Index

Actionable Insights Origins: Mise en place Market: Recipe for disruption Product: Not a Supplier; All of them Evolution: Started from the bottom, now we're here Future: Execution

Cayena: The Streamliners

"Romário and I had a nearly telepathic connection on the field... I can say that we were the greatest double act in football history." – Bebeto

Romário & Bebeto: Football’s finest duo

Seleção entered the 1994 World Cup with a complex recent history. Brazil had yet to reclaim football’s most prestigious title since Pelé’s era, and the previous World Cup was a disaster: Romário and Bebeto were sidelined by injuries, and the tournament ended in a crushing 1-0 quarterfinal loss to Maradona’s Argentina. National pressure mounted further following Ayrton Senna’s tragic death just months before the tournament. Despite missing the 1990 World Cup, Romário and Bebeto’s partnership had been growing for years. They first teamed up in 1988, winning Olympic silver at Seoul Games, but their real breakthrough came with the Seleção, when they won the 1989 Copa América, ending a 40-year drought. Romário was left out of the 1994 World Cup qualifiers due to tensions with Coach Carlos Alberto Parreira. However, with a crucial match against a strong Uruguayan team looming and his top striker Müller injured, Parreira consulted Bebeto about recalling ‘Baixinho’ (Shorty, named after his 1.67m height):

"Call 'Baixinho' — we work perfectly together on the field," Bebeto told Parreira.

Before the match against Uruguay, Romário declared, "This game is going to be a war. I'm here to win and qualify Brazil for the World Cup." With Brazil’s World Cup spot on the line, Romário delivered — with Bebeto's help, of course, who crossed for Baixinho’s header that broke the deadlock in a 2-0 victory, sealing Brazil’s place in the tournament. Brazil’s 1994 World Cup campaign had gotten off to a decent start, with the team topping their group to advance to the knockout stage. The tactical setup prioritized defense; football wasn’t flashy, but it was effective.

In the round of 16 against the US, Brazil faced tension when Leonardo was red-carded for elbowing Tab Ramos just before halftime. Late in the match, with the score tied, Romário delivered a perfect pass to Bebeto, who moved centrally and scored with a sharp, low finish. Bebeto's "I love you" celebration to Romário solidified their legendary status, which continued in the thrilling 3-2 quarterfinal win over the Netherlands.

In the semifinal against Sweden, as the extra time approached, Bebeto connected with Jorginho, who delivered a perfect cross to the far post. Despite standing at just 1.68m, "Baixinho" miraculously rose above Andersson (1.85m) and Nilsson (1.86m) to head the ball into the net, sending Seleção to the final.

Brazil went on to win its fourth World Cup title by defeating Italy in an iconic penalty shootout (remember Roberto Baggio, right?), ending the 24-year drought. This victory cemented Bebeto and Romário as the greatest duo in World Cup and Brazilian national team history.

Cayena & Restaurant Owners: Food service’s rising duo

When thinking about Cayena, the Brazilian B2B marketplace for food procurement, the image of a duo beating the odds to deliver results comes to mind.

Restaurant owners are like Romário — a "Baixinho," disadvantaged but relentless, navigating a challenging playing field. They face outdated processes, high inflation, taxes, strict labor laws, and razor-thin margins, yet they push forward with relentless effort.

The massive market fragmentation of Brazil’s food service industry, coupled with the stressful, costly, and burdensome procurement process, created the perfect opportunity for Cayena to be the Bebeto for all the Romários out there.

Still, while this Series B round is far from solidifying them the way the 1994 World Cup did for Romário and Bebeto, it stands as a testament to the powerful partnership between Cayena and restaurant owners, highlighting their journey and the remarkable results they’ve achieved together.

