Singapore start-up rolls out more healthy ready-to-eat meals with hospital kiosk

SINGAPORE – At an unmanned kiosk in the lobby of Gleneagles Hospital, customers can order chilled fresh food bowls, mixing and matching a minimum of five ingredients out of 15, and have the bowl assembled within 90 seconds.

A receipt printed upon collection lists the exact amount of carbohydrates, protein and fat, and the calorie count for each order.

The automated kiosk, the size of two large refrigerators side by side, monitors the supply of fresh ingredients in real time so they can be topped up when specific ingredients run low before the day is over.

It is the product of home-grown start-up freshpod, which aims to make healthy ready-to-eat meals available round the clock.

The four-year-old firm is in talks with more private hospitals, office buildings and universities to expand its reach.

“Healthy food shouldn’t be so expensive, and a lot of the reason why health food is expensive in Singapore is rentals,” the firm’s co-founder Stephen Dunstan, 50, said.

Mr Dunstan is a former investment banker with firms like JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs. His fellow co-founder Joseph Ryan, 42, had opened outlets including Five Guys for Zouk Group in Malaysia at Resorts World Genting.

The two co-founders said they are familiar with the restaurant industry’s pain points.

Coming out of the Covid-19 pandemic, they saw that rental and labour costs were rising, squeezing margins for businesses. At the same time, there was growing demand for healthy food, driven by increasing health consciousness.

Reimagining how healthy food could be delivered to consumers, Mr Dunstan and Mr Ryan founded freshpod in 2021.

After three years of research and development, the company’s first kiosk opened at Science Park in August 2024. It is now being upgraded. Its second kiosk opened at Grab’s one-north headquarters in December that year.

The kiosk at Gleneagles, the company’s third, was launched on Aug 18 for health-conscious staff and visitors at the hospital. The kiosk also caters to staff who work overnight shifts, as well as visitors who stay the night.

Unlike conventional vending machines, freshpod sells only fresh food, with prices starting at $8.50.

Each kiosk machine can hold up to 20 ingredients in 20 separate pods, as well as nine sauces and condiments. These items are kept at temperatures between 1 deg C and 5 deg C to prevent spoilage and are restocked daily.

When a customer makes an order, the ingredients are assembled in a serving bowl as the pods dispense portions of 60g for each ingredient.

An individual pod can hold up to 5kg of ingredients, with an alert sent when a pod has only 20 per cent of its ingredient remaining. Unsold ingredients are replaced daily.

This pod-based mechanism minimises waste in preparation compared with a scooping system, which may result in ingredients falling outside the bowl. It also eliminates the chance of cross-contamination with allergens.

Freshpod’s hardware and software are developed and custom-built in Singapore by the company’s own engineering team of six people. It declined to reveal its investment in the system.

Developing locally allows freshpod to make tweaks to its system without relying on foreign suppliers. A text-message system is embedded in the kiosk to alert customers when their food is ready.

The patent for freshpod’s hardware and software, filed in Singapore, is still pending.

“We can make it to our own requirements,” Mr Dunstan said of the hardware and software.