Online supermarket Crisp has just raised 30 million euros in fresh capital. Among the investors are the founders of Just Eat Takeaway (Jitse Groen) and Adyen.
Wider assortment
In addition, the Berlin-based European investment fund Target Global and the Dutch company Keen Venture Partners are participating in the funding round, reports Business Insider. Earlier, Crisp raised 16.5 million euros, bringing the total invested capital in the start-up to 46.5 million euros.
Crisp wants to use the money to expand the electric vehicle fleet and extend the product range by 2,000 products, among other things. CEO and founder Tom Peeters is thinking of products for baking and fresh ready meals. Yet, he does not want to turn it into a supermarket that delivers everything. “You won’t quickly find toilet paper at our store”, he told Dutch newspaper FD. “I also don’t believe that a client needs to find everything in one single store.”
Crisp was founded in 2018. From the beginning, Peeters focused on fresh and local quality products. Currently, the offer consists of products from some 650 regional farmers, growers and producers.
Growth
The coronavirus crisis also gave Crisp a boost. Some 300,000 people have already downloaded the app. Peeters does not want to disclose specific sales figures, but he does say that revenues increased sevenfold last year. “We are profitable with every order. Not yet as a company, but that should not take more than ten years. We are growing fast, mainly through word-of-mouth publicity: people are recommending the app to each other,” he says.
While larger retailers struggle with the profitability of online shopping, according to Peeters, fresh food is suitable for online sales. “We succeed because we set things up differently,” he says. For example, the distribution centre works with a self-developed IT-system. “The system estimates demand, orders from our suppliers automatically and can flexibly allocate products to storage. If the weather, for example, gets hot, the fruit gets moved quickly to the refrigerator.”
Crisp has a reputation for being very expensive compared to traditional supermarkets. But Peeters attributes that to the quality of the products. “Our croissants come from a specialised French supplier. That is why they are our most popular product,” he concludes.
