Deliveroo raises $25m in Series B funding to transform the food delivery experience
Investment will fuel UK and international expansion of meal delivery from favourite local restaurants.
Deliveroo, the food delivery service that brings high-quality local restaurant meals to your door, today announces a $25m Series B investment round led by Accel Partners, with participation from Index Ventures, Hoxton Ventures and Hummingbird Ventures. The investment will help drive expansion across the UK and internationally. Deliveroo is already live in London and Brighton and launches in Manchester this week.
Founded in 2013 by William Shu and Greg Orlowski, Deliveroo is focused on providing the ultimate food delivery experience. Customers use the service to get meals from a variety of leading local independent and high-quality chain restaurants, delivered to their homes and offices quickly and conveniently by one of the hundreds of Deliveroo drivers and cyclists. National quality restaurant operators like Nando’s already trust the service with their brand.
The current food delivery landscape is dominated by pure online marketplaces that predominantly work with lower-end takeaway restaurants that utilise their own drivers. This generally results in an inconsistent customer experience and choice that’s limited to restaurants that are already set up for takeaways.
By contrast, Deliveroo is all about a delightful consumer experience – bringing the high-quality cuisine of local restaurants that customers know and love to their door in a very short amount of time. Customers can get great food from local restaurants prepared and delivered in 32 minutes on average, whilst maintaining real-time visibility on every step of the food preparation and delivery process.
Restaurants benefit from Deliveroo’s hyper-local approach, drivers and logistics platform. Deliveroo enables partner restaurants to utilise excess kitchen capacity and fixed costs, generating uplift in restaurant sales of up to 30%, with none of the hassle of running their own fleet of drivers. By handling all the delivery and technology elements, Deliveroo allows restaurants to earn these significant incremental revenues whilst retaining focus on their in-house customer experience.
To provide consistent high-quality service and short delivery times, Deliveroo has created a network of hundreds of drivers and cyclists who are paid for each completed delivery. Since launch in 2014, it has built a team of 300 drivers and cyclists.
Deliveroo has expanded significantly since its Series A announced 8 months ago, when it delivered to a few thousand customers in a handful of London neighbourhoods. Today, Deliveroo serves over 120 neighbourhoods in London, Brighton and Manchester and has built a loyal customer base of over 50,000 who use the service regularly. Over the same period, the company has seen its office team grow to over 50 people.
This week’s launch in Manchester is the continuation of the company’s fast expansion across London and Brighton. Deliveroo plans to use the new funds to aggressively roll out its service to neighbourhoods across the UK and internationally, with a particular focus on hiring and marketing activities.
“This is a significant moment for Deliveroo. We’ve seen high demand for our service in London and Brighton and are excited to be launching this week in Manchester, the first step in our ambitious expansion plan. Today’s funding gives us the ammunition we need to bring our first-class delivery service to a much wider audience, and we’re delighted to have the Accel team and our existing investors on board to help us reach our goal,” said William Shu, CEO of Deliveroo.
Accel Partners’ Fred Destin will join the board, while Luciana Lixandru will be an observer. Destin said: “Will, Greg and the team have achieved very impressive traction to date and created a service that speaks to a much larger global trend in how people want to discover and experience local food. Both customers and restaurants absolutely love Deliveroo; we’re looking forward to helping the team scale even faster and bring that delightful food experience to a much larger audience.”
Martin Mignot from Index Ventures, the venture capital firm that led the company’s Series A round, added: “Deliveroo is one of the fastest growing companies in our portfolio. The main reason behind this growth is its win-win-win proposition. Customers get access to good food they couldn’t get delivered before, restaurants increase their revenues and hundreds of drivers generate new income.”
About Deliveroo
Deliveroo is an end-to-end food delivery service that brings high-quality local restaurant food to homes and offices through a proprietary technology and logistics platform. Founded in 2013 by William Shu and Greg Orlowski, the company delivers dishes from leading independents, such as Ollie Dabbous’ Barnyard and Martin Morales’ Andina, and high-quality chain restaurants including Busaba Eathai, Honest Burgers, Nando’s and Gourmet Burger Kitchen. To date, Deliveroo has raised $28m from investors including Accel Partners, Index Ventures, Hoxton Ventures and JamJar Investments. www.deliveroo.co.uk
Published — Jan. 29, 2015