Healthy Meals at 35,000 Feet: Pollen + Grace’s Disruptive Approach to Foodservice

Pollen + Grace has nailed what so many brands struggle with, getting fresh, nutritious food into the hands of travellers without compromising on quality. They’ve landed deals with British Airways, LNER and Eurostar, proving that healthy eating and convenience can go hand in hand. But this didn’t happen by chance. They’ve worked through supply chain headaches, nailed their branding and stayed true to their mission. If you’re looking to break into the travel food space (or any tough market, really), here’s what you can learn from their journey.

Join us at The Foodservice Summit, where Pollen + Grace founder, Kristina Komlosiova, will be delivering the keynote talk and delving further into their triumphant story of success in the foodservice industry.

What inspired you to start Pollen + Grace?

The inspiration really came from frustration with the lack of healthy, nutritious lunch options in the UK. We’ve always felt that food should be both nourishing and exciting, but in 2015, the food-to-go market was dominated by highly processed options, with fresh, healthy meals being hard to find.

Nearly 10 years ago, my co-founder Steph and I worked together at an events company. When Steph was diagnosed with food intolerances, she started preparing vibrant, colourful lunches for herself at work. Her meals quickly caught the attention of our colleagues, who began asking her to make theirs too. That’s when the idea for Pollen + Grace began to take shape. In 2015, we launched with a simple mission: to make healthy, feel-good food accessible to everyone.

Pollen + Grace has recently earned impressive partnerships with British Airways, LNER, and Eurostar. Can you tell us how these deals came about?

Healthy eating is often seen as time-consuming, making it hard to prioritise—especially for travellers with busy lifestyles. We aim to break this barrier by offering great meals that are ready to enjoy when you are, wherever you are.

We are always looking for new opportunities to fit eating well seamlessly into the lives of our consumers, so expanding into travel felt like a natural next step. Airlines and trainlines have been on our radar for a while, so securing these partnerships is a dream come true.

How did you manage to stand out in such a competitive foodservice market?

While the foodservice market is undoubtedly competitive, the reality is that genuinely healthy options within this space remain surprisingly limited. If you look closely at the ingredients in many products still being served in the industry today, you’ll often find a long list of E-numbers, preservatives, and other additives. By staying true to our mission and using quality ingredients, we’ve carved out a niche and built trust with our customers. I believe our transparency and quality are what have allowed us to stand out in this crowded market.

What are the biggest challenges when working with major transport providers?

Supplying transport providers is very different from supplying grocery accounts. One of the main challenges is the complex supply chain. Our products are fresh and vibrant, with a rainbow of deposits and a very short shelf life, so ensuring they are still perfect at 35,000 feet or 125mph hasn’t been easy. Packaging plays a major part in this, and designing something that’s not only travel-friendly but also prevents ingredients from shifting around too much on a moving vehicle, while being efficient in terms of space, has been one of our key challenges.

Transport settings come with unique constraints, so we’ve worked closely with partners like BA, LNER, and Eurostar to create packaging that addresses these needs while maintaining an optimum customer experience. For example, we’ve recently been developing new packaging and processes for our airline hot grain bowls. These are crafted to give passengers a substantial, comforting, and healthy hot meal, so we needed to ensure the packaging maintains freshness and product integrity after heating, while working with very strict dimension requirements to optimise storage and oven space on board.

It’s a lot of variables to consider, and it’s definitely an area we are constantly learning and evolving in. We’ve often found that what works on paper doesn’t always translate perfectly in practice – but that’s all part of the challenge. Each experience helps us refine our approach, ensuring we continue to deliver the best possible solutions for travellers.

How do you ensure your products maintain their quality and freshness at scale?

We work closely with our manufacturers to ensure our ingredients meet our high standards for quality and freshness.

Our meals have a short shelf life because we avoid the artificial preservatives and stabilisers commonly found in food-to-go. We select all ingredients very carefully to ensure they maintain freshness and quality over the required length of time naturally or with the help of spices and antioxidants that inhibit deterioration–such as ascorbic acid found in lemon juice or natural preservatives like apple cider vinegar.

We take quality control seriously at every stage of production to ensure our products are consistent and safe. From raw materials to final packaging, we conduct regular testing and monitoring. We also run careful transit trials to make sure our transport methods keep our meals in top condition and minimise the time spent travelling, so our consumers receive the freshest meal possible.

Further, as chefs and foodies, we maintain control over our recipes, even as we scale production. We cook many components in-house, whether it’s our taco-spiced roasted sweet potatoes or our creamy homemade houmous recipe, we’re deeply involved in every detail. I’m always excited when I visit our manufacturers’ kitchens and see racks of spices labelled ‘Pollen + Grace’. It’s a small but powerful reminder of the care we put into maintaining our quality.

What has been the most rewarding moment of your journey so far?

As every start-up and scale-up journey, ours has been filled with a tonne of ups and downs. The most memorable milestones include our first big national listing with Ocado in 2018 and landing a Tesco listing amid the pandemic in 2020, especially after being told it would never happen and that plant-based diets were “just a fad.” Most recently, we’ve reached new heights—literally—by launching on British Airways, which was a long-standing dream for us.

What’s truly rewarding, though, is looking around at the amazing team of people that have helped us build Pollen + Grace from just an idea into one of the key challengers in the traditional prepared foods industry. I am incredibly proud and grateful for everyone that has joined our journey and our mission. What started as a niche idea is now mainstream, as more people embrace real, whole foods over ultra-processed options—a shift we’ve championed since day one.

How do you stay inspired and motivated in such a dynamic industry?

It has its tough moments, but what keeps me inspired is watching the industry evolve. When we launched, healthy options on the food-to-go shelves were rare, but now, there’s a real shift toward better choices. While it can be disheartening when others replicate our products or recipes, we take pride in knowing that this is still a positive change for healthy eating, and we’ve contributed to the movement of making nutritious food mainstream.

What's next for Pollen + Grace?

We’ve kicked off 2025 with a whole host of exciting new launches, including a new range of ready meals that meet every aspect of our brand values, and we are so proud of. Along with that, we’ve made a significant change to our packaging, ensuring our wraps are now fully recyclable at home—a step forward in our commitment to sustainability. We’ve also revamped our Mexican salad recipe, introducing a delicious and zesty edamame smash dip to the bowl, which not only tastes great but also enhances the nutritional benefits.

Looking ahead, there’s so much more to come, particularly as we expand in the travel sector. We’re also exploring some exciting new categories, whilst our brand focus remains on growing our position as the ‘go-to’ choice for feel-good food.