Choco has completed its landing in Spain. This German platform, which coordinates the relationship between suppliers and restaurants, has just closed a financing round of 102 million euros, boosting the company’s valuation to 1.12 billion euros. In other words, a tech startup has reached unicorn status with about 1 billion dollars in value. Most of the funding will be used to strengthen its activity in Spain, a market the company views as highly significant and demanding.
The local operation was led by Oriol Reul, formerly managing director for Southern Europe at Too Good To Go. Reul now oversees expansion efforts in the region, while also providing guidance to Nestlé from a consulting role at KPMG, focusing on scaling the business and broadening its footprint.
“A restaurant in Spain can rely on up to 40 suppliers,” Reul notes. “This means the platform will not only centralize orders through data, but also reflect the realities of each supplier. Some suppliers accept orders only on certain days, others prefer channels like WhatsApp, and so on.”
Choco is a platform that enables restaurants to consolidate all orders and reach buyers through their preferred communication channel, whether that is SMS, text message, or email. Spain, with a higher than average supplier-to-restaurant ratio compared with Europe and the United States, appears to be a crucial and strategic market for the company.
growth plans
The company already maintains several offices across the United States, Germany, France, Austria, Belgium, and other markets. It arrived in Spain a little over a year ago and is looking at 2022 as a year of consolidation. The plan is to double the number of restaurants working with the platform to around 2,000, boost turnover significantly by December, which researchers estimate, and hire about 40 new staff to reach a total workforce near 80.
“There is already a substantial volume of activity, and we are not starting from zero, but there is still a lot to accomplish,” says Reul. “For now the focus has been Madrid and Barcelona, and the aim is to open additional cities this year. Valencia was the first city on the list.”
In terms of technology, the objective is to advance a complementary business line that is already in motion: delivering the same platform to suppliers. This approach helps centralize customers, optimize distribution, and above all detect potential customer losses that might otherwise go unnoticed.
[Citation needed: company announcements and market analyses indicate that Choco’s expansion in Spain aligns with a broader push to streamline supplier relationships and reduce food waste across hospitality channels.]