The Story of Burgreens, Pioneer of Vegan Food Restaurants in Indonesia

In the past, it was still difficult to find a vegan restaurant in Indonesia, even in Jakarta. The alternative at that time was to visit a Chinese restaurant. These difficulties finally inspired Helga Angelina Tjahjadi and Max Mandias to establish Burgreens. It just so happens that both are consumers of vegan food.

Burgreens is a vegan food restaurant that specially designed for the Asian tongue. Although the menu is fragmented, interestingly the largest customer base is not vegetarians, but people who are health conscious and choose to reduce meat consumption for health and environmental reasons.

Not only being a restaurant, the vision and mission of Burgreens is actually a socially conscious movement that the selected food comes from nature and organic local farmers. "Most of our food ingredients are taken from local farmers, one of which is the Usaha Mulia Foundation and BSP," explained Burgreens Marketing Manager Irene Tjhai to DailySocial.

Burgreens' form of business is retail offline with 10 outlets spread across Jakarta, Bandung and Tangerang. The menus developed ranged from heavy meals, daily catering packages, frozen foods, snacks, drinks to food for children.

Along the way, Burgreens has received investment from WIND twice, on 2016 and 2017 with an undisclosed amount. The company's rapid development, finally made Wind interested in top up enter the latest round.

According to reports on Deal Street Asia, it is reported that Burgreens has secured pre-Series A funding from ANGIN and Teja Ventures. When reconfirmed by DailySocial, Irene just said that in fact the round is still ongoing and the company will officially announce it.

Start using digital technology

Irene explained that so far the company has only taken advantage of the presence of digital technology provided by logistics partners for sending orders to consumers. The website itself only provides information about the menu and the store directory.

The company plans to officially release its own app in the next two months. Preparations have been made since last year. In it, there will be a choice of food menus according to the preferences of each tongue, usually there are those that are anti-gluten, only vegan, and so on.

“At first, such an option could not be ordered through a courier application online. But later we can detail all consumer requests through our application and sent by our internal courier. In addition, we also want to provide complete information regarding organic food in Indonesian.”

Although it has not been officially launched, this application can already be accessed on the Play Store.

Beaten by the pandemic

Because the company is a culinary player offline, directly affected by the current pandemic. The majority of its outlets must be closed at the beginning of the PSBB. However, Irene admitted that the company is determined not to reduce employees and salaries.

"During the PSBB, our outlets were still open. Interestingly our employees have high solidarity so they enforce share shifts, employees who work in outlets that are closed can take turns working at outlets that are open.”

The company was also helped by the implementation of a rental discount from the mall manager. "Honestly if it wasn't there, we would really struggling. "

In upload on Helga's social media account five months ago, he said the pandemic had an impact on sales dropping by up to 30%. Not only that, the price of raw materials has risen sharply, the number of visits to outlets has decreased , and unexpected delays in financing.

“Our days are filled with sudden decisions. [..] We will be taking some very difficult and heart-breaking decisions: releasing our new recruits who are supposed to be working in our new store and closing some of our stores,” he wrote.

Finally, in line with the easing of PSBB by the local government in early June, Burgreens has again opened a stand-alone outlet (stand alone) and receive meals on the spot (dine-in) and takeaway.

To order food, consumers do not need to visit the cashier, simply scan the QR code to order the menu. Even when the payment is non-cash, consumers scan the QRIS code from a note that can be used by various electronic money applications, such as Gopay, Ovo, and Dana.