Who is Luca?
I’m a Law graduate, although from my third year of University I started realizing I couldn’t see myself as a lawyer. Therefore I decided to shift my career towards a different direction. I worked at the European Parliament, at the Ministry of Economic Development in Rome, and then at Innogest SGR, a Venture Capital fund. During the latter experience, I was working on helping startups in the food-tech sector to scale up. I could see how the food-tech industry was quickly developing in Europe and that Italy was an interesting market to explore. The HoReCa (which stands for Hospitality-Restaurants-Cafes) industry in Italy is highly fragmented and I realized that I wanted to create something that would give an added value to this sector. That’s why I decided to quit my job and start a company with my co-founders Ivan Aimo and Gabriele Angeleri to create something helpful in this industry.
What was your secret wish when you were younger?
My dream has always been to have a job that I am passionate about and especially one that has a positive social impact. I wanted to create something from scratch on my own, that could employ people, have a positive contribution to families and respond to a market demand.
Describe Deliveristo in one sentence
Deliveristo is a digital marketplace of suppliers for restaurants and the HoReCa sector.
What is the added value of Deliveristo compared to a classic supplier?
Our goal is to give restaurants the choice between various suppliers as if they were at a market. We give them the possibility to buy from both small scale producers and bigger suppliers, having only one invoice. Nowadays, the majority of restaurants still buy from suppliers based on their relationship with the vendor. They often don’t know the exact price of products and they have to deal with an entire catalogue of products for each of their suppliers – which often is not practical. Suppliers are not easy to manage, that’s why we provide an entire team of people to support each customer.
We offer a service that enables our customers to be more in control of their purchases. They can have the best quality for the best possible price, as simple as buying from a wholesaler. For free. We don’t have a warehouse – we don’t stock products, and suppliers are in charge of the logistics. We are basically a purchasing group: the more restaurants that buy through Deliveristo, the better price/quality/speed for everyone. We offer our customers’ purchasing managers a way to lower the food cost. If they don’t have a manager, we offer them a consulting service to ultimately manage their purchasing process.
What are your core values as a company?
For our team, we look to add people who embrace our vision of “disrupt and build as fast as we can”. The ambition of changing the game. Meritocracy and giving feedback on how to improve are core for us. Each member of the team can share their ideas and perspectives, as we value everyone’s opinion. Flexibility and multi-tasking are also key to our company. If you are not ready to innovate – don’t come to us! If you like every day to be different you should join us! Every day brings along new and interesting challenges.
What were the main challenges you faced while starting the company?
Everything was so new to us and creating something that no one had ever done before was very challenging in itself. One of the hardest tasks was definitely finding the right people to join us, those who were able to believe in something that didn’t exist yet. You can have the best idea on Earth, but if you don’t have the right people with you, you will never reach your goals. Businesses are made of people and at the end of the day it is really a matter of teamwork!
How did you convince restaurants of your added value?
At the beginning we only had a limited supply, so it was hard to convince restaurants to believe in our project, as they were often not interested in our products. One of the trickiest things is to change people’s habits, but once we were able to do so, restaurants understood the added value we were offering them. At the beginning a small set of clients trusted us because we were a group of enthusiastic young buddies – now they choose us because we give them something really helpful to their business.
What are the most important things you learned since starting Deliveristo four years ago?
Every day new opportunities come to our door and it’s not always easy to prioritize them. It’s not a matter of how great your ideas are, but rather how efficiently you develop them. I often find myself having to deal with several projects at the same time.
How did you deal with the Covid-19 pandemic? What initiatives did you pursue?
During the first lockdown we tried to find a solution to support the restaurants we work with. We offered a B2B2C service, turning restaurants into retailers of various products, to allow them (and ourselves too) to keep on working and maintaining a relationship with their customers.
What is your vision for the future of Deliveristo?
Our goal is to give the power and the control of food costs back to restaurants, recommending them new products and delivering an efficient and easy service. We recently started operating in Bologna and our aim is to expand internationally, offering our service in other European countries. It’s not about being a supplier of Italian products abroad, but a service to all restauranteurs.
At the moment there are two main types of businesses that work in this sector. Either those that offer a software for your own suppliers or those that supply products and take care of the logistics (who cannot have a supply as rich as ours). We are a hybrid of both: a better service with a better food cost.