Why Paris is about to become the new world’s foodtech lab
Foodtech has clearly become a new economy with tremendous acceleration in the past year. And if San Francisco used to be the capital city of food innovation, it now is clear that Paris is about to challenge it, for the following reasons.
Any good dish is the combination of a nice recipe, exquisite ingredients and a chef with the know how to cook it. Let’s use this metaphor as a guide to understand France’s secrete sauce to become a leading foodtech restaurateur.
A unique culture of food that takes its roots in the largest variety of produce : where else could you find such a diversity of fruits, vegetables, cereals, fish and meat which are grown over 54% of its territory by 450 000 farmers generating a global revenue of $70B+. Learning how to cope with such richness, we learned how to invent processes like fermentation (which is the essence of our bread, wine and cheese), pasteurisation or sous vide. We aslo developed an indisputable savoir faire in cooking and feeding, but also in inventing cooking utensils, appliances and crockery.
Innovation and expertise have also expanded in the academic and research field: Paris Saclay is under construction and will be the European Silicon Valley, gathering together the most amazing concentration of talents and R&D centers including Inra, CNRS and AgroParitech for food.
To answer the expectations of more than 65M food lovers who still cook 53 min everyday, take 80% of their meals in convivality and spend a record 2h11 eating, France has developed a unique ecosystem and value chain of producers, markets, brands, retailers and restaurateurs, many of which have taken a worldwide leadership and built international renowned brands and chains.
More recently the spirit of food entrepreneurship has emerged like in no other region in Europe: if France is only 3rd in terms of money raised for foodtech startups, we excell in terms of number of deals with 341 rounds since 2014 (when UK only counts 223, Italy 67 and Germany 64).
We may not have grown an undisputed delivery platform (even though AlloResto and LaFourchette where grown in France before being respectively taken over by JustEat and TripAdvisor) but according to our analysis the top 30 French foodtech already have raised close to 500M€ over the past 4 years.
And this is just the beginning… thanks to a fantastic ecosystem of investors, the unique support of BPIFrance and a growing number of investment funds specialized in food and ag which all together have 750M€ ready to invest; thanks also to a tremendous number of platforms dedicated to incubating and accelerating entrepreneurs.
Station F is emblematic of this new French startup nation spirit with its 1000 startups in residence under the same roof, sharing the floor with French Tech, Business France, 30 business programs and 40 international funds.
We at ShakeUpFactory are the FoodTech partner of Station F where we have grown a vibrant ecosystem of 100+ actors eager to build and develop business and R&D synergies. Our foodtech factory is like no other in its capability to craft the future of food: it’s both an accelerator with the experimented support and the solid network of business partners that is needed to foster the scale up of its startup members and also a sole of its kind open innovation lab with foodtech expertise. In the heart of the world’s biggest startup campus we’re making the future of food innovation and business happen and connect every of the most breakthrough actors of what already can be named the new food economy.
We all know now that the food value chain is just at the beginning of a total reinvention. We need to invent the conditions and the adequate open innovation process required to make it happen in the best conditions. It’s our duty and mission everyday at ShakeUpFactory, thanks to all the partners which already have given un their confidence.
We’re thrilled to welcome any of those who want to be part of such a revolution: you’ll enjoy Paris not only for its lifestyle and atmosphere but also benefit of a town which is a fantastic large scale experimental field.
Let’s cook the future together.
For more info : our deck
