Reynolds was working at Flight Centre when he had an idea for a business. Thanks to an “all right boss” he built it from the office mailroom.

A former Flight Centre worker who kickstarted his own company using a spare bedroom and the office mailroom credits an “all right boss” for his $1.5 million success.

Conor Reynolds was working in marketing for the travel company when he decided to pursue his dream of a “snacking empire”, having identified a gap in the market for healthy office snacks.

The 27-year-old started Snackwize — a subscription company that delivers boxes full of hand-picked healthy snacks to offices on a weekly, fortnightly or monthly basis — running it as a side project for the first 18 months.

“We started in the spare bedroom of my apartment,” he said. “I was working full-time, I’d have to get stock sent to work, (take it home to pack), on the weekend drive to work, take it back to the mailroom to be picked up. Luckily I had an all right boss. He said, ‘OK mate, as long as you don’t let it take over your full-time work.’”

Three years later, Snackwize has about 100 clients across Australia and New Zealand including Deloitte, Uber, BDO, Hutchinson Builders, Red Bull, Samsung, Universal Studios, the MCG, Queensland Rugby League and Canva.

The business last year raised $500,000 in venture capital funding from Adrian DiMarco, founder of software firm TechnologyOne, on a valuation of $1 million.

Mr Reynolds says the business is now valued at $1.5 million.

The Brisbane native said he first got the idea while in charge of bringing in health initiatives to make sure employees were engaged in the workplace.

“Things like healthy eating challenges, 12-week challenges, fitness programs,” he said. “A lot of my time was spent going interstate to visit offices. I saw the majority of employers had all the great gyms on site but what they lacked was access to healthy, nutritious food on-site, particularly snacks. There would be a box of fruit and then a vending machine full of artificial food.”

Mr Reynolds left his Flight Centre job in July 2017. Picture: Joseph Byford

Snackwize boxes start from $179 a month for 65 snacks, with options for 100-, 200- and 400-snack boxes. The most popular is the 100-snack box.

“The majority of our snacks would retail for $3.50 to $4, you’re getting on average $2.20 per snack,” Mr Reynolds said.

“Plant-based protein balls and trail mix, paleo bars, cashews, almonds, preservative-free beef jerky, coconut chips. We have up to 40 different types of snacks in each box. Curation is a really big part of our service, that’s why our customers love us.”

He said both established and up-and-coming brands were always coming on board.

“They like that, they get into a new market,” he said. “Sometimes suppliers approach us or we approach them. At the start (it was more the latter) but now they ask how they can get into our boxes.”

Brands have to be Australian and “free of artificial colours, flavours and preservatives”.

“It’s not just a nice thing to have, there has actually been a shift in demand in the workplace,” he said. “Forty-six per cent of Australians are now snacking in favour of lunch, that’s a huge shift.”

Mr Reynolds said it was “pretty tough” at first balancing his “crazy” working hours with trying to grow the completely bootstrapped business.

He snagged his first customer by simply sending them an email.

“I said, ‘Would you be interested in healthy snacks?’,” he said.

“They said, ‘Sure let’s have a chat,’ so I went in there. It’s come a long way since then but it started literally with a cold email to a company.”

He finally quit his Flight Centre job in July 2017.

“We got to a point, about 50 customers, where I said I can’t do this now,” he said. “I’m bringing in revenue, I’ve got to do operations, fulfilment, it was a full-time job. It just got way too much. I had to make the decision to grow and scale.”

The $500,000 investment will be used to scale the Newstead-based business by hiring two full-time employees ahead of an expansion into home delivery.

“That’s what we’ve used that to grow and expand our team, marketing and sales efforts, hire a salesperson and account manager,” he said.

While declining to disclose revenue, Mr Reynolds said Snackwize was growing customers by 20-30 per cent a month and was aiming for 300 recurring customers in the next year-and-a-half. His 10-year plan is to have 5000 recurring customers.

“We’re taking it step by step,” he said.

[e-mail]