Deliveristo: digitizing the B2B food delivery market
December 22nd, 2020
Today we are happy to announce our participation as lead investor in the €4,5 million Series A round of the Italian food tech startup Deliveristo, which aims at digitizing the B2B segment of the food delivery market by directly connecting restaurateurs to food suppliers.
While the B2C food delivery market is populated by large players with a well-established positioning, the B2B segment is just at the beginning of the digitization process: as of today, the process of ordering food supplies for a restaurant is still done mostly manually, by phone, email or text messages. It is lengthy, repetitive, not efficient, and requires multiple in-person interactions.
The food industry is one of the backbones of the Italian economy and it has been terribly affected by the pandemic – but during these months it has shown great resilience, creativity, and drive for technological innovation. We believe that Deliveristo has great potential to stand out in the competitive landscape and become the reference platform for producers and restaurateurs looking to digitize their businesses.
How Deliveristo works
Founded in 2017 by Ivan Aimo, Luca Calia, and Gabriele Angeleri, Deliveristo offers a double-sided, cloud-based platform with a potentially infinite catalog that directly connects restaurant owners to a variety of food suppliers.
Deliveristo adopts a drop-shipping approach which eliminates warehouse and logistics issues and costs, and the constraints and requirements that come with each category of product, without renouncing to providing an end-to-end solution. Regardless of the number of different suppliers on the order, the company issues to restaurants a single invoice per order, significantly decreasing the administrative burden on restaurant owners.
Due to this large set of products available, the company can reach traditional and modern restaurants, dark kitchens, and stores. In terms of supply channels, Deliveristo addresses small producers, farmers, as well as traditional wholesalers. The platform includes both niche products to satisfy the most demanding chefs as well as more commercial products to bring the best value for money.
Restaurant owners can research the platform by supplier or product, based on their location, and they can save their preferred products and recurrent orders, in order to streamline their food procurement process. The platform automatically geo-locates and selectively shows only those suppliers that can deliver to the location of the restaurant owner.
The golden rule
Food cost is one of the most important keys to running a profitable restaurant. When it comes to monitoring costs, the golden rule in the restaurant business is to split them into 30% for food costs, 30% for labor costs, and 30% for rent and general expenses. The remaining 10% represents the profit of a restaurant. Therefore, food costs are the most delicate and significant variable that can be monitored daily, impacting a restaurant’s cost structure.
It is estimated that, on average, an Italian restaurant spends €70K a year in food costs, equal to approximately €23B in restaurant food costs in Italy. Efficient management of the cost of food supplies helps restaurateurs develop profitable businesses that can hold up over the long term and overcome times of crisis such as the current one.
The Next Normal
The recent Covid-19 crisis has deeply impacted the foodservice industry, with obvious short-term negative consequences due to extended lockdown measures. However, this crisis has also resulted in the acceleration of some trends that were emerging in the market and the strengthening of others that are already present. More in general, it has fastened the adoption of digital solutions in the foodservice industry.
In particular, restaurants are becoming more and more acquainted with the concept of food delivery, and the global online food delivery services market is booming, with a growth rate of 11.5% (CAGR 2020-2023) and an estimated value by 2023 of $154.3 billion.
The food industry is experiencing a moment of great change and we are excited to be part of it. We are very happy to partner with Ivan, Luca, Gabriele, and the Deliveristo team, as they continue to push the digital transformation of the B2B food delivery market.
