Foodsi, the Polish startup developing a platform that allows its users to buy surplus food from restaurants, bakeries and shops, has raised €1.24 million in a seed round. The fresh capital has been provided among others by CofounderZone and Satus Starter funds and experienced private investors, including the founders of Pyszne.pl. With the new funds raised, the startup will be able to increase its nationwide reach and prepare its processes and mobile app for international expansion.
Founded in 2019, Foodsi is a Warsaw-based startup that helps combat food waste with zero waste philosophy in mind. The young company has created a platform that allows catering establishments and shops to sell their surplus food. This way customers may buy products for even as little as 30% of the original price. And catering establishments do not have to throw away unsold food and gain an additional source of income as well as an entirely new group of customers.
The Foodsi app for consumers operates as a managed marketplace. Its users may choose from offers of foodservice outlets available on Foodsi and book their chosen package in mere seconds. The package is available for collection on the same or next day right before the establishment closes. Its content always comes as a surprise and depends on the current menu or the regular offer at the place in question.
The startup has already attracted over 800,000 mobile app users, with more than 500,000 joining in the last year. The founders themselves used to work in restaurants in Copenhagen and Warsaw which allowed them to get to know the problem of food waste from behind the scenes. Since the start of Foodsi, consumers have saved more than 850,000 food packages.
Foodsi users can choose from offers by more than 3,000 catering establishments across Poland, primarily in Warsaw, Wrocław, Kraków, Poznań and the Tri-City. Over the year, the number of outlets available in the app has tripled. Foodsi’s partners are for instance restaurants, bakeries, confectioneries, cafés and grocery shops. These include brands well-known in Poland, e.g. Salad Story, Pasibus, Thai Wok, Oskroba Bakeries, Cofix, Olimp restaurants, AVIA petrol stations, Koku Sushi, as well as local chains such as Aromat and Batida in Warsaw.
Interestingly, Foodsi helps save not only food. The app’s range has expanded to include florists or shops selling potted plants and cosmetics. Pet owners may find something of interest here, too, for instance hunt down a packet of pet food at a lower price.
Last year, Foodsi raised €240k in a funding round led by the AIP Seed fund. This allowed the company to create a new mobile app, change its branding and focus on building solid traction. As a result, the number of available establishments has tripled and the number of users has grown more than 2.6 times. Earlier, the startup was developing thanks to its founders’ own funds and reinvestment of earnings.
“We have been following the development of Foodsi for a long time and are impressed by what Mateusz, Kuba and their team have managed to achieve. They survived the pandemic and won hundreds of thousands of users and a thousand restaurants with no external funding, and then made good use of the capital from the pre-seed round. They focused on very intensive product development which resulted in a rapid increase in the area covered and allowed them to reach a wide range of partners and customers. They showed character and business maturity. We are happy that, together with a group of experienced business angels, we can support them in the next stage of their development. Foodsi has the potential to become a significant player in the online foodservice market in Europe and, in the long term, will bring value to us all by reducing food waste,” Dr Tomasz Goliński, General Partner at CofounderZone, says.
The funds raised will help Foodsi to further develop its platform. As soon as this year, its partners will gain new analytic features and features to automate the sharing of offers allowing them to save even more food they will be able to provide to users. Users will experience product change, too, which will make the app even more convenient. Foodsi plans to further expand in Poland and intends to enter new markets next year.
To this end, Foodsi is extending its team, which has grown sixfold over the past year and now numbers more than 30 people.
Foodsi CEO Mateusz Kowalczyk stated: “5 million tonnes of food are wasted in Poland every year. Shops and catering establishments forced to throw away unsold food contribute to this. Foodsi’s mission is to ensure that this food, instead in a trash bin, ends up on consumers’ tables, thus providing restaurants with an additional source of income and customers with savings. However, it is primarily consumers who are responsible for food waste. We hope to help reduce this phenomenon by changing the awareness of our customers, which will have a positive impact on their responsible menu and shopping planning.”
