R2m investment helps Yebo Fresh expand township food distribution

The Scheinberg Relief Fund has donated R2m to online grocery delivery startup, Yebo Fresh, to help it expand its distribution capacity and food relief efforts in disadvantaged communities.

Started in 2018, Yebo Fresh delivers groceries directly to the customer in South African townships. Due to the startup’s experience in this regard, the company has a unique understanding of how to distribute food to these sorts of areas, which is what proved to be attractive to the Scheinberg Fund.

The Scheinberg Relief Fund was established by Israeli-Canadian businessman Mark Scheinberg and his family to support organisations and initiatives that are tackling the direct impact of the Covid-19 virus on vulnerable people and the communities they reside in.

The Scheinberg Relief Fund contribution has enabled the online retailer to expand its services to more townships with the acquisition of a larger warehousing facility with more than five times the combined space of the previous two. The donation also assisted the startup to source the equipment required to scale up fast, including adding recyclable food crates, roller cages, pallets, desks, laptops and other items.

On behalf of the Scheinberg Relief Fund, Mark Scheinberg said: “We’re extremely proud to have made this innovative ‘pay-it-forward’ contribution to Yebo Fresh, to enable them to scale their operations and empower them to deliver significantly more affordable, quality food to South African townships during this pandemic.”

The online grocery retailer also increased its capacity from 400 to 1,000 food parcels (the equivalent of 120,000 meals per day) with plans to further increase this to 2,000 packs a day and to recruit an additional 20 packing staff.

“When we started talking to the Scheinberg Relief Fund, we were operating from two small warehouses and were struggling to prepare 400 parcels a day. We are now at four to five times that volume and still growing week on week,” explained Jessica Boonstra, Founder of Yebo Fresh.

“We are privileged to receive this donation and we are honoured to be able to use it towards helping our communities during this incredibly difficult time. Our purpose has always been to create access to affordable quality food to underserved communities, and we are pleased to be able to do this at a much greater scale, especially at the moment when access to food has become a very real problem for many people,” she added.

The two organizations have agreed that as soon as Yebo Fresh reaches the agreed financial performance indicators, the donation shall be ‘paid forward’ to local communities through the additional distribution of food parcels.