Antony Roczek, Tomy Eitner and Simon Chorzelski (from left) rely on a returnable deposit system for their new delivery service.
Dusseldorf Delivery services for groceries are booming, and young people in particular are enthusiastic about being able to save themselves a trip to the supermarket. But the downside: This business produces vast amounts of packaging waste.
The Alpacas delivery service wants to show that there is another way. He delivers the groceries without disposable packaging – and can now convince investors. The start-up, which was only founded in November, raised five million euros in a seed round.
Well-known angel investors such as Martin Enderle, Verena and Philipp Pausder will be there. Vorwerk Ventures and FoodLabs are also investing in the food delivery service. Both investors already have other delivery services such as Hellofresh, Gorillas or Flaschenpost in their portfolio. Above all, the Alpacas founders want to benefit from the experience of their investors and expand into other German cities.
The new delivery services Gorillas, Flink, Knuspr and Getir have shown how this is done, and they are conquering one city after the other with millions from investors. The fast delivery service Gorillas, for example, received 245 million euros last year and, with a valuation of three billion euros, is the German market leader among food suppliers and one of the most successful start-ups in the country.
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Alpacas, however, has a fundamentally different approach than most of its competitors. The founders Antony Roczek, Tomy Eitner and Simon Chorzelski rely on a reusable deposit system: All products are packed in reusable containers such as nets, glasses or bottles, which are returned to the cycle when the next order is placed. Single-use plastic is avoided in the entire supply chain.
South Korea is a role model for delivery services
Although other unpackaged delivery services such as Glasbote and Fandli also use a deposit system, Chorzelski and his co-founders have a slightly different focus when it comes to the range: “Our central promise is that we can offer the entire weekly shop plastic-free.” According to Chorzelski, the competition is geared more toward stock purchases.
Chorzelski should know, because the alpacas founder not only regularly tests his competitors, but was also the managing director of Fandli, a sustainable delivery service from Berlin, for a while. He brought his experiences from that time to the founding of Alpacas.
Plastic-free packaging, delivery and storage is particularly difficult for products such as tofu, cheese, milk and butter, he explains. But alpacas seem to have found the solution: tofu and milk in deposit jars from regional retailers. Butter and cheese come in wrappers made from recycled paper.
Online grocery shopping is still a niche. The market share of online trade in sales of food was two percent last year. But that’s exactly where Simon Chorzelski sees the potential: “The biggest lever will be the offline to online switch. The online market will grow by 500 percent or more in the coming years.” An example of this is South Korea. In the Southeast Asian country, 30 percent of groceries are already delivered to the customer.
The plastic-free alternative to Edeka, Rewe and Lidl
But in addition to the general delivery boom caused by the corona crisis, he could also benefit from another factor: sustainability and resource-saving living are becoming more important for many people. The large food retailers Edeka, Rewe and Lidl are also offering more and more products in recycled packaging. According to Chorzelski, however, they will only be able to achieve 100 percent plastic-free and sustainable packaging in ten years. Alpacas already offer that.
>> Read here: Why it is so difficult for manufacturers and retailers to ban plastic from packaging
The sustainable food supplier obtains its products primarily from regional retailers and in large 25-kilo bags. “In this way we save on all intermediate packaging,” says Chorzelski. “We also relieve the customer of additional work steps. No return of the deposit, no long distances to the nearest bulky store and no cleaning of the deposit container.” Nevertheless, Alpakas promises prices like in an organic shop.
The founding team wants to make reusables economically scalable. It wants to guarantee this by grouping customer orders into fixed routes. Deliveries are made between 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. From 25 euros delivery is free. If you order less, you have to pay a fee of 3.90 euros.
In this way, the drivers do not always have to go back to the warehouse and save time. The start-up also relies on covered e-cargo bikes, which with a payload of 200 kilograms are more like a small van and can transport up to 20 orders at the same time.
That’s exactly what got investors excited. Patrick Huber, General Partner at FoodLabs, is convinced that the growth of alpacas and the increasing demand from consumers show “that positive impact and economic success can go hand in hand”.
More: Pick it up instead of throwing it away: Too Good To Go saves groceries from being thrown away