Interview with Giacomo Perazzo, CEO of Pickeat
November 4, 2021
Interview with Giacomo Perazzo, CEO of Pickeat, the platform dedicated to lunch break.
Our society is inevitably frenetic and fast and for this reason, very often, the time to dedicate to ourselves is almost non-existent. During a working day, this stressful frenzy affects especially our breaks. How many times have you happened to eat a quick sandwich while with one hand you answer the phone and with the other attempt to bite your luncheon?
Well, Pickeat was born with the aim of giving you the pleasure of a relaxing lunch break! In what way? Using a truly innovative app through which you can pre-order your favorite menu or dish, in your favorite restaurant and at the same time book a table in the restaurant room.
No delivery, with Pickeat you can just sit on a table in a restaurant and enjoy your food without having to wait in line or stay on your feet for a long time (If then, for some strange reason you would prefer the takeaway, obviously Pickeat gives also the possibility to pre-order lunch and go to pick it up).
How PickEat works
The Pickeat App is simple and intuitive. You have just to look for the restaurant among those available, choose the dishes proposed in the menu and pre-order them for a precise time. Ah, by the way, among the menus offered do not forget to also look through the fixed menus offered by restaurateurs! At that stage you will only have to make the payment with a simple click, go to the room, sit at your table and eat the dishes previously ordered.
The advantages are many:
- no waiting for the table
- no waiting to communicate the order to the waiter
- no waiting to be served
- no waiting to pay the bill ( an advantage also for the restaurateur )
Using Pickeat you will optimize the time of your work’s break, avoiding wasting precious minutes in operations that are often long and stressful. Start to really enjoy the lunch break experience with colleagues and friends in total relaxation! Try Pickeat now! And if you want to know more, read our interview with Giacomo Perazzo, CEO of Pickeat, right below!
Hi Giacomo, nice to meet you and thank you for your time. Pickeat: It’s nice to meet you!
Hello ! Thank you for contacting me and giving me the opportunity to tell Pickeat story in your blog. With Pickeat you can pre-order your meal and simultaneously reserve a table in your favorite place. Do you want to eat outside, at home or in the office ? Pre-order with Pickeat and inform the caterer that you will pick up the take away meal at the restaurant. All by paying safely online, optimizing your time, especially during lunch break, and helping to reduce food waste. With Pickeat on average you save 15 to 20 minutes each lunch, also with the data we provide to restaurants, especially thanks to the order in advance, you can help the restaurateur to reduce food waste, to better organize its services and to better manage the peaks of demand.
Finally, to complete our offer we are also starting to work with the company cafeterias where we are able to reduce food waste by 92% compared to current services, reducing the costs of cafeterias to 20%. Pre-order with Pickeat and taste your time!
How and when was the idea of Pickeat born?
Pickeat was officially born on 28/07/2021 but our story is unique and special. In November 2019 with my second place on the hackathon of the Silicon Valley Study Tour in Sestri Levante, my birthplace, I got the opportunity to participate in the next Silicon Valley tour in August 2020. Then the pandemic came and the tour was postponed to 2022. Meanwhile SVST has organized a series of webinars held by Italian excellences who work in the big companies of Silicon Valley and during these webinars in May 2020, I decided to launch a call looking for guys who want to occupy part of their time in lockdown to brainstorm and look for innovative ideas. During these meetings the idea to respond to the problem of the little time available for lunch was born (ideas based on our university’s and office’s lunch experience). Pickeat was born looking for something that could help to optimize the time of people who work and at the same time try to reduce the food waste of the restaurants and of the collective catering.
How long did it take to shape the project?
We started designing Pickeat at the end of summer 2020, trying to outline a product that could meet the needs of the market. From November 2020 we started with the first customer interviews to restaurants and workers to understand whether the market needed this solution or not. After validating our product, we continued our journey succeeding in being admitted to the pre-incubation path of Astra Incubator, Pickeat was selected among the 20 projects participating in the path among the more than 400 applications received by the program. We grew a lot and we produced our first mvp in May 2021 launching in Beta on the market and starting to test our app, collecting interesting data like seeing that some restaurants received a pre-order even on Sunday at lunch !
In July 2021 we published a new version of the app and founded the company, with a launch event in Puglia, where Pickeat was the official app of the “Mercatino del Gusto” the most important food fair in Southern Italy. At the “Mercatino del Gusto” we received 12,000 accesses in 5 days and 21% of the seats booked came from our application. In the same month we started to collaborate with an Italian Air Force structure, with an internal canteen. It’s been 9 intense months and now we are ready for the launch in Milan in October.
Who is Pickeat targeting? How is the market responding to both restaurant owners and customers?
Pickeat focuses on the lunch break, in fact it is addressed to restaurants, cafeterias and other places frequented by workers for lunch, but also to corporate cafeterias and places of catering.
We are also preparing our service for sports centers with bars and restaurants and beach resorts where our app will allow the customers to book at the beach umbrella and to move from the beach to the restaurant only when your lunch will be ready. Finally, we would like to propose Pickeat also for major events such as national and international fairs. Last week I was at the Genoa International Boat Show and I had to endure 20 minutes in line before I could sit down to eat, You think you can go to events and no longer have to waste time in line to eat, or to concerts/shows where you can pre-order from your seat and get up from the place to go to pick up the order only once this is ready.
The market is responding positively, 75% of restaurateurs contacted by phone showed interest in organizing a meeting with us to learn about our offer and to implement it. We found some restaurants that already allowed the pre-order to the most usual customers, to whom they send the menu by message in the morning and wait for the pre-order during the morning. Therefore, for some it has been a digitalization and optimization of the service being able to widen it to all the workers of their zone. We have about 300 registered users now and 2000 workers who have shown interest in using the service and await our launch.
Where do you think we are in Italy, in terms of the use of new technologies in the food sector?
Well, the food-tech in Italy has grown a lot in the last two years and the pandemic in this sector has helped a lot. More than 70% of restaurants decided to open up to digital and use delivery apps or get their own app made to survive during the lockdown. The positive perception of technology and service digitisation has increased, restaurants have understood how technology can be useful and how it can help cut costs thanks to the data that can be collected and shown to the restaurateur, trying to maximize revenue . Moreover, with technology, like ours, food waste can be drastically reduced and even public administration is beginning to be in favour of the digitalisation of their structures.
In Milan then was born a district where the main companies and startups of the agrifood-tech sector have been established and where we too will soon stabilize.
How did you launch your project? Did you use crowdfunding campaigns?
No, no crowdfunding campaign. We self-financed ourselves by raising some money even from family and friends eager to support us in this project and then survived so far in bootstrap without ever going into financial difficulties. Now is the time to open a Seed Round to expand on more Italian cities, collect data and then turn our gaze to the European metropolises. We’re starting to talk to some investors, business angels, and venture capital. In addition, we have asked for two incubation routes in Milan, and we are waiting for an answer.
We are open to listen to any investor or advisor who can introduce us to people who can help us grow and climb. I often reply in a few hours on Linkedin or via email where I see growth opportunities for me, for the team and for Pickeat. I think the biggest mistake at this stage is to refuse opportunities for growth. My philosophy is to meet as many people as possible, if I see an opportunity I try to take advantage of it otherwise then relationships get bogged down by themselves. I’m of the opinion that a chat is good to do with anyone who shows interest, the confrontation is always important. Investments or other contacts might come out that help the company grow, never turn down a meeting or not listen to a proposal, until you put anything in black and white I think it’s naive not to talk to people, make themselves known and understand if there are opportunities for growth.
Curiosity: do you also use Pickeat for your lunch break?
Absolutely yes, and you ?
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