- Liv Up will enter the D2C segment (direct to the consumer);
- Olga Ri will triple its salad production infrastructure, with two new dark kitchens.
Two Brazilian foodtechs announced their expansion plans this week. After being born selling frozen lunchboxes through its online channels, Liv Up said it is ready to set foot in the physical world, and in more than one type of operation. Olga Ri, in its turn, carried out an investment round led by the Kaszek Ventures fund to install two new dark kitchens in Sao Paulo.
To the website PEGN , Liv Up announced its plans to enter the D2C segment (direct to the consumer). Still last year, the company bet on the sale of meals to the corporate public, through the installation of refrigerators in companies interested in the service and, in January this year, it bought another startup specialized in this branch, VYA.
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In the coming weeks, Liv Up will also offer delivery of ready-to-eat dishes (not just frozen), and, by the end of the year, it should open a restaurant. The foodtech told PEGN that it has a partnership with more than 25 families of small producers and that 80% of the vegetables it uses to prepare the dishes are organic. This dynamic, according to Liv Up, not only guarantees the supply of raw materials in a sustainable manner, but helps the company to make another delivery of important value to the consumer: the traceability of its production chain.
To the website Brazil Journal, Olga Ri gave some details about the round of investments she made. In addition to the leadership of KasZek Ventures, the round was attended by Arbor Capital and physical investors such as Renato Fairbanks Ribeiro, former member of the management board of Burger King in Brazil, and André Jereissati, of the family that controls, among other businesses, those of Shopping Iguatemi in Fortaleza.
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Although the company did not reveal the exact amount of the investment, Olga Ri explained to Brazil Journal that the round will enable the construction of two new dark kitchens, and that each of these kitchens costs, on average, BRL 700 mil. With the new structures, the company intends to reinforce its operations in Sao Paulo and also debut in new Brazilian cities.
Today, Olga Ri works with only one dark kitchen. Half of the sales come from the company’s own platforms, and the other half come from sales made via Rappi, Uber Eats and iFood and other delivery applications. One of the assets to keep the startup growing is its customer loyalty rate: 85%.
