Beef Deli sets sights on scaling up eCommerce platform for meats and gourmet products with $500,000 equity crowdfunding round on Eureeca
Beef Deli, an innovative company aspiring to be the Middle East’s leading eCommerce online delivery platform for quality fresh meats and gourmet products, is now live on Eureeca with their equity crowdfunding round aiming to raise $500,000 in order to scale their
business.
Beef Deli sources quality products directly from distributors and producers and offers the lowest prices in the marketplace. Its selection of 25+ top-of-the-range meats is currently available from Argentina, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, South Africa and the USA.
Delivery is immediate or within 24 hours directly to the end-client, depending on order size. The majority of chilled meat in the GCC and broader Middle East region is sold through the retail channel. Today, modern retailers have overtaken traditional ones with an ever- increasing number of consumers opting to purchase their meat from supermarkets during their weekly shopping. Modern retail accounts for approximately 80% of total retail beef sales and growing, as more traditional butcheries lose share.
“The market is growing for a differentiated chilled product with a good story to tell which presents an opportunity for Beef Deli,”explains Carl Ortiz, Chairman, Beef Deli. “The areas which we look to exploit include high growth rates in quality meat consumption, attractive demographics, young population with changing income trends and the deployment of technology which reduces traditional approaches and unnecessary costs.”
So far, Beef Deli has plenty of key achievements to shout about:
- Established Q4 2017 and achieved breakeven Q4 2018
- April 2018 achieved Q3 2019 forecast numbers through organic growth only
- To date, they have spent zero on marketing and have reached capacity with current staff count
- Shortlisted among top F&B startups from around the world
Beef Deli was able to do this by keeping costs low by applying technology and innovation enabling the team to deliver better service and exploit growth and inefficiencies. They also embrace Blockchain as an integral part of their food tracking process and mobile ordering and digital interaction providing the team with insight into customer/product behaviour and data analytics. Also, Beef Deli’s machine learning integration allows it to reduce overhead and focus on the customer experience.
“We have also grown our event management services where we initially only offered live BBQ management, but now support corporate events and special occasions,” adds Ortiz.
The funds from Beef Deli’s equity crowdfunding campaign will go towards the following priority areas:
- Staff – 35% – additional transportation & administration personnel
- Vehicles – 30% – additional refrigerated vans & motor bikes
- Production – 20% – purchase & renting of equipment
- Operations – 10% – fleet management, route optimisation
- Marketing – 5% – social media campaign, marketing partnerships
“We ultimately need to be prepared to fulfil the high demand we are experiencing from our client base and anticipate further growth from new customers, be it individuals, restaurants or hotels. Our goal is to integrate a supply chain using a unified technology with operational efficiencies that will meet the demands of our expanding consumer base and suppliers. As we have reached capacity with our current staff count, the first round of funding will also be deployed to hire more drivers and purchase/lease more delivery vehicles,” says Ortiz.
Beef Deli has already raised $20,000 (4% of their $500,000 target) from 8 investors so far.
Their funding round on Eureeca is set to close on 5th June 2019.