The Venture Codex

Participated · Equity · May 2018

La Belle Vie operates an online grocery store in the Paris area, originally focusing on fresh products such as vegetables, fruit, meat, fish and cheese. It has expanded its assortment to include packaged goods and now offers about 17,000 products, including 4,000 fresh items, and has a partnership with Système U. The service delivers across Île-de-France in under three hours, processes roughly 15,000 orders per week, and employs around 500 people (the CEO also cited over 600 employees on permanent contracts). To compete with quick-commerce players the company launched a faster brand, Bam Courses, in Paris with a 2,500-product assortment dispatched from seven distribution hubs and targeted 15-minute deliveries. La Belle Vie emphasizes profitability and tight control of margins and supply chain, and plans to expand to other major cities in France. La Belle Vie focuses exclusively on groceries, offering a large inventory of basics, organic items, meat, fish, vegetables and prepared meals after acqui-hiring 62degrés. The startup has built its own stack from scratch, including an ERP, warehouse management and delivery management services. In 2017 the company generated $3.5 million (€3 million) in sales. It competes with services such as Amazon Prime Now and supermarket delivery offerings in Paris. With its new funding, La Belle Vie plans to open a second warehouse in Paris and expand to new cities, starting with Lyon. The product proposition emphasizes optimizing every step of grocery fulfillment for faster delivery and higher specialization than generalist services.