Actionable Insights

Short on time? Here's a brief rundown of Cayena:

• Cayena is a B2B marketplace for food procurement. It enables restaurants, bars, dark kitchens, and bakeries to order goods from multiple suppliers. Its success is credited to its effective pain-solving product, trust-building abilities, asset-light strategy, and financial solutions.
• It has benefited from a large and fragmented market. The regional market is highly fragmented on both sides of the marketplace. Food service owners spend hours daily procuring inventory, while prices for the same item on the same day across multiple suppliers vary by +60%. Most transactions occur offline, and there’s no guarantee of securing the best deals.
• 100% asset-light. The company does not interfere with logistics, inventory, or CapEx. This approach has allowed Cayena to experience exponential growth over the last few years while consuming minimal cash.
• Gabriel, Pedro, and Ray's story goes all the way back to their college days. Long-time friends, these first-time founders exceeded all expectations as operators, building a fast-growing business with great austerity and seamlessly overcoming tough times.
• Cayena Pay broadens the food service industry. Restaurant owners often have to pay for goods upfront and are burdened with debt. By offering extended payment terms, Cayena’s financing arm helps businesses improve working capital cycles while virtually eliminating default rates for suppliers.

Origins: Mise en place

From friends to co-founders

Gabriel, Pedro, and Ray brought with them a years-long friendship. The trio, consisting of an Argentinian, one guy from Bahia, and one from São Paulo, first crossed paths in 2011 during their time at Insper, one of Brazil's top business schools.

After receiving degrees in economics, they followed traditional paths into the financial markets. Gabriel spent the 5 years prior at a local Private Equity firm, while Pedro and Ray pursued careers in Investment Banking at Merrill Lynch and JP Morgan, respectively.

Despite pursuing careers in finance, the trio would gather at dinner tables to discuss business ideas. As  Latam’s entrepreneurial landscape flourished in 2018, they boldly quit their jobs to start a business. As Pedro himself outlines:

"We've known each other since college. After graduating, Gabriel, Raymond, and I went to work in finance. But as the entrepreneurship ecosystem matured, we decided to start something together. Before anything else, we chose each other as partners."

Treasure hunting

Gabriel, Pedro, and Ray used the analytical toolkit developed from their previous experiences to find the best opportunity to be tackled. First and foremost: find an acute and large problem that could be addressed in the coming decade.

Their initial preference was for a B2B thesis. Think about it: as consumers, we can purchase nearly anything through a smartphone, from coffee to used cell phones, and bus tickets. So, why do SMBs still lack the ability to manage simple payment processing? (If so, please get to know Malga) Why don't companies have an easy way to compare their employees' compensation in real time? (Now they do - please meet Comp). And why do restaurants still have to place orders for their most essential supplies in person?

The landscape of high-potential B2C theses in LatAm got increasingly saturated over time, with prominent players establishing significant moats through first-mover advantages and scale, while B2B has often been overlooked. Until 2018, 4 out of the 6 Brazilian unicorns were B2C focused, the only B2B unicorns had a clear regulatory "Why Now?" with the Brazilian Central Bank ending the payment processor duopoly in 2010 and further eliminating other exclusivities between acquirers and credit card networks (Stone and PagSeguro).

"We identified the pillars we wanted for our company: a large, fragmented, and also offline market, one that relates to the core business of the clients, and, last but not least, built on a win-win business model with recurrent purchases."

This is how Pedro Carvalho described the framework that he, Gabriel, and Ray used to identify a thesis that had the potential to establish a category-defining company.

The trio then saw an opportunity in the B2B marketplace space. Although it may seem counterintuitive, B2B marketplaces typically offer larger addressable markets, have more friction, are less digitized, and are known for their high average tickets and purchase frequencies compared to B2C.

Pedro's background influenced the decision to focus on the food service sector. He grew up with firsthand experience in the food service industry, as his family owns the largest Japanese food delivery network in his homeland.

In a more permanent move, Pedro, Gabriel, and Raymond went out to talk to dozens of industrial kitchen owners and suppliers to understand the reality of the industry. It was after this stage that they truly grasped the challenges and pain points faced by restaurant owners and suppliers, which ultimately drove them to create a solution that would aggregate both the demand and the supply side, allowing any wholesale food buyer to buy goods from multiple suppliers in one centralized platform.

