spring gateway unable to start with feign client - spring-webflux

Question

Using Spring 2.7.0 to create an API gateway, that was working fine until I tried to replace the RestTemplate with OpenFeign.
Here is the relevant build.gradle contents:
plugins {
id 'org.springframework.boot' version '2.7.0'
id 'io.spring.dependency-management' version '1.0.11.RELEASE'
id 'java'
id 'org.liquibase.gradle' version '2.1.0'
id 'groovy'
}
ext {
set('springCloudVersion', "2021.0.3")
}
// implementation 'org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-web'
implementation 'org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-webflux'
implementation "org.springframework.cloud:spring-cloud-dependencies:${springCloudVersion}"
implementation 'org.springframework.cloud:spring-cloud-starter-circuitbreaker-resilience4j'
implementation 'org.springframework.cloud:spring-cloud-starter-netflix-eureka-client'
implementation 'org.springframework.cloud:spring-cloud-starter-openfeign'
implementation 'org.springframework.cloud:spring-cloud-starter-gateway'
implementation 'org.springframework.cloud:spring-cloud-starter-config'
implementation 'org.springframework.cloud:spring-cloud-starter-bootstrap'
My application class:
#SpringBootApplication
#EnableDiscoveryClient
#EnableFeignClients
public class ApiGatewayApplication {
...
}
My FeignClient:
#FeignClient(name="identity-service")
public interface IdentityServiceClient {
#GetMapping("/api/all")
public List<ApiKey> getAllApiKeys();
}
when I try to start the application now I get:
o.s.c.openfeign.FeignClientFactoryBean : For 'identity-service' URL not provided. Will try picking an instance via load-balancing.
DiscoveryClientOptionalArgsConfiguration : Eureka HTTP Client uses RestTemplate
....
onfigReactiveWebServerApplicationContext : Exception encountered during context initialization - cancelling refresh attempt: org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: Error creating bean with name 'apiGatewayApplication': Invocation of init method failed; nested exception is feign.codec.DecodeException: No qualifying bean of type 'org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.http.HttpMessageConverters' available: expected at least 1 bean which qualifies as autowire candidate. Dependency annotations: {#org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired(required=true)}
com.netflix.discovery.DiscoveryClient : Shutting down DiscoveryClient ...
com.netflix.discovery.DiscoveryClient : Unregistering ...
com.netflix.discovery.DiscoveryClient : DiscoveryClient_API-GATEWAY/192.168.1.72:api-gateway:8081 - deregister status: 404
com.netflix.discovery.DiscoveryClient : Completed shut down of DiscoveryClient
***************************
APPLICATION FAILED TO START
***************************
Description:
A component required a bean of type 'org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.http.HttpMessageConverters' that could not be found.
Action:
Consider defining a bean of type 'org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.http.HttpMessageConverters' in your configuration.
But none of the online examples seem to show the need for adding custom HttpMessageConverters since they are included in spring-web and spring-boot-starter-webflux
UPDATE -
this appears to be related to #Autowired. I put both my service and feign service in a regular class and it starts up fine. But when I autowire those two services, I get this error again.