Foorban, smart fridges and ever-changing menus for the company lunch break

'Work smart, eat smarter': with this slogan Foorban is conquering Italy. There are already more than 700 small 'smart fridges' (one square metre in size) installed at client companies where employees can choose what they want for lunch every day. The menu changes every week and offers 10 different dishes, healthy and balanced, studied by nutritionists and made with seasonal ingredients, ready to be eaten directly in the office. A service within reach of your smartphone, thanks to an app that allows you to consult the menu and unlock the fridge in a matter of seconds. So, an innovative and 'problem solving' approach to tackling the lunch break at work, which is used by over 70,000 unique customers for 100,000 meals a month. Quite an achievement for the start-up that was launched in 2016 and has grown at an average annual rate of 100% over the last three years. A performance that has earned it 37th position in the 2026 Growth Leaders ranking compiled by Sole 24 Ore and Statista and second in food, thanks to a Cagr of 86.40 per cent. In 2024, Foorban reached financial break-even and recorded EUR 8 million in turnover, but the goal is to reach EUR 30 million by 2028. In order to achieve this ambitious goal, the company raised two million euros in investments at the beginning of the year, provided by a pool of family offices and partners who have long supported the company. These new resources are destined to accelerate expansion into new areas (today Foorban is only active in Lombardy, Piedmont, Emilia-Romagna and the metropolitan city of Rome), and to launch new logistics hubs, such as the one in Bologna, which has just been opened and which joins those in Milan and Rome. The new financial injection also serves to start the technological development of smart refrigerators and to launch new services to complete the food offer for companies. "Our vision," explains Marco Mottolese, CEO and co-founder of Foorban, "is to become a 360° corporate wellbeing partner for Italian SMEs and large companies, accompanying them in their employee wellbeing journey, starting with education on healthy eating and a digital experience built around the needs of the employee. We aim, with this new round, to reach more than a thousand companies by 2028, for a total of 200,000 people and 15,000 meals served every day". Foorban also offers corporate wellbeing programmes ranging from nutrition education workshops in the office to team engagement events and food corners in large companies.