We are Chrissy and Luke, the founders of Foddies. We produce a range of LoFo (Low FODMAP,) Fructose Friendly, Gluten Free and other allergy-friendly foods that also taste delicious! We also own and operate a cafe in Melbourne and sell ready-made take-home meals called Fodboxes! You can check us out at www.foddies.com or on our FB page at www.facebook.com/foddies. 

Why Foddies? We got sick of telling people we had irritable bowel syndrome or fructose malabsorption or trying to explain what the hell the LoFo lifestyle was. Besides, we didn't like how negative it all sounded, so we came up with 'Foddie', what we think is a nicer way to label ourselves!

It is estimated that between 20% - 30% of the population will benefit from following the LoFo lifestyle. On top of this, 1 in 70 people have Coeliac disease, meaning they can't consume any gluten. Check out more *fun* statistics below!

Let's face it, we all know someone who can't eat something!

The Foddies dream was born out of our own personal frustration at the lack of options available and easily identifiable. With our combined food allergies and intolerances, it was impossible for us to enjoy each other's company at restaurants or cafes for fear of an embarrassing reaction to food.

Who else can relate to the following?

- Getting eye rolls from your waiter when you go out to eat.

- Making excuses or missing out on plans with friends and family because you know you won't be able to eat anything.

- Spending half an hour in the grocery aisles trying to comprehend the advanced theoretical physics on the ingredients listings of products; gotta love me some Potassium Metabisulphite, although it's never as good as mum's.

- Thinking 'to hell with it' and going to town on something you know you're going to pay for later.

- Trying to cook for someone with food allergies or intolerances, especially a Foddie. How the hell do you cook without onion and garlic?!

- Trying to tell your Yiayia that you can't eat any of her food because it's full of onion and garlic and then getting beaten with a wooden spoon for talking such rubbish because what kind of good greek person would you be if you can't eat onion or garlic?!?!?! Ok maybe that one was just us....

All this has to change (we're looking at *you* Yiayia).

Our mission is to unite and bring people together through freedom of food choices and our vision is to be the largest specialty food producer in the world! But to make all that happen, we'll need your help.

We run our cafe so you can safely go somewhere and not have to worry about being 'that person' or feeling abnormal amongst your friends.

We have a range of packaged goods to make your trip to the supermarket less of a headache.

We now sell ready-made meals (instead of our Fodbox meal kits) so you don't have to worry about cooking at home at all.

We understand how much allergies and intolerances can control your life and we want to help improve every aspect of it!

With your help, we're going to change the world for people with food allergies and intolerances!

If you don't know much about LoFo, check out the list below of foods that should be avoided. Sounds like fun, huh!

We have uploaded a Low FODMAP pie chart to illustrate where the funds will be applied.

Our rationale for each item is as follows:

Equipment: We are an existing business but to achieve our vision we will need to increase our production capacity. As good as Chrissy is, she will need some help! We expect that this will be our largest commitment given equipment does not come cheaply!

Design & Packaging: We know our products taste delicious but we want to make sure they look great as well! We're happy to toot our own horns when it comes to our food but neither of us have any idea how to design anything beyond some stick figures... maybe.... 

Production Run: Once everything is good to go we will need to get that product cooking! 

Marketing & Advisory: The best product won't go anywhere if no one knows about it! We want to make sure that people konw what we're up to and we will need the help of experienced people in the industry to help make that happen.

You can never change the world without jumping over some hurdles along the way. We have identified the following challenges we will need to overcome.

Education

More and more people are growing aware of the LoFo lifestyle but a lot of people still don't know what it is. We want to help educate the community so they understand what it means and how to cater to it. The better our product and the more places we can sell it, the more we think people will start to understand.

Shelf Life

We don't use any preservatives in our food. We like using natural ingredients to make sure we look after what we put in our bodies. The only downside to this approach is a lack of preservatives means much shorter shelf life for some of our products. Thankfully, there are really intelligent people out there who can help and, if we're successful with this round of raising, we will look to bring these people into our family to help us naturally extend the shelf life of our products!

Grandad's Reaction

We've all had to deal with Grandpa who refuses to accept that allergies or intolerances are even a thing. Because, back in his day, no one ever reacted to any kind of food anywhere! The best way we can think of to deal with this is to make our food so delicious that everyone will enjoy it; they won't even know it's intolerance friendly!