European Premium Restaurant Delivery Service Take Eat Easy Closes €10M Series B

The European premium restaurant delivery space appears to show no signs of cooling. As recently as July, London’s Deliveroo raised a $70 million Series C for further international expansion. And today it’s the turn of Rocket Internet-backed Take Eat Easy.

After raising a €6 million Series A funding round in April, the Brussels-headquartered startup has already returned to investors with the closure of a €10 million Series B round led by Eight Roads Ventures (previously Fidelity Growth Partners), and existing investors Rocket Internet, DN Capital and Piton Capital.

Take Eat Easy co-founder and CEO Adrien Roose tells me the new capital will be used to consolidate the company’s presence in France and Belgium and to expand further into Europe, namely U.K., Germany and Spain.

That puts it on a trajectory where it will have to compete with heavily funded Deliveroo and a host of other local premium restaurant delivery startups, including Germany’s Volo, which Rocket Internet recently acquired.

(Yes, that’s right, another example of Rocket effectively competing against itself, albeit with some claimed degree of separation. A discussion for another day perhaps…)

As to how Take Eat Easy plans to compete, Roose is talking up the quality of restaurants that the startup works with, along with what he believes is better logistics technology. Specifically, he says that unlike competitors, Take Eat Easy offers “dynamic delivery times that adapt based on demand, preparation time of restaurants, position and speed of couriers”.

In this way, the platform is designed to “manage expectations” as the estimated time of delivery is continually updated per restaurant so that you know how long it will be before your food arrives, prior to placing an order. Delivering food reliably so it doesn’t arrive cold is no mean feat after all, and these startups are in the logistics business primarily.

In contrast, Roose says competitors typically overstaff areas and then when they don’t have enough drivers they simply pause orders for that particular restaurant or area.

Meanwhile, Roose has previously said he thinks the market is a long way off from being “winner takes all” and that there is still room for numerous players. As I say, like the food being delivered, this is definitely a hot market.