RobinFood: A Tech Enterprise That Sells Food

Colombia-based mostly RobinFood — Latin America’s swiftest-escalating chain of “cloud” restaurants — credits proprietary technology, the explosive advancement of FinTechs and pandemic-led way of life alterations as the secrets of its success. Add in ghost virtual-buying kiosks and physical locations and Luis Vega, RobinFood co-founder and COO, expects RobinFood to become Latin America’s most significant player by restaurant count by 2024.

“We are a tech corporation that sells food items,” Vega mentioned. But he reported that considering the fact that the region’s ordinary month-to-month cash flow is less than $400, “we knew if we preferred to go massive, we would have to go downscale.”

Even with lower ordinary incomes, Latin The united states gives a enormous all round market place measurement and expansion opportunity. The location is property to just about 50 % a billion folks and previously served by pretty much every rapid-service restaurant (QSR) chain possible — as nicely as an array of mother-and-pop alternatives, seemingly on each individual seemingly corner.

Even so, Vega said that when it comes to buying food, the masses are underserved.

“The regular earnings degree of the men and women listed here doesn’t allow them to go to the Kentucky Fried Chickens and the McDonald’s on a every day foundation. They just can not afford it,” he explained. “What we are striving to do is tap into this enormous population bracket.”

Breaking Latin Americans’ Adore Of Shelling out Money

To capture the market’s reduced conclusion, RobinFood has created a fleet of cloud places to eat throughout large towns in Colombia, Brazil and Mexico. These provide shoppers foods via contactless buying kiosks, takeout or shipping.

“It’s pretty convenient, but also very, extremely disruptive,” Vega explained. “You can get your food stuff in four minutes for a few of bucks.”

But mainly because velocity and effectiveness are important, RobinFood has embraced of modern electronic payments technologies in a area where 80 percent of meals is paid out for in funds. Vega explained adaptability all around payments is a large section of RobinFood’s development and benefit proposition.

“What we’re viewing is a shift towards far more credit score playing cards and debit cards, but also an explosion of the FinTech companies,” he claimed. “The payments landscape is modifying really rapid in Latin The usa, and it’s not being pushed by the common banking companies, but alternatively by the FinTech organizations.”

But as much as FinTechs and RobinFood equally want to use the chain’s cloud dining places as screening grounds for new electronic-transaction choices, Vega stated his enterprise is committed to getting “payment agnostic.” It desires to make it possible for people today to order and fork out however they are most at ease, regardless of whether that signifies making use of QR codes or facial recognition.

Behind the scenes, RobinFood is also seeking at utilizing technologies such as convolutional neural networks and artificial intelligence as high quality command steps for each and every dish. Vega mentioned that requires taking an graphic of the dish, and if it receives turned down for no matter what reason, you can trace it back again and know exactly who organized it.

Consider It, You will Like It

Like most technological adjustments, cloud dining establishments would intrinsically feel to be a much more all-natural in shape for young, tech-savvy people.

Even so, Vega likes to cite the experience of his 80-calendar year-aged mother, who was able to navigate RobinFood’s procedure and speedily turn into relaxed with new ideas like not acquiring a cashier.

The pandemic has only served push these adoption. “I assume COVID has drastically changed business just about everywhere, and Latin The usa is no exception to that,” Vega said.

$16 Million In New Funding 

RobinFood this thirty day period elevated $16 million in personal debt funding from MGM Sustainable Energy Fund II.

Vega said the company prepared to make investments that cash into increasing operations and “winning” in Colombia, Mexico and Brazil. At the similar time, the company will also go on to commit in new technology, as properly as employing extra individuals to bolster its development workforce.

“Those 3 items — infrastructure, individuals, and technologies — are likely to push our business enterprise forward [and] will make it possible for us to acquire in people 3 marketplaces around the study course of the future two years,” he reported.

And even though some have questioned the timing of attempting to develop a foodstuff-dependent startup all through a pandemic, Vega is undeterred.

“I usually notify [critics]: ‘We’re quite self-assured about the upcoming,’” he stated. “The spirit of the persons in Latin America will prevail.”