Pascal Uffer, the Boost inc Co-Founder, talks to Planet Vending Editor Ian Reynolds-Young about how he overcame ‘terminal’ cancer’ to build a game-changing business in unattended retail that’s just attracted a €16 million investment.
It’s now a month since the news broke that Boost inc had raised €16 million to fuel its international expansion and product innovation. The company was founded in London by former Selecta COO Pascal Uffer and Johannes Lermann as recently as 2020 and since then, Boost has morphed from being an ambitious idea into achieving the position of Europe’s leading provider of unattended retail technology.
The company boasts thousands of live locations, customers across three continents and a 150-strong team working from the United Kingdom, Switzerland, and four additional countries. Whichever way you look at it, Boost inc is redefining how brands and operators serve consumers anytime, anywhere.
It’s a hell of a story, but that’s only half of it: barely fifteen months after launching the company, Pascal was diagnosed with cancer.
‘I ran a half marathon and started coughing afterwards,’ he says. ‘I went to the hospital because I thought I needed antibiotics or a cough suppressant.’ However, the doctors sent him immediately for a scan. Then came the devastating news.
On the face of it, Pascal was ‘a goner’, as he explains: ‘I could barely walk. The scan had revealed a 9cm tumour in my left lung, together with dozens of metastases across my body and brain. I was told that it was terminal lung cancer, classified as NSCLC 4B. The best-case scenario was that I could maybe stretch it out a couple of years, but it wasn’t the type of diagnosis that gives a reasonable person hope. The historical five-year survival rate is less than one percent.’
Within 24 hours of receiving the bombshell news, Pascal had told Johannes that the search for a new COO should begin immediately. ‘We had a founder who was about to die’, Johannes recalls. ‘That shaped everything.’
The whole business was effectively holding its breath, waiting for the ‘inevitable’. Medically, no stone was left unturned. They tried everything: radiation, surgery – nothing worked – until a new type of immunotherapy brought about an unexpected turnaround. After six weeks of the new treatment, the tumour had disappeared. Pascal’s survival – indeed, his return to full fitness as encapsulated by his recent completion of a half marathon confounded the medics. ‘I finished the race in 1:28’ he says, ‘coming 19th in my age group in a time that was just 3 minutes above my personal best, which I’d achieved 10 years earlier.’
Pascal’s favourite photo is one of him with his children, taken the day after news of the ‘all-clear’ came through. The sense of reprieve in the image is palpable. It’s as though the future has somehow been reinstated.
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Reading between the lines of the press release when you know the back story has a powerful poignancy. It announces ‘the successful completion of its Series B equity round’. Series B refers to the second round of funding for many start-up businesses acquiring new capital to pay for scaling operations, expanding market reach and enhancing product development. Bringing in institutional investors is the next step up the ladder after ‘angel’ funding. This route is a non-starter for any business whose boss is at death’s door and as such, it’s a marker of Pascal’s full recovery, a €16 million show of faith.
‘…we’re ready to accelerate our international expansion’
So, how will this investment impact the business? ‘Our rapid growth leading up to this moment shows the timing is right’, Pascal says. ‘The market is ready, our technology is proven, and we’re ready to accelerate our international expansion together with our partners.’
I ask him to enlarge on the point that ‘the market is ready’. ‘If you zoom out globally, you’ll see the three vending markets: the Americas, Europe and Japan. The US is always a bit ahead; Europe will be in the middle and Japan is left behind. Everyone’s surprised really when I make that point, but Japan kind of stopped in the ’90s. As for the US market, it increasingly consists of unattended retail. Today, almost a third of turnover is through micro-market formats, small fridges and so on, which is a huge shift in a very short time in an industry that traditionally moves quite slowly.’
A consequence of this turnaround has been a step change in the way vending operators view unattended retail. ‘Two years ago, I’d be discussing business with operators and they’d say to me, ‘No, Pascal, we will never do smart features, we’ll never do micro-markets.’ Now they’re coming back saying ‘Pascal, you were right, we need to do it.’ All it takes in any given market is for one or two players to take a step ahead and then the rest follow. That’s what I mean by ‘the market is ready’.’
