Gousto

Gousto modernizes its network connectivity and security posture with Cloudflare

Gousto is a UK-based meal kit delivery company that recognizes the importance of home cooking in today’s fast-paced world. The company’s innovative approach allows customers to select their preferred recipes, then Gousto delivers food boxes containing precisely measured ingredients directly to their doorsteps.

The company is currently operating in the United Kingdom and Ireland. Gousto employs approximately 1,300 staff in total, including around 650 device-based knowledge workers in remote and corporate locations and a large factory workforce supporting production operations.

The challenge: High-risk, low-visibility legacy architecture

In 2024, Gousto grew its customer base by 700% — and almost doubled its year-over-year revenue. These increases were fantastic for the company’s bottom line and future growth. But as the company matured from a startup into a larger organization, their legacy network, their security model, and their bring your own device (BYOD) policy began to show serious limitations.

“Since my time here, we've matured quite a lot,” says Gousto’s Infrastructure & Security Engineering Manager Oliver Knights. “We were very startup-y, you know, everyone had their own devices. But this put our network security at a significant risk. Everything was open to the world. It was a real mess.”

Operating with a lean IT team, Gousto relied on a traditional Virtual Private LAN Service (VPLS) network, a Fortinet VPN, and a Fortinet firewall — all managed by a third-party service provider. This system restricted agility, made security reviews difficult, and left large parts of the environment exposed. “We had very little visibility of our users and what they were doing and where they were going,” says Knights.

Gousto’s system also suffered from slow and rigid change management. “If we wanted to make any changes, we had to log a ticket with our service provider and wait three business days for the change,” says Knights.

In addition, the system delivered a poor user experience. Its Fortinet SSL VPN was slow and caused issues with heavily used applications like Google Meet. It also required manual login and multi-factor authentication for every connection.

Gousto was well aware that they had to move away from their legacy VPLS network and centralized firewall system.Their existing network access was flat and didn't adopt any least privilege or zero trust principles. To gain the visibility, control, and network security they needed, they turned to Cloudflare.

Modernizing security and networking with SASE

Cloudflare One, Cloudflare’s secure access service edge (SASE) platform, enabled Gousto to modernize its security and networking approach and regain control over its architecture.

Specifically, Cloudflare WAN replaced the legacy VPLS network, giving Gousto direct control over site-to-site connectivity, the ability to execute rapid network changes without third party delays, and improvements in monitoring, health checks, and failover.

Cloudflare WAN’s IPsec tunnels link factories with AWS-hosted production systems and integrate with their existing FortiGate firewalls This is business critical: losing factory connectivity would instantly halt a massive portion of Gousto’s production capacity.

Cloudflare Access replaced Gousto’s legacy VPN solution, streamlining the user experience by speeding up performance and removing manual user actions. This zero trust network access (ZTNA) solution helps Gousto improve its security posture by enforcing identity-based policies and offering more granular visibility across all user traffic and security events.

Cost-effective and simple site-to-site connectivity

Cloudflare WAN’s ability to integrate seamlessly with existing systems stood out for Gousto, helping them reduce costs compared to other vendors.

Cloudflare WAN integrates with Gousto’s existing firewalls, without requiring additional hardware investments. This allowed Gousto to activate new network connections in seconds instead of the days-long wait times required by their previous provider.

As a result, Gousto can scale in almost no time. For example, “Building anIPsec tunnel probably took about 20 minutes and connecting Gousto’s new Ireland site took about the same time," says Knights.

Cloudflare also brought in their partner, Focus Group, to work with Gousto. As a Managed Services Provider, the group works with the lean IT team, helping them to properly build out a detailed identity and access management architecture and a future strategy for Zero Trust.

“Focus Group is helping us as a trusted advisor along the way,” says Knights. “They can help us answer the question, ‘How do we best achieve this with Cloudflare?’”

Simpler, safer, and faster user-to-app access with ZTNA

By replacing the traditional VPN, Cloudflare Access simplifies how Gousto’s 650 remote workers and factory employees reach internal applications. For Gousto’s IT team, onboarding new apps and new users in new locations is simpler, supporting the business’s goals of further global expansion.

Among end users, the new solution has been “positively received.” Employees no longer need to manually launch their VPN and repeatedly authenticate; instead, they “open the laptop and a zero trust connection opens automatically,” says Knights. In fact, a high number of employees requested early access during the solution’s proof of concept because of the superior experience.

The result is a significant reduction of end user complaints and support tickets.

“The performance is a lot better with Cloudflare,” says Knights, “People were excited and glad we moved to it. They keep saying ‘This is so much better.’”

What’s next: Future plans for the partnership

Looking toward future innovation, Gousto sees itself as more of a tech company than a meal delivery company. Driven by a vision from the CTO to be recognized among the top five global companies using AI, the organization views Cloudflare as the critical, high-performance foundation required to support these advanced technological ambitions.

Cloudflare’s partnership with Gousto has enabled the company to enhance its efficiency, productivity, and security posture. The next stop on their modernization roadmap is strengthening their zero trust maturity. Working with Focus Group, Gousto will continue to build out fine-grained zero trust policies like role-based access control throughout the remainder of the year.

Cloudflare will work with Gousto to evaluate some soon-to-be released features like Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) over IPsec for Cloudflare WAN to take advantage of the enhanced capabilities BGP can provide.

Gousto will also explore the possibility of using Cloudflare's WAF to replace the company’s current AWS WAF.