Taster
Restaurant-quality food in the comfort of your living room
Funding stage: Series B
What Taster does
Taster is a family of delivery-only restaurant brands bringing unique street-foods to European consumers. Starting out in Paris, they now also have a presence in London, Madrid, Lille, Rouen and Versailles.
Taster’s five existing brands have their food made in a variety of franchisee kitchens (typically underutilised space within restaurant or hotel kitchens) and are delivered via the “last-mile” (kitchen to customer) infrastructure, offered by popular food delivery apps such as Deliveroo and UberEats. As a result, the business is entirely focused on food-making, customer experience, and brand building.
Each of Taster’s restaurant brands is based on a different cuisine, with menus created both with renowned chefs and in house.
Why we like it
There’s a significant and growing gap between consumer demand for quality food delivery and available supply, due to traditional restaurant brands not being set up to take advantage of digital ordering. Taster is one of the first digital-only restaurant brands to launch in Europe, with the founder previously having direct food-service experience as the #7 employee at Deliveroo.
Online food delivery for European restaurants and platforms is projected to be a $21 billion annual market within the wider European food market of $1.7 trillion*. Taster operates a unique franchise model utilising existing restaurant kitchens and their employees, enabling their restaurant partners to increase sales with little additional overhead. The business is well placed to benefit from the dramatic shift in food consumption behaviours, with 60% of 18–34-year-olds** increasing their food delivery frequency in the last year.
* Business Wire – Europe Online Food Delivery Market Report 2021
**Statista – Increase in food delivery usage due to COVID-19 in Great Britain 2020
What our fund managers say
“Taster is focused on delivering high quality food through an exciting range of brands, that are already capturing the hearts of consumers across Europe. Thanks to their experienced team, and their franchise business model, we believe they’re setting the standard for restaurant-quality foods in the comfort of our living rooms.”
– Rebecca Hunt, Principal
Who are we backing?
Anton Soulier – CEO & Founder. Anton was the #7 employee at Deliveroo where he worked with Deliveroo Founder Will Shu.
Ian Pate – CMO. Ian was previously VP of Global Brand Marketing at Careem, which was acquired by Uber for $3.1bn.
Aubert Loury – COO. Aubert was the European Purchasing & Quality Director at Domino’s Pizza for 7 years, operating a franchise model.
Caroline Tulloch – CFO. Caroline was previously CFO at Unforgettable, a venture-backed marketplace.
See more on Taster’s website here.