Nick Volpe – Founder, Gnibl Healthy Vending

Nick Volpe founded Gnibl Healthy Vending in 2015, after five seasons producing The Biggest Loser Australia. Before that he wasn’t a food industry person at all. He was a television producer, watching contestants fight hard to change how they ate while the crew filming them lived on soft drink, lollies and biscuits between takes.

The irony stuck with him. A show about transforming people’s health was feeding its own team out of a vending machine full of chocolate bars. His takeaway was simple: people don’t eat badly at work because they don’t care, they eat badly because it’s the only thing within arm’s reach in the afternoon. If you fix what’s in reach, behaviour changes on its own.

That idea became Gnibl. Nick isn’t a dietitian and doesn’t claim to be. His job is sourcing, ranging and getting food that’s genuinely good for people into places it’s rarely found, with product decisions informed by Gnibl’s consulting dietitian, Jenn. Eleven years on, Gnibl runs more than 150 machines across Sydney workplaces, schools, gyms and warehouses, what’s likely the largest range of healthy vending options in the country, and Nick is now taking the business into a corporate sponsorship of Food Education Australia in 2026.

Born and raised in South Africa, Nick studied at the University of Cape Town before moving to Sydney with his family more than two decades ago. Outside of work he’s a dad to two cheeky daughters, an enthusiastic amateur artist and board gamer, regular bushwalker and a firm believer that a homemade pizza night is the honest exception to running a healthy good business.