Didier Gribeauval: from Michelin-starred kitchens to digital strategy
From a fine-dining artisan at Relais & Châteaux properties to a visionary entrepreneur, Didier has successfully combined culinary passion with business acumen. Rigour, discipline and curiosity are ingredients that have helped him move towards a success as unexpected as it is brilliant. That success has a name: Foodmoods. A look back at a journey as unconventional as it is inspiring.
“You don’t build anything without discipline,” Didier insists. And he knows a thing or two about it. Before launching his innovative concept, Foodmoods, a French e-commerce integration company run from Montréal and based in Paris that helps independent businesses gain visibility on home delivery platforms, he had travelled a long road.
Although succeeding in business was not a career plan in itself, his entrepreneurial success is not the result of chance, but of constant effort and listening to himself. “I don’t come from a family of entrepreneurs,” he explains. When asked how it all began, he gives this surprising answer: “From a very young age, I always dreamed of becoming a chef.”
Born in Montréal, Didier decided at age 19 to leave for France to pursue his dream: learning from the world’s greatest restaurateurs. He would learn his craft at prestigious establishments such as l’Arpège and Lameloise, where gastronomic heritage meets historical heritage.
It was at a 500-year-old Relais & Châteaux property in Chagny, Burgundy, awarded three stars in the Michelin Guide, that his journey of self-discovery began. “The artistic work of plating a dish, the rush, the adrenaline of serving customers in the evening, but also seeing all the social strata that make up fine-dining restaurants,” he describes, were all things that fascinated him and taught him the art of the finished product.
Learning from the best means many things: rigour, pace, discipline, organization and routine, striving for nothing less than excellence. Service must live up to a prestigious setting where, historically, nobles travelling from Paris to Lyon would stop to dine.
“Arriving every morning at 8 a.m. in your white uniform, ironed and spotless, doing all the prep work until 2 p.m., going home around 3 p.m., taking a nap, going back to work around 5 p.m. and staying until 1 a.m. teaches you consistency,” he sums up.
Although pushing himself was already deeply ingrained, with a frantic pace of between 60 and 70 hours a week, this intensive training in the culinary arts would prove a real school of life for the rest of his journey.
A change of course
After a while, Didier could no longer see himself in that world of luxury gastronomy. “You work late at night and on weekends—when everyone else is having fun,” he sums up. He then made a 180-degree turn, heading for the Middle East, where he would travel for a year.
From Turkey through Cyprus, Israel and Palestine, he slept in his tent, volunteered and worked in lavender fields. Didier could hardly have experienced—or appreciated—Socrates’ famous maxim, “Know thyself,” more fully.
“I was 24 and couldn’t see the next step; to me, it was abstract,” he recalls. Ultimately, the magic of travel worked and had an unexpected effect: leading him on an inner journey.
“I came up with an initial idea for a first company that I launched in Bangkok: making intercity transportation easier for tourists through a mobile app,” he explains. Although the idea did not work out as planned, it was his first step towards international entrepreneurship.
He soon began looking for an employer in foodtech, where his culinary knowledge combined with his startup experience would offer unique added value.
The missing ingredient in the food industry
He would work for Deliveroo, a home meal delivery company listed on the London Stock Exchange and part of the FTSE 250. Based in Lyon, he started as Business Development Manager, developing operations along the Côte d’Azur from Marseille to Nice. He would finish as Head of Virtual Brands in Paris, responsible for defining and implementing Deliveroo’s commercial strategy for virtual restaurants in France, whose brand identities exist only online.
He left Deliveroo on a very specific and symbolic date: March 11, 2020, the day COVID-19 was declared a global pandemic by the World Health Organization. The planet ground to a halt—and Foodmoods began.
“I saw a unique opportunity to support restaurateurs and businesses on home delivery platforms, to get started on Deliveroo and Uber Eats, create a virtual brand, and franchise independent businesses so they could operate exclusively on those platforms,” Didier sums up.
Today, the gamble has paid off. “We manage between 200 and 300 businesses,” he explains. Now the majority shareholder in the company he co-founded, Didier runs his Paris-based business from Montréal CoWork.
The coworking space’s open area also enabled him to make a key connection: a developer specializing in extracting qualified contact records. Didier immediately awarded him a contract, seeing another opportunity: growing his client portfolio in France.
“You have to see Foodmoods as a living machine that identifies, attracts and supports local businesses—grocers, bakers, wine merchants—to bring them onto Uber Eats,” he sums up.
Today, Didier applies what he learned in fine dining to the digital world: every detail counts, every action builds something greater than oneself and leads towards a success he would ultimately never have imagined.
“Consistency and rigour are what will allow you to make things last. If you go to extremes and then stop, you’ll have trouble creating something sustainable.”
Meanwhile, “Foodmoods is going to keep growing,” he predicts. “We’re in France, but we’re going to expand into Belgium, Spain and the UK; it’s a matter of time,” he shares.
Article credit: Hélène Lequitte