Not only is the market ready, Boost inc is in prime position to take advantage of the changing perceptions of unattended retail within the trade.
Commenting on the recent deal, one of the investors said the Boost inc team was ‘unique in its understanding of how to scale physical and digital infrastructure’. I asked Pascal to explain how that is an advantage: ‘Once upon a time, people would ask ‘are you a hardware startup or a software startup?’ The underlying belief is you can’t be strong in both. However, the thing is, if you want to transform the vending industry without expecting people to throw away everything they have, you need to be able to provide both hardware and software. We have the people who can do that.
‘…you need to be able to provide both hardware and software. We have the people who can do that.’
‘Jason and Pambo – who founded Aeguana back in the day – brought to the team a strong software and digital vending background. We’ve also added technical expertise from other industries: people who’ve rolled out 100,000 retail checkouts, people who built overhead cameras for Formula 1 cars. We also have former operators on board, such as the person who led Europe’s largest telemetry rollout of big data at Selecta, and the people who created Foodie’s and Express hub, which is still Europe’s largest micromarkets concept.’
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As an operator, how do you see the development in unattended retail? Are you ready to jump in now or have you put the possibility on the back burner? Pascal is clear that the time is now: ‘We’re at the point where it’s ‘adopt or die’, he says. ‘The market is moving now. Until recently, unattended retail was something for dreamers and early adopters, and you could get away with putting your heads in the sand and focussing on your current business. But this period is over: we’re seeing it happen in all major markets, the early movers are rapidly gaining market share.
‘People must appreciate that going unattended isn’t a gimmick, or a new-fangled vending machine. On the contrary, it’s a complete rethink of how you run your business – it requires a dedicated approach, re-thinking how you run your business end to end – and a partner who can help you on this journey.
‘Most operators are too focused on debating which VMS or which payment system to pick, rather than on a root and branch analysis of where the market is going and what you need to do to go with it. That’s little bit like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.’
If you’re in any doubt about any of this, take a look at Boostbar, the operating company created by Boost inc, based in Switzerland, which is the ultimate proof of concept.’ We built Boostbar from scratch and the company has gone from zero to €10m in 4 years, using only the unattended retail concepts that we are offering. It’s a source of great pride that we don’t just deliver tech; we can also show interested parties a winning business model.
‘The benefits go far beyond your individual smart fridge / micromarket solutions – it’s about who you are as a company and the service you provide to your customers. In fact, it’s our conviction that being able to respond to your customers’ complete unattended F&B needs is critical to win in today’s market environment: and with every smart fridge or micromarket we install, we often place two or more coffee machines.
‘Finally, if your exit strategy involves selling your business, in the world of Mergers and Acquisitions we’re seeing that buyers are willing to pay significantly higher revenue multiples for operators who have innovative concepts.’
‘…with every smart fridge or micromarket we install, we often place two or more coffee machines.’
To sum up, at the heart of the Boost inc business is its mission to build the operating system for unattended retail and to serve customers where traditional retail and catering models increasingly fail. Today, companies like Coca-Cola, Hilton, and Siemens trust Boost inc and its subsidiary Boostbar to deliver smooth consumer experiences. Boost inc combines connected hardware like smart coolers, vending systems, and self-checkout kiosks with its flagship cloud platform, Vendlive. Together, these solutions give operators, OEMs and brands full control over their networks, helping them boost sales and streamline operations.
And at the top of the pile is man who was COO of Selecta at 31, a man who’s just turned 40; a man who once believed he was a dead man walking.
Like I said: it’s a hell of a story…
There’s more about Boost on Planet Vending…
Here’s a Boost for your business: One user interface across all unattended points of sale. READ HERE
Boost inc at Vendex to talk about the future of vending. READ HERE
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