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Lollipop

Your smart shopping assistant, helping you eat better one meal at a time.

21-100 employees
  • B2C
  • Retail
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Food
  • Productivity
  • SaaS
Waterside Apartment, Clink Wharf, Clink St, London SE1 9DG, UK

Company mission

To change the trajectory of human and planetary health through food, by building a smart shopping assistant to help the world eat better, effortlessly.

Top investors

58% female employees

Otta's take

Theo Margolius headshot

Theo Margolius

COO of Otta

Lollipop is building a smart grocery shopping assistant to reduce the stress and time spent on the weekly shop. This AI-powered assistant aims to relieve several pressures around grocery shopping - helping working parents shop whilst reducing food waste.

The product will allow easy planning around recipes and needs, shopping at different supermarkets and in different formats - individual items, recipe boxes, ready-meals. The founding team has impressive experience building and scaling businesses such as Monzo and Curve, and is bringing this expertise to Lollipop.

In addition, the company is backed by investors who have been involved in the growth of organisations such as Microsoft, Graze, Bulb, and Deliveroo. Further, recent funding secured, and a new deal struck with leading grocer Sainsbury's, are positive markers for Lollipop's future. Though Lollipop is at an early stage, its growth will be tracked with anticipation as it harnesses the opportunities from changing shopping habits in this digital era.

Benefits

  • Competitive salaries with generous EMI options. We believe in paying in plain sight, which is why our progression and salary framework is published publicly. You'll find our salary calculator at https://team.lollipopai.com/
  • We’re a small, exceptional team of around a dozen individuals with a flat hierarchy and zero bureaucracy, so you’ll work closely with everyone (including the founders) from the start
  • You’ll get all the tools you need to do a great job, including a MacBook Pro (or equivalent)
  • Everybody does hybrid working. Work life balance is super important to us, which is why we all work Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays at home. The other two days we work from Lollipop Lodge, our beautiful London Bridge riverside office and kitchens, for the magic that only happens in person. ✨ Those who live further from London only travel once a week and we’ll consider fully remote applications, though our preference is hybrid
  • Flexible, sustainable working hours - we have an operating principle that’s ‘Kipchoge not Bolt’
  • More perks as we (and you) think of them!

Company values

  • Bolder 💥
  • Faster 🏃‍♀️
  • Better ♻️

Funding (2 rounds)

May 2022

$6.3m

SEED

Jun 2021

$1.3m

SEED

$7.6m

Total funding

This company has top investors

Founders

Former Monzo COO, also co-founded Curve, the all-in-one card and children's bank Osper.

Previous founder and co-founder of numerous companies including Kickstart Academy, Revelation Games, and Think Code Learn. Also held role as CTO at Gower Street Analytics.

Diversity & Inclusion at Lollipop

Tom Foster Carter headshot

Tom Foster Carter (CEO & Founder)

  • We believe diversity, equality and inclusion is so important that our CEO has co-founded the 'All In' initiative [https://www.allin.works/]. It's a coordinated response by the UK startup and scaleup ecosystem to proactively drive diversity and inclusion in our businesses, creating a fairer world for all.
  • We strongly encourage candidates of all different backgrounds and identities to apply. We believe that our team is stronger with a variety of perspectives, and we’re eager to further diversify our company, though, we’re off to a strong start, e.g. over 50% of the current team identify as women. If you have a background that you feel would make an impact at Lollipop, we’d love to hear from you.
  • We’re committed to building an inclusive, supportive place for you to do the best work of your career.
  • One of our core principles, written by TFC, is 'leave it better than you found it'. What we mean by this is, at a fundamental level, we believe in allyship, including being brave when we feel others are being unfairly treated. We believe diversity and inclusion shouldn't just be a project or an initiative that a group of individuals get involved in, but instead something that's in our entire company's DNA.
  • Someone at Lollipop always needs to play the critical friend in every meeting, communication or project to make sure we make Lollipop a company for everyone.

Endorsements

All

Open and honest communication (2)

Inspiring mission (2)

Tech & tools (1)

Supportive management (1)

People of all backgrounds are welcomed (1)

Team energy (1)

Growing fast (1)

Lollipop is always looking for the next amazing person to join what's already a hard-working, respectful and cohesive team. Nobody has ever looked at me as the "new guy"; I have never once felt looked down on by anyone in the company, and it's really helped me settle in quickly and feel at home here. Everyone respects and values one another here.

People, HR, Recruitment

Growing fast

Mar 2022

We work in plain sight. I have never worked at a company where everything is so transparent - people's schedules, workloads & even their salaries are open to all, because we're all part of the same team.

People, HR, Recruitment

Open and honest communication

Mar 2022

We're ambitious: what we are taking on with Lollipop is a mountain of a challenge. Most families have to do some form of weekly shop, and it's not an easy task to do. There is so much scope to enhance this experience in today's busy world, and we're taking this challenge on quite like nobody else.

People, HR, Recruitment

Inspiring mission

Mar 2022

I love the energy at Lollipop, everyone is eager to lend a hand when required, give and receive feedback, work together to deliver an amazing product while building and nurturing a fantastic team! Whether that's "boshing" through customer support issues, shipping the next feature, or finding the next great addition to the team.

Software Engineering

Team energy

Mar 2022

One of the core operating principles at Lollipop is working in the open. Everyone is encouraged to and understand the value of having conversations in the open, sharing work early and often and how it helps us to collaborate better and get to a better solution. We're hard on problems, not people -- the responsibility we have as a collective to provide thoughtful and honest feedback with the right tone when sharing early and often is a key enabler of the open and honest communication we can foster.

Software Engineering

Open and honest communication

Mar 2022

Lollipop is an early stage company, with lots of things to build and experiment with there is a business need to be able to "move fast". However, we enable ourselves to move fast and build a sustainably fast pace by investing in our tooling in order to ensure we can continue to deliver value to the business and to our customers not only today but next week as well. We want to be Kipchoge, not Bolt -- we want to be running our marathon at a world beating pace, we need to be investing in our tools continually in order to achieve this balance.

Software Engineering

Tech & tools

Mar 2022

As we're such a small team, your thoughts and feelings are considered. Our Founders truly care about you as individuals and this comes out in everything that you do at Lollipop. I definitely feel personally cared for. We are also given the autonomy to run with things we've never done before which is incredible for personal growth.

Operations & Strategy

Supportive management

Dec 2021

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is fundamental to how we want to build Lollipop. TFC our Founder is a huge advocate for helping under represented groups succeed and thrive, inside and outside Lollipop. The team really take time to understand who they are working with and what experiences they bring to the table! I'm excited to see what we can do to be better.

Operations & Strategy

People of all backgrounds are welcomed

Dec 2021

No one has ever built what we want to build. We don't just want to build a cool product, but one that will help individuals, families and society as a whole. The things that really resonate with me are; reducing the stereotype of people who identify as females doing the shopping and cooking; allowing people with allergies and dietary requirements to find yummy safe food; and supporting people to understand their carbon footprint/helping to reduce food waste. There is so much we can do here!

Operations & Strategy

Inspiring mission

Dec 2021

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