Berlin, Hamburg Nikolas Bullwinkel receives in the kitchen. The CEO of the start-up Circus is in one of his first branches in a commercial area in Hamburg-Barmbek. Linoleum floor, cold light, the midday shift is just coming to an end behind the panes. The chef presents the last dishes ready. A tablet tells him the steps he has to follow. The bicycle couriers who deliver the food crouch on a bench opposite.
Circus only started in mid-2022. With the app, customers can choose from the usual menu for hectic city dwellers. The pasta, bowls and small pizzas, so-called pinsa, would work just as well in Kreuzberg or Brooklyn as in Barmbek. Some of the dishes are pre-cooked and based on similar ingredients wherever possible.
The range is limited, and Circus cooks and delivers it itself. Bullwinkel and his colleagues want to keep costs low, because they focus on low prices of between six and nine euros, the prices for children’s meals are lower.
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Circus is part of a surprising movement. Despite high interest rates and the start-up lull, new companies are venturing into the highly competitive food delivery market of all places.
Their business models rely more on efficiency and lasting success. Because the times of turbo growth fueled by venture capital seem to be over for the time being.
New start-ups want to set themselves apart from Gorillas and Lieferando
Providers of ultra-fast food deliveries such as Gorillas, Getir or Flink were the most prominent representatives of this hype. They plunged over their high costs last year. Recently, the takeover of gorillas by Getir attracted attention. Since then, little has been heard from the billion-dollar start-ups. Her ratings, meanwhile, shrank like a soufflé left out in the air for too long.
Older delivery sizes that deliver prepared dishes from restaurants, such as Wolt, Delivery Hero or Lieferando, have recently had problems. They were burdened the most by the high personnel costs: if a courier with an hourly wage of more than 14 euros, for example, only delivers to one or two customers, the already small margin quickly evaporates.
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Circus from Hamburg as well as Homemeal and Chef Coco from Berlin want to do it differently and secure a higher share of the added value in order to be able to better refinance the delivery costs. The founder and CEO of Chef Coco, Shaminder Dhillon, uses a subscription model to make deliveries more efficient.
Start-up boss Coco: efficiency through subscription model and high route utilization
The drivers deliver to the same customers every week and therefore know the route well, explains Dhillon. Chef Coco uses discounts to try to attract customers to specific delivery windows so routes are more fully booked. So far he has hardly spent any money on advertising.
The food start-up uses a subscription model to make deliveries more efficient.
(Photo: ChefCoco)
The system kitchens from Circus look like food factories trimmed for efficiency. At Flink, where today’s Circus boss Bullwinkel once worked and held shares, he was able to find out first-hand where the problems lay in the business model. Circus therefore controls not only delivery and production but also purchasing.
According to him, his three Hamburg locations currently have around 100 to 150 orders per day, which should pay off from a total value of 20 euros each. Expansion into medium-sized cities such as Dortmund or Nuremberg is already being prepared. With the scaling, profitability will soon beckon, says the founder. Before that, however, he will first encounter new competition on his home market: Next, Chef Coco will expand to Hamburg.
Homemeal: Start-up supplies home cook meals
Homemeal follows a slightly different concept than Chef Coco and Circus. The Berlin start-up uses a platform to offer dishes from hobby chefs that they have prepared in their own kitchens. “It just tastes a bit different at Mama’s and usually better than at the restaurant,” says co-founder Martin Andreas Schmidt.
The start-up has now recruited 100 chefs.
(Photo: HomeMeal)
Homemeal has now recruited 100 chefs. Schmidt and co-founder Mario Dugonik provide support with the legal and hygiene requirements – requirements for cooking at Homemeal include a hygiene pass and business registration, for example. The chefs store their profiles and favorite dishes in an app, and Homemeal handles distribution.
Food start-ups: trend comes from the USA
Circus, Chef Coco and Homemeal reflect a trend that is currently spilling over from the USA to Europe. “Especially in the USA, there are sometimes no longer any kitchens in the conventional style in the apartments in metropolises like New York, but at most only a niche with a microwave,” says e-commerce expert Matthias Schu from the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts. Fast, inexpensive meals are therefore in high demand.
However, the market potential in Germany is difficult to calculate. Schu explains that the food start-ups can be classified between the ghost kitchens, which only deliver, and the well-known food delivery services.
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In the meantime, venture capitalists have also taken a liking to the new business models. The largest US provider, shef.com, recently raised almost $70 million from investors. The German representatives do not yet come close.
Start-up delivery service: Circus and Homemeal in good financial shape
So far, Circus from Hamburg is best positioned. The company secured eleven million euros at the beginning of the year – including from Blackmars Capital and 2bx. Food labs and business angels such as Felix Jahn, Philipp Kreibohm and Gesa Miczaika are among those invested in Chef Coco.
The Berlin start-up Homemeal offers dishes from amateur chefs via a platform.
(Photo: HomeMeal)
Foodlabs co-founder Christophe Maire says a whole new line of business is emerging. The recent seven-figure round in Homemeal was led by Longfield Invest. The Homemeal founders now want to use the fresh money to expand into new cities.
Customers currently order Indian food most frequently from them. “Of the 16,000 Indians who live in Berlin, 2,000 are our customers,” says Schmidt.
German home cooking in particular is currently underrepresented: “We don’t have that much authentic German food yet. We still have to improve on that.”
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