Thanks to a partnership with Delhaize, Foodmaker is finding the means to open new restaurants quickly: not only in cities but also in corporate settings. “You don’t help your employees by offering them chips. You help them with healthy food.”
Great growth potential
“This evening in Paris we are opening our smallest restaurant ever, at 40 sq m. Next week we will open our largest restaurant ever, in Rotterdam, measuring 800 sq m. And today, I can announce our agreement with Delhaize. It is crazy!” Foodmaker’s chief executive Lieven Vanlommel sounds audibly proud when we call him on the occasion of the newly announced marriage with the supermarket chain.
It is truly a win-win situation, he emphasises: “I want to expand quickly into national coverage, but I don’t have the means. Opening a Foodmaker restaurant costs three to four hundred thousand euros. I don’t have that, but Delhaize does.” In addition, the supermarket chain is looking for new growth paths: with more than 800 stores, the room for further expansion is rather limited. However, the potential for healthy restaurants is high: “After an analysis, we came up with at least 60 potential locations. Eight locations have already been signed. This year, three will open, from next year onwards, we will open at least five restaurants a year, and then we will see how fast we can go. The more, the better.”
‘Hard franchise’
A preparatory phase lasting one and a half years preceded the deal. It is a ‘hard franchise’ concept in which Foodmaker supplies everything, from the concept to the layout to the products. Delhaize will work with independent operators to run the restaurants. “Thanks to this agreement, we can concentrate on marketing, innovation, the products, the community. But also, on supporting the restaurants and training the staff: we are evolving from an operational model to a service model.”
The first restaurant operated by Delhaize has already opened: it is Foodmaker Bascule, in Uccle, Brussels. The next branches will be in Mechelen and Brussels-North. “I am incredibly delighted with this partnership. Running restaurants is new for Delhaize, but they believe in it. The Ahold Delhaize group has given its approval. It is a huge vote of confidence.”
Company restaurants
Consumers are demanding healthy food, says Vanlommel. “Not only on the streets but much more within companies. After all, as a company, you are responsible for your people. How do you help them? By offering them healthy food at the office, rather than chips. That is nudging. Today, there are some 2200 company restaurants, so if you ask me what the potential is, I would say 2000…”.
That is not an exaggeration: in the Netherlands, Foodmaker already closed a deal with caterer Appèl at the beginning of this year: “They have six hundred traditional company restaurants in their customer base of which they want to convert at least 10 per cent to Foodmaker. In Belgium, too, we will be focusing on business-to-business. Our restaurants at Proximus, Engie or in The Link business centre are real gems.”
Unstaffed stores
In partnership with Delhaize in Belgium and Appèl in the Netherlands, Foodmaker is guaranteed to open at least one restaurant every month for the next two years. “That’s 24 that have already been contracted. But my production can handle two hundred if we find the right partners. We have space,” Vanlommel assures us. Foodmaker also has a concept ready for fully automated unstaffed stores for businesses. The first one will open this year in the RetailDetail RetailHub, in the Antwerp Stadsfeestzaal.
The deal with Delhaize is a boost after a particularly difficult period in which the healthy restaurant chain had to completely reinvent itself. “We have been fighting for our life for the past year and a half. I am extremely pleased that I can now announce positive news. There is nothing anyone can do about the Covid crisis, and I would have preferred to be on the side of the winners. We cannot undo the damage we have suffered, but that does not mean our concept is flawed. The importance of healthy food is even greater now than it was before Covid. But if you don’t have the capital to grow, you have to look elsewhere.”
