The Vegan Food Hub, parent company of well known Sydney plant-based burger chain Soul Burger, as well as “ghost-kitchen” brands Plantas Taqueria and Zaynas Lebanese, is gearing up for a crowd equity raise to scale their growing fleet of brands.
Currently operating 4 Soul Burger Restaurant Locations, and 8 delivery-only locations with its additional brands, the VFH plans to raise the capital to tighten up existing Soul Burger operations before opening their first Plantas Taqueria and Zaynas Lebanese locations in Sydney.
Revenue to date from 2015 has seen over $20M in largely burger revenue, however with Zaynas Lebanese and Plantas Taqueria launched recently, collectively the brands are now doing near 20% of total revenue.
From the founder: “We have an amazing system where we can effective trial new vegan concepts through delivery-only offerings. Once the operations are down pat, and the brand has proven demand and gained a following, we can build physical locations for it and take the brand to the next level”.
Key to their strategy is the Vegan Food Hub App – a mobile app and online webstore which hosts all brands on it. This app allows customers to order GPS-trackable direct delivery from any of their brands within 10km of store locations, effectively circumventing UberEats and other third party apps. The key advantages to this strategy are avoiding 30% delivery commissions as well as keeping their own customer data.
“We hope to build the world’s most compelling quick service brands, completely plant-based, and to do this, we need to master delivery. Delivery is the present and the future, and our time and investment in building a 33,000 membership database is our way of ensuring we keep our delivery business profitable and allow our customers to get access to cheaper prices. It’s a genuine win/win”.
Amit aims to have 8 locations by 2025, featuring 2 additional Plantas Taqueria and 2 additional Zaynas Lebanese, before heading to Brisbane and Melbourne markets for further growth (with an aim of 40 restaurants under the VFH banner by 2028).
“We don’t want to make the mistake so many groups make, and start growing fast and spreading too thin. We want to have a serious presence in Sydney first, across all our brands. Then we’ll look at interstate growth, and we’ll do it store by store and in clusters. We want to maintain brilliant food, value and customer experience – those are the pillars to our success”. The group has audacious plans to list on the ASX by 2029, following Australian expansion, to increase capital before taking on overseas markets.
The VFH has also brought on ex-Sony heavyweight Michael Ephraim in an investor and advisory capacity. Michael joined Sony in 1992 and finished his career with Sony as the Managing Director after 24 years, highlights include launching the iconic Playstation brand throughout Australia.
From the founder: “We’re really excited to bring on Michael to bolster our managing team and help us direct sustainable growth of VFH brands throughout Australia”
The crowd equity raise campaign is currently live and currently accepting expressions of interest.