Dubai-based food delivery company, Fine Diner, has secured $150K in SEED funding.
Founded in 2019, Fine Diner Inc. develops food delivery brands. The Fine Diner business model eliminates the risk of launching fresh new brands into the food delivery space by eliminating OPEX and CAPEX.
The Food & Beverage industry in the UAE has recorded quite the dip in the Q1’22 after being the most funded industry in UAE in 2021, led by cloud kitchen Kitopi‘s $415M Series C Round. As recorded in our UAE Q1 2022 Venture Investment Report, this year the sector has declined by 92% in terms of funding as compared to Q1’21. The downward trend isn’t just limited to Dubai, the MENA region overall has observed a slump in funding in the Food & beverage sector. One reason could be attributed to the return to normalcy after pandemic-induced lockdowns which previously resulted in an increase in F&B-based startups especially in the delivery sector. The highest funding round in MENA was recorded by KSA-based DailyMealz ($5M) that offers subscription-based meals.
Sami, Fine Diner CEO and co-founder, explains the business as “a B2B2C platform that leverages and utilizes the spare capacity in fully equipped and underutilized kitchens allowing them to host third-party delivery specific restaurants increasing their revenue stream and efficiency”.
Faisal Alabdelsalam, the Lead Angel Investor, explains, “we saw an opportunity with the Fine Diner Team that we couldn’t let pass. The team is diverse and has built a business model that is very creative, lucrative and scalable. The Team’s leadership has an ironclad entrepreneurial mindset and will find solutions to multiple challenges to achieve their vision of building the largest network of kitchens in the Middle East while minimizing, if not eliminating, the CAPEX and OPEX risks of traditional dark kitchen models”.
“Working with Fine Diner over the last 2 years has been extraordinary”, explained Bernard Fantoli Cluster, General Manager for TIME Hotels. “Ever since the beginning, we have seen volumes of orders increase, as a result of our Ghost Kitchen concept. This journey together with Fine Diner helped us increase our F&B revenue by 15%, our teams are now implementing the same within our sister hotels kitchen to further develop this successful concept.”
The company will be utilizing the funds to expand its food delivery concepts to the rest of the Emirates, and across the GCC.
