VIDOOFOOD - GITA Grant Winner Startup to Serve 1000 Restaurants in 10 Countries
If you plan to organize your own online restaurant without essential efforts and extra financial costs, Georgian startup ViDooFood will help you. Several weeks ago, the startup won the 100,000-GEL grant competition of Georgian Innovation and Technology Agency (GITA).
As the startup founder Giorgi Japaridze told Business Partner, the objective of the company is to serve over 1000 online restaurants through over 200 kitchens in 10 countries. The company plans to achieve this goal in 5 years. The digital kitchen has not been represented in Eastern Europe and ViDooFood will be the first company to establish this concept in eastern Europe. “We launched the first online restaurant amid the pandemic when the online restaurant industry started rapid growth.
Our employees had to stay 70% of working hours idle. We created the first digital kitchen in this way - the so-called Ghost Kitchen in Georgia. Thanks to this scheme, we enable Georgia customers to create their own online restaurants or expand the existing ones. Our customers face two key problems: arranging a kitchen costs around USD 50,000 on average and it takes at least 12 weeks to install it, employ the staff and train them. Besides these problems, our customers will not pay monthly fixed costs either that makeup around USD 5,000”, Giorgi Japaridze said. The startup plans to use the GITA’s 100,000-GEL for opening the second restaurant in Tbilisi. So far, the startup founders have already invested GEL 100,000 in the project. “Today we are approaching the highest production scales. Considering the high market demand, we need to expand our business.
As our customers say, cooking dishes in our system is cheaper by 20% compared to their own restaurants. This is additional proof that our business model is a success. Initially, we plan to add several facilities in Tbilisi to fully cover the market. As for the next phases, we plan to introduce our concept to foreign markets too”, the ViDooFood founder noted.