Frichti grabs $13.4 million for its full stack food delivery service

French startup Frichti is making the news again with yet another round of financing. This time, the company is raising $13.4 million (€12 million) from Idinvest, existing investor Alven Capital, as well as business angels, such as Sunrise co-founder Pierre Valade, Leetchi founder and CEO Céline Lazorthes, My Little Paris co-founder Céline Orjubin. Frichti is a young startup. The company started last summer and has been growing nicely since then.

“There are different strategies for food delivery,” co-founder Quentin Vacher told me. “We have an interesting approach at Frichti as we bet on daily habits.”

Frichti tries to optimize its offering for different days of the week. For lunch, the startup mostly sell cold dishes that you can eat quickly. For dinner, Frichti has entrées for 2 or 4 people for example because it doesn’t make sense to serve individual portion when you’re a family. On weekends, the startup lets you make your own brunch by selecting individual elements.

There are three key differences between Frichti and bigger delivery startups like Deliveroo. First, Frichti handles everything in house — you order on the website, the startup cooks everything in its own kitchen, and Frichti delivers your meal in Paris. In my experience, you can order a full meal for €10-€14.

Second, Frichti delivers cold meals. “It tastes better and that’s how the best restaurants work — they cook everything in advance and reheat at the last minute,” Vacher said. “Delivering hot meals is complicated as well. There’s a significant chance that your delivery is going to be below average.”

Also worth noting, Frichti lets you order in the middle of the afternoon because you don’t have to eat right away from the delivery person arrives. And for things you can’t make in advance like burgers, Frichti lets you order the ingredients so that you just have to spend five minutes making your burger at home.

Third, Frichti has found a way to optimize deliveries. In some ways, Deliveroo, Postmates and Doordash are the Uber of food delivery. But Uber drivers drive someone from A to B, then find another client and drives them from B to C. It’s a bit different for Deliveroo bikers. They ride from restaurant A to someone living at B. Then they have to go restaurant C and go to D. They waste time going from B to C.

With Frichti, if you order in advance, delivery persons take multiple meals at once and deliver them one by one without going back to Frichti’s HQ. It’s a good way to optimize delivery costs.

With today’s funding round, the company is going to invest in its own infrastructure to serve more clients. Frichti is going to spend money fostering word of mouth — you can expect more referral programs in the future.

And yes, Frichti is going to expand to other cities in France and other countries. “We can’t tell you our expansion plans yet simply because it’s not finalized yet,” Vacher said.

But if you don’t live in Paris and can’t try Frichti for yourself, I’m sure you have a burning question — is Frichti any good? I’m glad you asked, because Frichti delivers some damn good and healthy meals.