#takeeateasy

In September 2013, Adrien Roose, CEO & Co-Founder at Take Eat Easy, had the idea of creating a food delivery startup in Brussels. To develop this innovative idea he was accompanied by his sister, Chloé Roose, and two friends, Jean -Christophe Libbrecht y Karim Slaoui. 

The Brussels-headquartered startup, after being one year operating in the capital of Belgium, they decided to expand the high quality food delivery to the French market, starting in Paris. In April 2015, raised the first round funding with a value of 6 million euros. The investors were Rocket Internet, DN Capital and Piton Capital. This money collected was going to be used for investing in the actual markets they were participating, the French and Belgium Market, and for expanding across Europe. Spain, UK and Germany were the next countries the Brussels-headquartered startup wanted to start delivering high quality food. After three months, in August 2015, the second round closure was 10 million euros, whose investors were the ones from the first round (Rocket Internet, DN Capital and Piton Capital) and Eight Roads Ventures. The funds they received from these companies were an opportunity for the Brussels food delivery company to develop on higher dimension their service. Investors give a growth opportunity brother-and-sister Roose, Jean-Christophe Libbrecht and Karim Slaoui. Of course they grew, and numbers are the proof of it. From 2015 to 2016, the company expanded to 3 different markets (Spain, UK and Germany) and, also, started providing it service in more cities from Belgium and France, being 20 the different cities they delivered food. Their number of employees increased from 10 to 160, their customer’s amount grew up to 350,000 and developed the restaurant partnerships from 450 to 3,200.

Karim Slaoui talks about Take Eat Easy Sketch notes

I had the pleasure to listen to Karim’s story at Take Eat Easy. As a former employee, this brought me back many smiles and some closure on the case.

During the talk organized by Startup Grind, Karim talked about his past, about the different waves of funding for Take Easy Easy and shared what went right and wrong with the Belgian start-up.

“An idea is just an idea, until you work on it.” - Karim S.

The starting idea of Take Eat Easy was plain and simple: improve the user experience of ordering food online, with a strong preference for good quality restaurants without delivery. Although Take Eat Easy delivery system started with cars, they pivoted soon to bikes due to traffic inefficiency and parking issues in Brussels. It was then clear that Take Easy Easy should also manage the bike couriers internally.

Brussels was the city to test the idea and to scale up. In Paris, influencers foodie bloggers picked up the trend and Take Eat Easy went viral! This buzz allowed to grow the team and to expand to new cities. Going big also comes with downs sides: the difficulties encountered in communication and loss of control over new team members. In any business, you need to share the same values with your team to build a great service and product.

Soon enough, competitors come into play. It validates the market and brings conversion, but gets bitter when money becomes the only main drive.

Karim’s take aways:

3 Good’s

The great people that came together to work around this idea. And the fun around it! (I completely agree: put together people that are good and that get along. No matter which domain your product is, it will become beyond awesome! I loved the team so much that I even drew them!) 

The power of scaling.

The ability to maintain a good quality service.

3 Bad’s

Take Eat Easy shouldn’t have lower down to it’s competitors level, in terms of reckless money spending. 

The business went too fast, too quickly into too many cities.

Maybe reconsider HQ and C level team placement decisions.

“We were not modest enough, neither good in taking feedback.” - Karim S.

What’s next? Another company or something else!