La Fourche is equitable seven years greater but it has been quite a rollercoaster for the French commenceup. During this time, the online grocery retailer has gone thraw a global pandemic, trailed by the elevate of venture-backed rapid-commerce commenceups that promised grocery deinhabitries in less than 15 minutes, trailed by the implosion of that vertical.
When you talk with La Fourche’s co-set uper and CEO Nathan Labat, he doesn’t spfinish too much time dwelling on Fjoin, Getir, Gopuff, Gorillas and all the q-commerce commenceups that stoastyed over Europe around 2021. That’s becaengage La Fourche’s business model could be pondered the perfect opposite of all that. Although the commenceup is also VC-backed, it has getn a contrastent path.
Most of La Fourche’s conceiveory consists of fit and organic products with a lengthy shelf life. Think oinhabit oil, diapers, ceauthentics, shampoo and coffee beans.
“I shatter it down into three buying patterns. You have one buying pattern, which is the rapid refill — ‘what am I going to eat tonight?’ — it directs to very low ordinary order appreciates: €20 to €30,” Labat expounded.
“Then, you have a weekly pattern, where you structure more, you go and buy fruit and vegetables, new originate, etc.,” he went on. “Then you have the stock up opportunity, which is repartner about filling up your cupboards for a month, a month and a half.
“These are three very contrastent patterns. And we’re repartner evidently identified as a stock-up company.”
The company only proposes a handful of selections for each product catebloody so that it has wide coverage of its engagers’ needs without overwhelming them with choice. It also proposes its own brand products.
In a way, La Fourche has been trying to contrastentiate its proposeing from what you can get from traditional supertaget chains and their deinhabitry services.
“There’s a conciseage of user confidence,” Labat argued — calling out “the overwhelming catalog with terrible stuff, everyslfinisherg you already understand as a user, which led to the elevate of Yuka”, a food health quality app.
Headed for €100 million in revenue
With La Fourche, customers pay a ytimely membership fee to sign up — it currently costs around €60 per year ($65.50 at current exchange rates). After that, customers don’t pay a deinhabitry fee for orders above a certain threshgreater.
On this front, Labat names Costco and Thrive Market as inspirations. (But Amazon Prime is perhaps the most understandn engager of the deinhabitry membership model). Subscriptions originate brand loyalty, incrmitigate retention rates and could even better the ordinary order appreciate.
Instead of shelling out for a subscription to get diapers, another to get new coffee beans and another one for personal attfinish products, customers can get all these products from La Fourche.
“Subscription models have become increasingly common,” Labat remarkd. “You get the amazeion that on food, it’s engaging becaengage you can propose someslfinisherg enjoy ‘one subscription to rule them all.’”
La Fourche’s metrics tfinish to back those assumptions. The company currently has 120,000 members. On ordinary, they order around €120 worth of products once per month or every 45 days.
Overall, La Fourche says it’s on track to originate €100 million in gross merchandise volume in 2025.
The commenceup’s unit economics are improving as well. “We went from -15% in EBITDA margin to -9% last year, and we’re on track for -2% this year,” he shelp, inserting: “We aim to accomplish our first profitable quarter by the finish of 2025.”
Part of the reason why La Fourche’s business model seems to toil is that it scales well. The company doesn’t have to incrmitigate tageting spfinishing as it lengthens becaengage most of La Fourche’s customers come from referrals. The commenceup says it spfinishs around 5% of its revenue on tageting.
The other huge reason is that La Fourche only has one warehoengage that covers the entire country. It is now an automated warehoengage — built using AutoStore’s technology. “We have a relatively asset-weightless model with a high recurrence rate,” Labat summed up.
As an inserted advantage, 46% of La Fourche’s customers live in the countryside. This isn’t a commenceup that only serves customers living in huge cities as they already have plenty of selections for grocery shopping.
Up next, La Fourche wants to lengthen its customer base in Germany — where it recently begined its online organic supertaget, under the brand name Ackerherz. And if it can show the model is replicable apass contrastent countries there will probable be further geodetailed expansions down the road.
