The food tech industry is moving to fast food. Sweetgreen located in the U.S. is an “fast-casual” restaurant chain that serves healthy “bowl food”. It has been able to raise $478.6 million. The company is similar to Sweetfin. Both utilize a lot technologies in their back-ends in order to boost efficiency.
In this space has come European company Poke House, that is industrializing the manufacturing process of “poke bowls” for food delivery services. Poke House specializes in bowl food , which typically includes marinated fish, which is then cut into cubes and layered over sticky noodles, pickles, rice as well as other ingredients.
The company has just received EUR20 millions ($24 millions) in the Series B round of funding which was led by Eulero Capital, with the support of FG2 Capital, and reinvestment from Milan Investment Partners SGR. The startup uses technology and data to enhance the delivery and production of its products across all of the top food delivery services like Uber Eats, etc. The food tech startup from Italy boasts of having built an “EUR100M+ company” inside two years.
The company was founded in the year 2000 by Matteo Pichi and Vittoria Zanetti, Poke House has opened more than 30 stores across Italy, Portugal and Spain and is now home to 400 employees. The company is estimating a turnover greater than EUR40 million by 2021.
With the money the company can begin opening stores in its existing markets, and will then expand into France and then begin expansion into the U.K.
Poke House says it uses many different technologies in its back-end monitoring every part that is part of its supply chain in order to maximize the effectiveness of the business. It also analyses data from other delivery services (i.e. Deliveroo, Glovo, Uber Eats) to ensure an order that is prepared in less than 10 minutes time and delivery times under 25 minutes.
Matteo Pichi, co-founder of Poke House said: “The outbreak has brought challenges to our food sector and we believe that technology as the best way to revolutionize and digitize the old-fashioned restaurant experience. There is changes in people’s preferences for fast, healthy and convenient food. Bowl food meet this requirement and promotes an active, healthy, balanced and sustainable lifestyle by providing quick and healthy food options close to.”
According to TechCrunch, Pichi added: “Our competition is the rapidly growing healthy food concepts like Sweetgreen and Sweetfin on the U.S. However, in the same way we consider ourselves fortunate as we’re one of the very first brands made entirely from people who have worked in food service or as former workers. The next competitions we will face will be full-time virtual brands that are extremely adept at analytics of data and branding. Food delivery platforms are used as media platforms and invest more than our competitors in the food delivery channel.”
Gianfranco Burei, founding partner of Eulero Capital, said: “Poke House’s business model follows certain of the most prominent developments in the restaurant sector (food-tech and healthy food delivery, customized) and is a perfect fit with all the attributes and capabilities to place it among the best competitors in the market at European level. We are delighted to be part of Poke House in an innovative and forward-looking venture which is to be in line with our investment strategy that is based on searching for companies which are included in the macro-trends which will drive the technological, economic, and social transformation in the next few years.”