The founder of a rapidly expanding restaurant company that's raised more than $50 million explains why he's banking on the future of virtual brands

• Taster's virtual brands are prepared in the kitchens of other restaurants who have spare capacity.
• Anton Soulier set up the company in 2017 after three years at delivery giant Deliveroo.

Anton Soulier was ahead of the curve when it came to takeout-only brands.

Soulier set up virtual-brand company Taster in 2017 after being the seventh employee at UK food-delivery company Deliveroo.

During his three years at Deliveroo, which included helping launch its French operations, Soulier realized that fast-casual restaurants had neglected takeout by focusing on dine-in, he told Insider.

"It's difficult to be good at everything," Soulier said. He added that Taster instead wanted to focus on "creating the best delivery experience possible."

Taster is a virtual restaurant company that offers five brands which don't have any dining rooms between them. Instead, these brands are available solely online.

Virtual brands have boomed in popularity during the pandemic as more people order takeout. Since Soulier launched Taster, Chili's has set up Just Wings and Applebee's created Neighborhood Wings.

But Soulier said most business owners view takeout and virtual brands "as an additional revenue stream rather than something competitive." Taster, instead, focuses solely on digital-only brands.

Soulier said that Taster was "almost a B2B2C business," with its partners operating similar to franchisees.

Most of Taster's food is cooked in the kitchens of other restaurants, who use their surplus space to generate extra revenue. Some Taster partners also rent out empty high-street restaurant spaces or ghost kitchens purely to cook Taster brands.

Its customers won't have heard of Taster or know their food was made in the kitchens of other restaurants. Instead, they'll order directly through a delivery platform and just recognize the names of its brands like Mission Saigon and Out Fry.

Some of these have small dining rooms, which Taster uses for click-and-collect orders.

"We try to avoid this being in a huge ghost kitchen," Soulier said. "Most of them are on high streets."

Restaurants pay a fixed setup fee of £1,500 ($2,000) and can start sales in around four weeks, Taster said. The company supplies the restaurants with access to its supply chain, marketing, and technology, and the restaurants in turn pay a royalty fee of around 30% on sales of Taster brands.

Delivery is outsourced to companies like Deliveroo, Uber Eats, and Just Eat.

"Our approach is we don't think we can be good at everything," Soulier said.

This logic also guided Taster's decision not to offer dine-in. Focusing on takeout alone means delivery is faster and you make fewer mistakes, Soulier said.

Real-estate and labor costs are much lower for virtual brands, too, because they don't need dining rooms, and menus can be adjusted in real-time.

Taster told Insider it had built its brands to minimize kitchen capacity. It said that its most "complex" brand, Mission Saigon, which sells Vietnamese food, required 1.5 meters (4.9 feet) of kitchen prep space, a bain-marie and toaster, while another required a vegan-specific frier.

Taster said most partners start by selling just one of its brands but the majority then take on a second or even third brand.

Soulier said that Taster orders have boomed since September and ordering frequency was going "through the roof." Sales of its brands are growing by 10% on average every week since late December, the company said.

Taster, which raised $37 million last year, has operations in 30 cities across the UK, Spain, Belgium, and France, and says it's building "the world's largest digital restaurant group."

Taster says it opened 100 digital restaurants in 2021 and plans to have "well over" 500 by the end of 2022, including opening one every day in February. It told Insider it sold 1.4 million meals in 2021.

Soulier said that demand for virtual brands would continue to grow and that it wasn't just fueled by the pandemic.

"In the future we won't even say 'digital' or 'virtual' – it will just be the best food brands," he said.