The funding round was led by Lifeline Ventures, known for their early investments in companies like Wolt and Supercell. The round was also joined by notable angel investors in the food delivery sector, including Laurel Bowden from 83North as well as Supercell’s CEO Ilkka Paananen and Aiven’s CFO Julian Lange.
Finnish startup Huuva building virtual food courts announced today their new €1,050M pre-seed round led by Lifeline Ventures. Lifeline Ventures is known for its early investment in companies like Wolt and Supercell. The round was also joined by notable angel investors, such as Laurel Bowden, an early investor of Wolt.
Huuva is building a virtual food court platform that restaurants can join and build their business with. Each of Huuva’s physical kitchen locations gathers 3-10 well-known restaurant brands under one roof, enabling consumers to order multiple brands in one delivery. The online food delivery market is expected to grow rapidly for which Huuva’s solution will create relief, especially for restaurants. Restaurants are currently challenged with the costs of food deliveries, fulfilment and adjusting resources.
“Restaurants are currently battling with the dilemma of growing demand for food deliveries and making it sustainable in the long run. While the amount of deliveries is growing rapidly, the costs of it are weighing heavily on restaurants. Huuva offers a tangible, cost-effective solution for restaurants with our virtual food court platform. We will see more and more restaurants opting to grow and expand their delivery sales through platforms like us, explains Ville Leppälä, CEO and co-founder of Huuva. “Our vision is to enable restaurant brands, physical or virtual, to scale their food delivery sales without the limitation of country or city borders – or time – through Huuva’s locations around Europe. The future of restaurants will be driven through platforms like ours. We’ve entered a new era.”
Huuva’s proprietary software makes sure that the kitchen operations also flow smoothly from ordering dishes to cooking them in sync.
“Our initial focus is all about making the in-kitchen experience less stressful and more scalable through our order management software for multi-brand orders. In the long run, we’ll be focusing heavily on frictionless deployment and management of restaurant brands on top of Huuva’s platform”, says Ville Lehto, Head of Product and co-founder of Huuva.
Huuva has already partnered with several top restaurant brands in Finland, such as Pupu, Story and Bites Burgers, which are all joining Huuva’s first virtual food court. Their first kitchen called Tapiola Food Court by Huuva opens today at Tapiola, near the Helsinki centre. The locations will be placed with the aim of reaching more food lovers around the city perimeters and for bringing new restaurant options for people outside of the busy city centres. Huuva is eyeing to launch four locations this Fall, with plans to expand rapidly to the Central European market.
