COCAI EXPRESS: FOOD DELIVERY IN VENICE

Last Monday we had a call with two founders of Cocai Express, a new food delivery start up born in Venice during the lockdown with the aim of helping local restaurants to deliver food for Venetian citizens.

Don’t be scary, you’ll not receive your food through seagulls (in this case I don’t think that you’d receive anything 🙂 ), but Cocai runners are guys that will take you the food that you’ve ordered through the App.

cocai express food delivery venice
Cocai Express App

It is a big news for Venice and Venetians, because we can consider it the first food delivery company of the city. As you know, in Venice it is only possible to walk and we can say that Cocai runners walk a lot in order to take you meals with big smiles and empathy.

Anyway, let’s start from the beginning and talk about the start of this company. The founders are three young guys (Giovanni, Guglielmo and Tommaso) with very different backgrounds and experiences.

Guglielmo was a professional rugby player, Giovanni has always worked in the catering sector and Tommaso is a mathematical. As you can image during the lockdown in Venice there wasn’t a lot to do, most part of commercial activities were closed, so they launched a Facebook page in order to understand how many people needed to order something to eat, they talked and get agreements with few restaurants in order to deliver food to the customers and that’s it…they started in a very simple and natural way!

The interesting thing is that they had immediately a lot of orders so they decided to create a regular company..in my opinion, it is a good example of Lean Startup : they tested the service with a prototype and then they improved it after seeing that it was a good idea : well done guys!

Their points of strength are the empathy that they create with the customers and their deep knowledge of the city factors that are very important in order to provide a good service in the fastest way.

Empathy is a key point in order to become a Cocai runner, therefore Giovanni told us that selection is important for them and that the applicant has to pass a test, but I’m sorry for you…I don’t know the answers of the test, so if you are interested in it, it’s better to try it out and cross your fingers.

Anyway, I can tell you that these guys has a very big enthusiasm, let’s wish good luck to them!