Taster

Taster is a London-based virtual restaurant platform that operates a franchise model that allows restaurant partners to license its brands and menus, leveraging underutilized kitchen space to integrate Taster meal preparation into their existing operations. The company has four digital food brands, each designed for delivery and based on a different cuisine in partnership with renowned chefs, one of whom holds two Michelin stars. They include Out Fry (Korean fried chicken), A Burgers (plant-based eaters), Mission Saigon (Vietnamese food), and Pepe Chicken.

Taster offers restaurant partners marketing and PR support, bespoke restaurant software to streamline operations and kitchen management, supply chain support, delivery platform management, and customer care. The company’s tech stack includes an algorithm that accurately predicts the volume of ingredients required to prepare each of its restaurants’ dishes on a daily basis, drastically reducing food wastage and heightening efficiency. In turn, restaurants partnering with Taster have the possibility of generating 30 orders from day 1 with an average order value of USD 33 and potential revenues of USD 250,000-700,000 per year coupled with zero set-up costs provided they have their own basic kitchen set-up. Meanwhile, restaurant partners are charged a commission of 20%-30% of each order.

As of February 2022, Taster had 150 digital restaurants and had delivered over 1.5 million meals across 38 major European cities including Paris, London, Madrid, Brussels, Lille, Rouen, Manchester, and Strasbourg. The company aimed to have 10,000 digital restaurants globally by 2025.

In April 2021, Taster raised USD 37 million Series B funding from VC firms led by UK-based Octopus Ventures and including Battery Ventures, Latitude (LocalGlobe), HeartCore, Rakuten, GFC, and Founders Future.