Case | Venner

Venner’s new business initiatives bring nutritious food to the tables of low-income families

Eat well and do good – a delightful combination around which Venner Ltd has built its business. The company’s mission is to ensure everyone gets to eat healthy and nutritious food and has the skills to prepare it. Indeed, Venner has become familiar with food boxes distributed to families in need that consumers and businesses have been able to sponsor. In fall 2020, however, Venner decided to expand its offering with seasonal food boxes containing seasonal vegetarian ingredients and recipes that companies can order to support the well-being of their staff and stakeholders. At the same time, each box order allows for three meals for a low-income family. To support the service, Venner needed ordering and redemption systems for the seasonal food boxes, which Sofokus was happy to support in developing and piloting. Thanks to the business scaled to new distribution channels, Venner can reach more and more families.

Promoting food equality

Venner was born in 2018, when founders Emilia Järvinen and Tuulia Järvinen became concerned about the unequal nutrition of Finnish families. Nutrition is the foundation of well-being, so it significally affects the children’s starting points and opportunities in life. Good nutrition supports development and learning, while poor diet causes numerous health problems. As a social enterprise, Venner’s food concept helps vulnerable families with children in collaboration with organisational, municipal and foundation sectors. In addition, Venner promotes Finnish food education by teaching and inspiring families with the food boxes containing ingredients and recipes. Families are introduced to affordable, nutritious and sustainable food, as well as encouraged for cooking and dining together as a family. To date, 17,000 Venner food boxes have been delivered to those in need.

The seasonal food box stems from the idea of how to help families more effectively – and, at the same time, encourage helpers to eat better themselves. Many responsible partner companies ordered Venner food boxes for families and received vegetarian food inspiration from the Venner Kitchen service. Alongside helping, however, there was a lot of demand for food boxes similar to the Venner box that helper companies could order for themselves, their staff, or their stakeholders. Action was taken in autumn 2020, as our paths had already met earlier in the spring at KasvuOpen. At that time, the enthusiasm for cooperation sparked quickly because guaranteeing nutritious food and a healthy life is a matter of heart for us at Sofokus too.