Founded by Clement Benoit and Alexandre Haggai, this French startup has raised 80 million dollars in recent series B funding for their new project. At first look, there idea of a delivery food service may seem cliche, but Not So Dark offers a unique business model. Instead of just offering a delivery service to existing restaurants, this startup seeks to expand their online menu as well as deliver. Not So Dark partners with interested restaurants and then sends ingredients and recipes to create foods for several brands they own such as JFK Burgers and Fat Panda. This allows the restaurant to always be cooking food, whether its their own menu for customers in store or Not So Darks menu for online customers. Its a win-win for everyone, customers get the food that they desire and the restaurant sees increased business, Not So Dark just takes a small cut of this.
These entrepreneurs inspire me in my own thinking through their innovation and creativity. They are effectively changing the entire way that we view restaurants. Instead of going to a place because it specializes in a food or menu that we want, restaurants using this model are becoming a more generalized and multiuse. The seemingly endless menu paired with delivery service means that they are basically a place where you can pay other people to cook a meal for you, an extremely useful and attractive idea.
Nate, it is really cool to see how they put a spin on the already existing and popular market of food delivery. Ive never really thought of this niche solution in a niche market. It seems to help everyone out in a super unique way, really cool!
This is interesting, I wonder how big they will get if they can sustain the growth over time and potentially create more of their own businesses.
Nate, something that struck me about this product was the name of it. I would not have mentally paired Not So Dark with a food delivery service without knowing of the connection first. I wonder why they used this name for their service and what the connection is. Also, I wonder if potential customers would mistake this business for something else because the name doesn’t obviously reflect the product.