2016 at La Belle Assiette: a year in emojis 🙊
What. A. Year.
Intense. That’s a suitable word to describe 2016 for La Belle Assiette. This time last year we shared the highlights and evolution of La Belle Assiette. Again, we thought we’d take advantage of the beginning of the year to take stock and share the next stage of our adventure.
We decided it would be fitting to use emojis to help tell our story of what happened in 2016. We used them a lot in 2016, so it’s only right that they help us illustrate the last 365 days.
First our year in numbers…
📰 457 appearances in the press (Financial Times, Evening Standard, The Telegraph …)
📺 9 appearances on French television (France 5, BFM TV, iTélé, M6 …). Our mums are proud.
📝 453 articles written on our 3 blogs and 381.569 unique views.
📤 113,453 emails sent from the team. Excluding newsletters of course.
👥 847.526 messages sent on Slack, our internal communication software.
🎫 2,581 tickets open on Github (2,223 closed).
🚩 73,282 new lines of code on the site ( 638.503 added, -565.221 deleted)
📚 57 new books in our library! (Most read: Delivering Happiness — T.Hsieh & We Are All Stardust — S.Klein)
⚽️ 8 games of football lost against other startups. 1 victory.
📷 3,525 photos taken during validation dinners. #foodporn
🚄 127 Eurostar tickets. No Brexit at La Belle Assiette!
☕️ 96 kilos of coffee beans. Same amount of chocolate? Hard to say.
🍼 1 birth. Welcome Gabrielle!
💏 1 beautiful wedding. Congratulations Astrid and Fab!
💌 1,001 sent greeting cards. Addressed by hand.
💡 — 2016 began with a simple but ambitious idea, diversification. In France and Germany we launched new catering services for businesses. The market is neglected, out-dated, fragmented, disorganised and lacking transparency. This presented us with an opportunity to solve the current issues people were facing. We did it with private chefs at home, it’s time for the rest of the industry to be disrupted.
😱 — The challenge is big, the catering market is valued at €18 billion in Europe. The challenge for the team was to continue to grow our private chef service while tackling a new market. We had identified the issues, all we had to do was offer a solution in record time.
🚀 — We had to innovate and create. We modified and adapted our existing tools to the needs of larger caterers and their customers. In June we launched “La Belle Assiette for Business” in France and Germany. This new tool intended to revolutionise how companies find and book catering services. You could now book buffets, canapé trays, lunch boxes, breakfasts and snacks all on one website.
🍴 — The private chef at home service continued to grow rapidly in all countries. A double-digit monthly growth rate, tens of thousands of customers and a 100 new chefs across Europe. The word about La Belle Assiette spread!
💯 — We hosted London’s Longest Dinner Party in London. Where 9 chefs cooked a different dish every 10 minutes for 1,000 minutes for 12 diners. A great success in the capital!
👠 — Elior Group acquired a stake in La Belle Assiette following the success of ‘La Belle Assiette for Business’, which saw hundreds of businesses book our caterers. A partnership that will accelerate the growth into the corporate catering market.
🎉 — On our team building weekend away, all the teams from Paris, London and Berlin come together to celebrate the achievements of the year. Alongside the fun there was some work to be done, choose the name for our corporate catering marketplace…
✂️ — “GoCater” — In December, we made it official and launched the new arm of the company, for now just in France and Germany. A separate entity with it’s own dedicated team. La Belle Assiette is refocusing on its private chef dining service, where customers can book a chef to cook for them at home. GoCater, accompanied by Elior, is embarking on the adventure of catering dedicated to companies.
👌 — 2016 also saw us move into our new offices in Paris, London and Berlin 🏢 . We raised a €1.3M round! We partnered with Moet Hennessy to offer perfectly paired Champagne menus, were loved by The Independent, The Times, The Evening Standard and many many more. We pitched at The Pitch final. Our chefs wowed guests with their culinary genius. We created and announced are 6 core values, which define us as a company. 📷 The guys at TopJaw tried out La Belle Assiette and this is what happened.
And finally..
👫 — This year, as with every year was above all about the people who make La Belle Assiette. We grew to a team of 28 people. We’re a hungry, young, motivated, dynamic and ambitious group. Each personality is unique and brings something new to the company. We have partnered with over 700 talented and creative chefs across Europe, who inspire us and our customers every day.
❤️— 2016 was thanks to YOU. Curious readers, foodies, customers, chefs, entrepreneurs, investors. You make La Belle Assiette, you inspire us and feed our ambition. So thank you, a thousand times over for a year of support.
We wish you all a happy, healthy and prosperous 2017. Full of happiness, adventures, family, friends and of course plenty of great food.
Anaïs, Ashley, Astrid, Audrey, Bertrand, Caroline, Cedric, Claudel, Duc, Franck, Fred, Gianluca, Giorgio, Guillaume, Henri, Kornelius, Maire, Mathieu, Millie, Nadinka, Nicolas, Oliver, Pauline & Pauline, Sam, Sophie, Stephen, and Thomas.
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P.S. We’re hiring! Check out our job opportunities here.