Market: Recipe for disruption

Let’s take a step back and put ourselves in the shoes of a restaurant owner in Brazil. First of all, we must say: they are warriors! The country’s famous complexities have scarred them: high inflation that constantly increases inventory prices, dozens of taxes that seem to appear out of nowhere, problems related to the strict Brazilian labor law, and so on. Even with these challenges, they manage to make ends meet.

In addition, another aspect of their routine that keeps them up at night is purchasing inventory. They already operate on thin margins because they lack scale or bargaining power with suppliers. When they need to buy supplies for their business, they do it in the following ways:

• They either go to a supermarket or wholesale store and spend hours going through the shelves and in lines, unsure if they are getting the best price per item or if all the items they need are available. Then, have a hard time with the logistics of getting all their purchased items to the restaurant.
• They can also reach out to vendors or a local distributor, usually through WhatsApp, spending hours talking to different and comparing prices, which is confusing and constantly subject to human errors.

Now that you have empathized with the struggles of a restaurant owner, let’s zoom out and examine the food procurement industry as a whole.

If you think about it, the food procurement industry in Brazil has characteristics that are music to the ears of someone who wants to disrupt it:

1. The food procurement market is massive and highly fragmented.
2. The procurement experience is stressful, expensive, and burdensome.
3. There is a lack of trust across the value chain.
4. Financing options are restricted or virtually nonexistent.

Massive and Highly Fragmented

Brazil is home to the world's fifth-largest food service market, with over 1.1 million food outlets such as restaurants, bars, bakeries, and more. These establishments collectively spend over $35 billion annually on supplies. Yet, though a regional rather than a national market, if you consider the Latin America market as a whole, it beats India as the second-largest food service market, with a staggering 4.6 million outlets that generate $200 billion in annual procurement.

You are probably familiar with unicorns like Rappi and iFood. The Latin American B2C food delivery market is currently worth $20 billion—10x smaller than Cayena's core market. While such comparisons could sound silly due to the distinct nature of their business models, they give us a glimpse of the size of the prize.

Thanks to the fragmentation of supply and demand, this market size translates into a significant opportunity for newcomers. In the United States, major food service chains like McDonald's, Burger King, and Five Guys represent ~60% of the total food service outlets, far beyond Brazil's ~10%.

On the supply side, there is a smaller but still evident discrepancy. The top 10 players in the food retail segment, including prominent names like Assaí, Carrefour, and Pão de Açúcar, capture only ~40% of the sales, compared to ~56% in the United States.

The procurement experience is stressful, expensive, and burdensome

The price variance for the same items from different suppliers is huge, making it challenging to find the best deals.

Take a standard bag of rice as an example. When comparing the prices from 15 suppliers for the same bag on the same day, the price gap between the cheapest and priciest bags differed by a whopping 60%.

Another important consideration is that COGS usually accounts for 40% of an independent restaurant's revenue. Saving that much money on essential items can significantly contribute to the restaurant's long-term success.

Inventory procurement is also time-consuming. Visiting multiple wholesale stores to compare prices and waiting in extensive lines takes over 2 hours per stop. Yet, even after this investment of time, there is no guarantee of securing the best prices and achieving overall savings.

Reaching multiple suppliers via WhatsApp can be extremely confusing. Responses are often delayed and are prone to human errors. Sometimes, they claim to have products that are ultimately unavailable. Additionally, there is a lack of sales support.

How many times have you been to a restaurant and found yourself unable to order a dish due to a shortage of ingredients? Independent restaurants lack tailored operational systems, resulting in limited inventory control and minimal automation in procurement cycles. These factors contribute to stock-out levels that can reach up to 10%.

Lack of Trust

It is no secret that a lack of trust among the parties involved in a market increases the likelihood of success of an intermediary such as a marketplace.

