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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Glovo

Spain’s Glovo Lands €450M to Expand Its Dark Convenience Store Delivery Business

Delivery service Glovo announced today it has raised €450 million (~$528 million USD) in Series F funding. The round was led by Lugard Road Capital and the Luxor Capital Group, with participation from returning investors Delivery Hero, Drake Enterprises, and GP Bullhound. 

Barcelona, Spain-based Glovo says that this fundraise — its largest to date — will go towards expanding Glovo’s reach in the 20 markets in which the company already operates. In particular, the company will expand its Q-Commerce, aka ghost convenience store, division in these areas. 

Customers order online from these convenience stores, which carry food and household items and deliver goods to customers in 30 minutes or less. Glovo launched its concept of the dark convenience store delivery in 2019 as a way to stand out from other delivery services, most of which were focused primarily on restaurant food at the time. Glovo said today it can provide delivery in 10 minutes or less in some urban areas, and that it anticipates “a permanent shift in consumer habits towards same-day and instant delivery.”

Recent funding in the realm of super-quick delivery suggests the same. In Europe, that includes Berlin-based Gorillas, which raised $290 million in March, Italy’s Everli, which just raised $100 million, and Rohlik, a Czech Republic-based company that recently nabbed $230 million. Activity (and investment) is equally big in the states, notably with Fridge No More’s $15.4 million fundraise and a whopping $1.5 billion for GoPuff last month.

Glovo plans to have 200 dark convenience stores running by the end of 2021. Currently, they are in Barcelona and Madrid in Spain as well as Lisbon, Portugal and Milan, Italy. Future stores are planned for Valencia, Spain; Porto, Portugal; Rome, Italy; and Bucharest, Romania.

As part of this q-commerce growth, Glovo will also build up its deals with major supermarkets. Right now, its roster of stores includes Carrefour, Continente, and Kaufland.

Glovo Lands Real Estate Deal to Expand Its Ghost Convenience Stores

Barcelona, Spain-based food delivery service Glovo has inked a deal with Switzerland-based real estate firm Stoneweg. The latter will invest €100 million (~$121 million USD) to help Glovo expand its network of ghost convenience stores. 

As part of the deal, Glovo will occupy the Stoneweg real estate locations for an unspecified period of time. Stoneweg will build and refurbish these real estate locations in key Glovo markets to help the delivery service expand its reach with these delivery-only convenience stores. Right now include Spain, Italy, Portugal, and Romania, with other European countries planned for the future. Glovo intends to have 100 different locations by the end of 2021. It has just 18 right now.

Glovo launched convenience store delivery in 2019 as a way to stand out from other Europe-based competitors (e.g., Delivery Hero). The company’s promise is to deliver goods one might find at a convenience store in 30 minutes or less to customers’ doorsteps. To do that, the Glovo operates these dark convenience stores from which customers can only order online.

The company’s increased focus on quick convenience store delivery — what it calls “Q-Commerce” — is at least partly in response to the pandemic’s impact on how consumers get food items and household goods. Certain countries, such as Spain and Italy, have had far stricter lockdowns during the pandemic than many U.S. states. Those restrictions around leaving one’s house have in turn created an environment where it makes more sense to order groceries, snacks, and household goods for delivery, rather than venture out oneself. 

That said, Europe isn’t alone in this shift towards ghost convenience stores. Most Notably, DoorDash began operating its own version of the concept in the U.S. in 2020. In South Korea, customers can even get convenience store goods delivered by robots courtesy of LG. 

For its part, Glovo believes these dark stores are the future of retail, hence the company’s new deal with Stoneweg. According to Bloomberg, Glovo’s Q-commerce orders have grown 300 percent from one year ago, and the company plans to hire 500 people for the Q-commerce business by the end of the year. 

Delivery Hero Acquires Glovo’s Latin America Operations

Berlin, Germany-based Delivery Hero announced today it has acquired fellow third-party delivery service Glovo’s Latin American operations for €230 million (~$272M USD). The transaction is expected to close in the next few weeks, according to a press release from Delivery Hero.

The deal covers all Latin American countries in which Glovo operates: There is some overlap here, as Delivery Hero already has operations in Argentina, Panama, and the Dominican Republic. Acquiring Glovo obviously means Delivery Hero will widen its reach in Latin America considerably. 

Any delivery service aiming to enter or expand in the Latin America market will need to ensure they offer affordable options for restaurants. By some accounts, roughly 96 percent of independent restaurants in Latin America are not even online right now, and restaurant tech is far less developed than in, say, the U.S. and Europe. Even so, the Latin American market is the fastest-growing one outside the Asia-Pacific region.

Delivery Hero CEO Niklas Östberg said in today’s press release that Latin America “is a region with exceptional growth potential for online delivery.” 

The acquisition also means more consolidation for the Latin America food delivery sector. Glovo actually exited two Latin American markets earlier this year. Meanwhile, iFood and Domicillios.com merged in April and together compete with the other major player, Softbank-backed Rappi.

