The food revolution is here. Belgian start-up Take Eat Easy comes to Barcelona with the aim of conquering the city as it has already done in Brussels, Paris, London and Madrid. Its speciality is the fusion of gourmet food, e-commerce and sustainability, with a home delivery service by bicycle from the best restaurants in the city, and providing customers with the possibility of tracking their orders.
Moreover, the service resolves one of the main problems everyone has: lack of time. The managing director of the start-up in Spain, Simone Colombelli, suggests that up to 46% of Spaniards do not have enough time to make their own food, which makes the success of the operation "almost guaranteed".
Creating a network of restaurants
The idea was born in 2013, when the current managing director of the company, Adrien Roose, was working in London: "One day, after thinking about it a lot, he realised that there was no established network of restaurants in the city, which led him to launch what is today Take Eat Easy with three childhood friends," says Colombelli, who adds that the founders set the aim of creating a base of restaurants that broke with "the poor quality, lack of logistics and bad image" that home delivery services normally had.
Despite it being a start-up that comes to Barcelona with lessons learnt from establishing the business in other large European cities, Colombelli recognises that the Spanish market has one difficulty: "It might seem like an uninteresting target area, because people go out to eat, but the fact is that 90% of Spaniards eat at home and that makes us think that the sector will grow." And to remove any remaining doubt, she points to the almost 2.5 million users who, she says, are connected to some app or other providing home delivery services in Spain.
The home delivery sector is already a market worth 70 billion dollars, of which 9 billion dollars come from online business. As many as seven global companies are valued at more than a billion dollars, which makes it a market niche expected to grow in the coming years.
Bicycle delivery
No cars and no motorbikes, as those who deliver the food to users' homes are keen cyclists who decide to become Take Eat Easy employees. This ensures that the company contributes to the sustainable development of the environment, and allows these people to turn their passion for the sport into a job.
As the logistics are simple and the service is totally coordinated by the start-up, the restaurants do not have to invest anything to be included in the service. It is an extra that can help them to increase their turnover by 15% to 25% in little over six months from the date of implementing the service, while the platform gains another outlet for promotion. 
Control of the fleet is done by computer system. "We have an algorithm that detects which cyclists are available, as well as the place and how long it will take to get there," says Colombelli. Each delivery cyclist has a file of information that includes their average time for a delivery and their average speed, which helps when it comes to choosing the best person for each client. Thus, the Barcelona city manager, Oriol Sanleandro, will stock his fleet with Uber experienced cyclists: "Our cyclists are at the level of this app because they are flexible, can work when they want and leave from wherever they want." Moreover, he points out that the Catalan capital is a place with a good system of cycle lanes, which will help the start-up to become established in Catalonia.
As for the product, each cyclist is equipped with a backpack for carrying the food, although the company intends to install boxes on the bikes. The container the food comes in is also important. "If the restaurant uses its own packaging, we test it out to see if it works. If it is not good enough or they do not have any packaging, we offer them alternatives from companies we have international agreements with and then it is up to the restaurant to make the final choice," says Colombelli.
Humanising the figure of the deliverer Beyond breaking new ground with the use of bicycles, Take Eat Easy has helped revolutionise the sector by putting the customer at the centre of the operation. "We want the deliverers to be friendly, polite and to show concern for our customers," stresses Sanleandro. The head of the Barcelona start-up has experience in new food businesses through Make Eat Easy, a project launched in San Francisco to deliver boxes of ingredients and recipes for dishes that can be made at home, which made him understand the importance of treating customers well. Because, in the end he says, "a good service leads to repeat orders."
To dispel the cliché of "poor customer attention in Spain," the start-up trains each of its cyclists. It also offers information, such as the name of the deliverer on a map in which the client can see at any time where his or her meal is. Two initiatives that help to humanise the service and change the concept of home delivery.
Barcelona's potential
While Colombelli highlights the natural openness of Spaniards as a factor against, Sanleandro chooses to point to one of the strong points of the Catalan capital: its multicultural nature.
"Barcelona includes many cultures and people from different places. We want to offer all of this variety, deliver it to customers' houses and help them to choose something other than the three or four options they tend to stick to," he says.
At the same time, the head of the Barcelona start-up recognises that the city is also a key place for becoming one of the most important companies in the foodtech industry. "It is well recognised in the home delivery sector. The economy and new technology are driving it forward and we will end up seeing deliveries on a level that until now has been un