AN EDINBURGH entrepreneur has ambitions to work with local authorities and the NHS to provide nutritious food packs for older people to help them get back to full health following a stay in hospital.

Kevin Dorren, chief executive and co-founder of Parsley Box, which delivers ready meals to older customers, described the social care system in the UK as “broken” and said new ways of tackling the challenges presented by an ageing population had to be addressed.

Speaking on the Go Radio Business Show with Hunter & Haughey, Mr Dorren said: “Councils don’t have funding for things like meals on wheels now so we are looking to plug the gap.

“We do have a mission and yes, we are a profit-making organisation, but we want to work with third parties on things like NHS discharge packs to help get people out of hospital beds and work with councils to look after vulnerable and elderly people who need nutrition.”

Lord Willie Haughey, a Labour peer, agreed that the issue required urgent action. “Within social services, people have to be open to new ideas,” he said. “We have to come with innovative ways to do this because the cost is increasing every year and this is going to become a major problem.”

Noting that Parsley Box’s business model also “saves time, energy and food waste”, he added: “There are a lot of environmental benefits with our products too.”

Parsley Box, which supplies an extensive range of hearty and nutritious ready meals such as shepherd’s pie, beef casserole and chilli con carne, along with a soups, puddings and meals that are suitable for vegetarians with gluten-free and high-fibre options.

Mr Dorren said: “The average age of our customers is 77 and they mainly like to telephone us with their order.”

Admitting that the company was a “beneficiary” of the pandemic, Mr Dorren told the show: “We launched the business in 2017 then in 2019/20 this thing called Covid happened and everybody had to stay at home – we increased our staff from 30 to 150 in a week.

Parsley Box chief prepared for shift from famine to feast

“In that panic moment there were a lot people asking ‘what am I going to do about mum or dad’ – we had to respond to that and we had to scale up to answer phones, pack orders and get our suppliers to ramp up production. We were working 24 hours a day during that period and show we could scale the business, which was a positive thing.

“Our growth continued after Covid and a lot of our customers stayed with us although some didn’t, but like a lot of businesses we were a beneficiary of Covid – we now have a loyal customer base of 50,000-60,000 customers and continue to grow.”

Asked about his early career and entrepreneurial journey, Mr Dorren spoke about his first business Orbital, a software company he launched with colleagues Calum Smeaton – who went on to found tech group TVSquared – and Alan Slater. “We famously went to the Scottish Tourist Board (now VisitScotland) and said that all bookings would happen over the internet – to be told that it would never catch on,” he laughed.

It was after speaking to tech entrepreneur Ian Ritchie that the trio relocated from Scotland to California. “He gave us an angel cheque and taught us about raising capital – and advised us to ‘go west’, not to Glasgow but to the US – so we moved to Silicon Valley when my daughter was just eight weeks old.

Parsley Box trims its sails as demand ebbs for ready meal delivery services

“It was like ‘Silicon Valley – The Series – with three men and a baby walking along the street and people asking ‘which one’s the father’. Seriously though, it was an exciting time and a great experience as it was the beginning of the dot.com boom. We had engineering in Edinburgh and sales and marketing in the US.

“Crawford Beveridge, who was chief executive of Scottish Enterprise at the time, gave us an introduction to Scott McNealy, the founder of Sun Microsystems and he told us to speak to Eric Schmidt, who was his CTO and had just left [he went on to become CEO of Google].

“It was like Wayne’s World – ‘we’re not worthy’ – as we were going around meeting all these amazing people who were so inspiring. In some ways, they didn’t care where we were from but they all loved Scotland and wanted to help us because we were a bit unusual in terms of what we were doing.”

Returning to Scotland after four years, they took Orbital public – three weeks before the dot.com crash. “Timing is everything and we got it wrong,” Mr Dorren admitted. “Our share price went pretty much down the toilet and we sold the business. It was a difficult period to go through.”

From there, he went into business with his lawyer with a firm called Diet Chef – a food delivery business inspired by the US weight loss company Nutrisystem.