Bioburger: 100% bio fast-food

With consumers today better informed than ever before, the food sector is adapting accordingly in relation to the healthiness and traceability of its products. Motivated by the increasing demand for organic food, French entrepreneurs Anthony Darré and Louis Frack created Bioburger in 2011, a certified 100% organic fast food chain.

Bioburger promotes full transparency in its products and services. From the origin of each ingredient to the journey from farm to fork, all the information is available to their customers. “At Bioburger we want to do things right and we want to let our customers know about it” explains co-founder Louis. The company favours short supply chains in order to offer quality products at market prices, even with the cost of organic products being typically higher than that of conventional products.

The first restaurant opened in Paris in July 2011, and by end-2017, the company was employing around 50 people across three restaurants. Building on this success, BioBurger is starting a franchise in order to expand its network, with the objective of opening 5 to 10 restaurants per year. With the business growing, Louis needed financing to open new branches and set up a holding company to manage everything from the business strategy to marketing and product development. For this, Bioburger found support in Lendix, a European lending platform with a community of thousands of private and public entities, backed by EIF. “This solved our cashflow problem. We were able to get financing within two weeks. Using traditional lending channels we would never have been able to get funding so fast – it would have come too late” says Louis.

As part of their commitment to sustainability, in Bioburger’s restaurants all packaging is biodegradable, recycled or recyclable, customers can sort recyclable waste and water bottle caps are collected to allow the association "Bouchon d'amour" to acquire equipment for the disabled. “As we grow, we have more ideas in mind. We want to improve our energy consumption, reduce our packaging and look also into using fewer water bottles” Louis adds.

Company: Bioburger (France)

Type of business: food & beverage

EIF financing: EREM

Financial intermediary: Lendix