Gourmet food at home
voilà is bringing together exclusive restaurants and gourmets
If you’re a fan of top gastronomy but don’t want to travel far for it, you can now have the complete menu delivered to your doorstep. The start-up voilà is bringing together exclusive restaurants and gourmets.
Roast peppers, green apple, porcini aioli, chanterelles, wild cauliflower, almond miso, biscuit mousse, pumpkin seeds, wild orange, chocolate crumble. Or: Pike, white kimchi, onion vinaigrette, kohlrabi, fermented asparagus, guinea fowl, koji, pastéis de nata, and caramel.
Simply reading the ingredients will make you hungry. Even more so when you discover that they are put together by top-level restaurateurs across several courses. However, sometimes the restaurant serving these compositions is far away or a babysitter unavailable and so it would be best to enjoy them at home. A delivery service for gourmet dishes would be just the thing.
This is exactly the idea that Julius Wiesenhütter and Florian Berg had. Supported by the Adlershof Founder’s Lab, they launched the platform voilà in June. It makes possible to order gourmet food every week until Wednesday night from nine different restaurants—all of which are top-rated in the restaurant community. They are put together and prepared on Thursday and sent out everywhere in Germany chilled and by express delivery.
“This is what it looks like,” says Wiesenhütter and places a brown cardboard box with the printed voilà logo on the wooden kitchen table of the co-working space. The urban appeal at this hip Rosenthaler Strasse address—quite a few start-up clichés come together here. However, being so close to cooperation partners like “Kochu Karu” or “Dae Mon” is quite helpful, says the founder.
Wiesenhütter shows us what happens when you open the box: first, there is a small tray for the written menu, a candle, and an individual little gift from the restaurant. The cooks also add digital content like fitting music and videos in which they elaborate on details of the dishes or give some advice on preparation. However, preparation is “super easy” because it is mostly limited to reheating.
The packaging is made from recycled materials, the cooling agent for the ingredients is water-based, and the company uses CO2 compensation for the delivery—sustainability is a key aspect of the company philosophy. “This is also very important to our customers,” says Wiesenhütter. He should know because the 7-strong team is in close contact with its clients: Even on a Saturday night, he is available via telephone should something go wrong with preparing the meals anywhere between Rügen and Reinickendorf—and to find out what can be improved.
Berg and Wiesenhütter are both experienced in the delivery business. Before they founded voilà, they were managers at Foodpanda and Foodora, respectively. With a menu for two cashing at over 100 euros, however, the demands of the customers also go up. This not a problem for them. On the contrary. Whether at the restaurant or at home, they are big fans of top-level gastronomy and want to share their passion.
It also works out for the restaurateurs, says Wiesenhütter: “The menus are prepared for shipping on Thursdays, which is typically a day where restaurant kitchens are not running at full capacity.” Thanks to the boxes, the restaurant owners can also expand their customer base. Sometimes online customers become real-life visitors: “We’ve had people tell us that they were so impressed by the food of ‘OPUS V’ in Mannheim that they wanted to experience it on location and drove there.”
Ralf Nestler for Adlershof Journal