The Carrefour Group one of the world’s leading food retailers, announces its acquisition of Dejbox, a pioneer in lunch delivery for business employees located in suburban and outlying areas.
With this acquisition, Carrefour expands its e-grocery offerings to include both a new product segment (ready-to-eat meals) and a new customer base (B2E, or the business-to-employee market), while furthering its ambition of becoming the leader in the Food Transition for all by providing an active clientele with balanced, everyday meals at prices that everyone can afford.
To capture this huge, fast-changing market, Dejbox created an intuitive online and mobile user interface as well as top-quality, inexpensive menu offerings and a streamlined logistics operation – all designed to meet the needs of the more than 10 million French employees who work in the urban hinterland and very rarely have access to an onsite dining service.
Operating in Lille, Lyon, Paris, Bordeaux, Nantes and Grenoble, plus hundreds more towns and cities located near those metropolises, Dejbox delivers over 400,000 meals each month. Its growth has been spearheaded by more than 300 workers, including 140 food preparers and delivery personnel employed directly by Dejbox – a factor that sets the company apart from other meal delivery platforms that rely heavily on gig-economy workers.
As part of the Carrefour Group, Dejbox will be able to expand its French operations at a rapid pace and very quickly move into international markets as well. In addition, one of Dejbox’s next steps is to speed growth in B2B services, an important growth driver insofar as it lets companies assume a portion of the cost of employee lunches simply by transferring funds virtually to each employee’s online Dejbox account.
By drawing on a system of smart delivery routes and a unique network of partner caterers and merchants from local communities, this top-notch foodtech company has successfully created a positive business model that is ideally suited to the recent trend towards food delivery, particularly among millennials.
“This acquisition, which reflects Carrefour’s desire to become the leader in grocery e-commerce, is a strategic on”, says Amélie Oudéa-Castera, Executive Director Customers, Services and Digital Transformation at Carrefour. “It will give us the opportunity to expand our customer base to include employees of medium-sized, small and micro businesses and also invest in the fast-growing food delivery segment with an offering rooted in quality and affordability.”
In the words of Dejbox co-founders Adrien Verhack and Vincent Dupied, “We made the strategic decision to join with Carrefour because we firmly believe it’s the best possible partner for helping us achieve our ambitious growth plans for Dejbox and for offering as many people as possible an online, affordable, sustainable and tasty alternative to a sandwich or a home-cooked meal.”
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