TechTalks with TFN: How Zhong Xu built Europe’s leading foodtech unicorn

zhong xu deliverect

Belgian unicorn Deliverect has been a key driver in Europe behind the rapid expansion of food delivery, powering thousands of restaurants’ systems to get your order ready for collection and delivery to your door.

With their recent acquisition of Tabesto, the leading European provider of in-store kiosks, they now provide a unified platform for restaurants. In the latest TechTalks with TFN we met Deliverect’s co-founder and CEO Zhong Xu to talk about the acquisition, how the food industry is being transformed, and how he hopes Deliverect’s expansion will help sustainability.

Watch the full episode on YouTube here, and don’t forget to like and subscribe to TFN!

The ingredients of Deliverect’s success

Restaurant platforms are in Xu’s blood, his father, having escaped Communist China, moved to Belgium and worked in a restaurant. While there, he developed a software system to help with order management that, thirty years later, is still used in some Belgian restaurants.

Founded in 2018, Xu’s Deliverect serves a similar market on a global scale. “We power almost 55,000 restaurants in 52 countries around the world,” Xu told us. Collectively, it means that Deliverect was behind 450 million orders last year, and is on course to nearly double that to 800 million this year.

Deliverect’s initial mission was simple, to provide a single interface for restaurant operations that allowed them to easily connect with delivery partners like Uber Eats and Deliveroo. However, as restaurants enjoyed the benefits that Deliverect brought their off-premises sales, they wanted something similar for their on-premises activity.

“It was a natural evolution to provide this,” Xu said. However, he resisted the temptation to expand Deliverect’s platform. “As a software engineer I believe we can make everything, but it’s good to not reinvent the wheel,” he explained. “We found the best company in Europe that has built an amazing kiosk at scale.”

The acquisition of Tabesto has increased Deliverect’s team by 60, with the Paris-based company joining to build on a product that has captured the European market.

The combination brings new clients and markets to both companies, as well as offering an integrated solution for restaurants.

The future of restaurant personalisation

One of the benefits of in-store kiosks, Xu explained, was that restaurants see a 10-30% increase in sales after installation, in large part because of the personalisation they can offer. Something that he predicts will be an increasing part of Deliverect’s and the whole food industry’s approach.

With the ability to connect on- and off-premise experiences, both will be able to adapt to the customer. Xu points out the potential this creates for machine learning and AI . “We are becoming more and more AI-first, allowing the work that used to need people to do it, to be automated while still letting people control the end result,” he told us.

He explained how this can benefit both customers and businesses. A customer, whether ordering at a kiosk or online, will see their preferences in both places. “If you go into a restaurant on a kiosk, it will recognise your account and give you the dedicated promotion you need, or only show the menus that you want,” he explained. “If I’m a vegetarian, why would I need to scroll through all the meat choices? Why can’t you filter if I’m allergic to certain things?”

However, the connection also benefits restaurant operations. Xu uses the example of menus automatically adapting to reflect specific events. While we are already accustomed to seasonal menus, he thinks the level of personalisation and adaptation could go even further, even to the level of catering for the preferences of visiting fans based on sporting timetables.

A global growth strategy

Xu is excited to continue Deliverect’s growth. Especially in the US, which now represents a significant share of their business. “In the US, we grew 15%, quarter on quarter,” Xu shared. In part, it was because of the sheer scale of the US market. “If you think about the enterprise customer in Europe, they maybe have 300 customer locations … in the US, we’re talking about 3,000.”

However, to serve multinational chains, Xu remains committed to every market. “We are the global player. If you want someone who supports you in the US, Mexico, Canada, Europe, the Middle East, Latin America, and APAC, we’re the go-to solution,” he said.

Xu is also working to help improve the sustainability of food. As well as improving the operational efficiency of restaurants, helping them to optimise delivery and stock, and to reduce food waste, a much bigger problem in the industry than many realise.

“We avoid and reduce food waste,” Xu said. “There’s a 3% to 8% error rate. You’re ordering something and not getting it, or getting the wrong time, you’re reordering and throwing away a lot of waste and packaging. We reduce the error rate to below 1%.”

Deliverect is also working with packaging companies, helping to minimise waste and maximise recycling and recycling opportunities. “If we can reduce food waste and packaging waste, that’s a key role we play in improving quality and sustainability,” Xu told us.

A billion reasons driving Deliverect’s purpose

Xu and Deliverect’s journey from an Asian restaurant in Belgium to tens of thousands of restaurants across the world has been remarkable. Already managing hundreds of millions of orders a year, Xu expects that Deliverect will soon cross the one billion orders per year threshold.

However, for Xu, these are not the real reward. “Building a company is what makes it worth it. It’s the fun, not the destination,” he said.

But, perhaps more important to him, is something his father shared about the purpose of restaurants. “‘These restaurants are the places where immigrants get their first job, where students get their first job, they are the glue of a society’, he told me. I believe in that deep purpose.”

This article is part of a partnership with Deliverect. For partnering opportunities, contact akansha@techfundingnews.com or sales@techfundingnews.com.

The post TechTalks with TFN: How Zhong Xu built Europe’s leading foodtech unicorn appeared first on Tech Funding News.

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