Delivery Hero’s last big acquisition was at the end of 2019 when the company bought its South Korean food delivery rival, Woowa Bros.’ Baedal Minjok service, for $4 billion. Prior to that, it had acquired InstaShop, an online grocery marketplace with operations in the Middle East and North Africa. Delivery Hero now operates in 44 countries worldwide.

Glovo will continue to operate its Latin America markets until March 2021, at which point, pending regulatory approval, they will become a part of Delivery Hero’s network.

Week in Restaurants: Glovo Achieves Unicorn Status, Chipotle Will Pay your Delivery Fees

I’ll be honest, a small part of me wanted to turn this entire post into a list of all the ridiculous holiday swag from QSRs that’s out this holiday season. One-piece loungewear from Dunkin’? A fire log that burns the scent of KFC fried chicken? What’s not to like?

Don’t answer that. Instead, feast your eyes on the usual fare of restaurant-tech news from around the web this week, including funding news, more instant pay for employees, and marketing schemes almost as perplexing as fried chicken fire logs.

Delivery Service Glovo Raises Nearly $170M

Barcelona, Spain-based delivery startup Glovo, best known for its restaurant food delivery services, said this week it raised $150 million euros (~$167 million USD), with the investment led by Mubadala, the sovereign wealth fund of Abu Dhabi. The round, which also saw participation from Lakestar, Idinvest Partners and Drake QSR. The new funds mean Glovo’s valuation is now at $1 billion and its status notched up to that of “unicorn.” Glovo said the capital will go towards growing the company’s workforce and hiring 300 new engineers and developers by 2020.

Chipotle to Pay Your Delivery Fees — For Anything 

Chipotle’s just took its focus on all things delivery to places no other fast-casual restaurant chain has yet to go. According to an announcement, Chipotle’s “Free Delivery Interception” campaign gives Twitter users the chance to win free delivery on any product, not just Chipotle food: “Expedited shipping on last-minute holiday gifts? Delivery on a California king mattress from college? Chipotle is in position and ready to intercept those fees.” To enter the contest, Twitter users can reply to this tweet using #ChipotleFreeDelivery and #Contest, and include a picture of your receipt and your Venmo handle. The chain is picking as many as 100 winners per day from now through December 22.

Takeaway.com Ups Its Bid for Just Eat

In what’s become an all-out bidding war for delivery service Just Eat, Takeaway.com has raised its takeover offer to “nearly £6.3 billion in stock,” according to Axios. The offer comes on the heels of Naspers-backed Prosus making multiple hostile bids over the last several weeks — all of which so far have been rejected by Just Eat. As Axios points out, Takeaway.com looks to be emerging as the winner of this battle, but it’s a fight where the details are changing quickly. Just last month, Takeaway.com said it wouldn’t raise its bid, and its stock proposal may be the higher number, but Prosus is offering cash. Shareholders have until January 10 to vote. Stay tuned. 

Taster Raises $8M in New Funding for Delivery-Only Brands to Europe

Taster, a French startup who creates restaurant brands made specifically for delivery, has raised $8 million in a new funding round. The round was led by Battery Ventures, with participation from existing investors Heartcore Capital, LocalGlobe, GFC and Marc Ménasé. This brings Taster’s total funding to $13.1 million.

The company currently owns and operates three “restaurants,” which it runs out of ghost kitchens in Paris, London, and Madrid. Out Fry is a Korean Fried Chicken concept, O Ke Kai specializes in Hawaiian food, and Mission Saigon makes Vietnamese fare.

Founder Anton Soulier got the idea for Taster after working at Deliveroo and becoming disenchanted with the quality of the food in the delivery realm. Taster, which he founded in 2017, works with Michelin Star chefs to keep the food as high-quality as possible, and locally sourced, too. The company works out of 12 different kitchens across Paris, London, and Madrid, though it doesn’t actually own the facilities. Instead, Taster partners with companies like Travis Kalanick’s CloudKitchens, who rent ghost kitchen space out to restaurants.

For the actual delivery part, Taster works with Deliveroo, Uber Eats, and Glovo, which means it doesn’t have to manage the logistics behind that part of the operation, and can instead focus on what goes on in the kitchen.

Taster is one of a few companies in Europe building a business off delivery-only restaurant concepts. Frichti is a fellow French startup, delivering pre-made meals customers heat up. It’s notable in particular for owning and operating the full delivery stack, from taking orders to making the food to cycling it over to your apartment.

Elsewhere, Berlin, Germay-based Keatz recently raised €12 million for its virtual kitchen network, which it uses to create in-house restaurant brands much like Taster.

To date, Taster says it employs 115 people, 100 of whom work in the kitchens. The company has already developed some tech that streamlines back-of-house operations like inventory management, supply chain, billing, and integrating delivery platforms. Taster says the new funds will go towards launching three new food brands by the end of 2019 and the company plans to hire more talent in tech and engineering, as well as supply chain and marketing.