Take Uber as an example. It is impossible to imagine a scenario where a person would just pop on a curb, raise their hand, and hop into a car with a random stranger. Whenever someone takes an Uber, they always check how many rides the driver did and, of course, his rating. This illustrates the role of an intermediary, creating trust and facilitating transactions within a market.

The food services market is marred by mistrust among its stakeholders. Food distributors are extremely risk averse, given their previous losses incurred due to defaulting or fraudulent customers. Restaurant owners, on the other hand, are skeptical about anything.

In Brazil, there's a famous saying: "When the alms are too much, even the saint is suspicious." This stems from Brazil's Catholic culture, where alms boxes in churches usually have a saint next to them. If someone donates excessively, even the saint, a figure that typically sees the good in people, becomes suspicious of the donor's true intentions. In simpler terms, it's like saying, "This seems too good to be true."

Restaurant owners are like the saints next to the alms boxes. When someone brings them an excellent deal, they think there is a scheme behind it. In Cayena's early days, Gabriel would visit restaurants to attract them to the marketplace. However, restaurant owners didn't take him seriously and would tell him to go away because Cayena lacked strong branding at that time.

Minimal access to credit

Due to the lack of trust, owners frequently have to pay for goods upfront. This not only limits their ability to buy more products from these suppliers and maintain higher inventory levels but requires restaurants to finance their working capital with loans. As we write this article, Brazil has one of the highest real interest rates in the world. To compound the issue, the average interest rate for this type of financing is three times higher than Brazil's—around 35% per year.

This situation significantly impacts the entire food service chain. In Brazil, two out of three food establishments have active bank loans. While restaurants' average profitability is around 10.0%, these establishments allocate 10.3% of their revenues to repay these high-yield loans.

Product: Not a Supplier; All of them

Cayena has built an asset-light business model that revolutionizes the food procurement experience on both ends. In doing so, Cayena provides a simple way for any wholesale food buyer to order goods from multiple suppliers in one easy place, with next-day delivery and fair payment terms. On the other hand, sellers can access a vast network of independent restaurants to sell more products faster.

Suppliers

To start, suppliers need to provide information about the types of products they sell and whether they directly deliver their products since Cayena does not manage logistics. The company accepts suppliers who use appropriate delivery vehicles (such as refrigerated ones for perishables) and evaluates whether these suppliers offer complementary outcomes to those already available and at competitive prices. Less than 30% of suppliers who apply for Cayena are accepted.

Buyers

Cayena also ensures a smooth buying process for food service owners.

The company's website and app offer a range of 60,000 products, from grocery items to beverages to packaging, across more than 100 suppliers and 3,000 product categories. The entire procurement process is conducted seamlessly through Cayena's website or app, and it comes at no cost.

After completing a quick registration on the platform, restaurants, bars, and cafe owners can select items to restock their inventory in a process that can take about 5 minutes, with support from the company's specialists if needed. Cayena's algorithm makes an optimal allocation of suppliers in real time with customized recommendations for each customer based on certain criteria such as order quantity, delivery time, prices, and supplier ratings.

Cayena then notifies suppliers of the specific products, quantities, delivery locations, and times. Additionally, it maintains a community of hundreds of restaurant owners, providing them with a daily radar of items on sale to improve retention and engagement.

Financing

To address the acute working capital issues faced by restaurant owners and reduce the risk of supplier defaults, Cayena built Cayena Pay.

Buyers can enjoy extended payment terms from any Cayena supplier using the company's Buy Now, Pay Later solution. They just need to select the products they want to purchase and choose Cayena Pay at checkout. After placing the order, they’ll receive an invoice with the extended payment conditions, subject to a credit analysis that takes no more than 24 hours.

While this might not seem particularly impressive by US or European standards, it's important to note that up to 50% of restaurants have limited or no access to credit at all (welcome to Latam!). Because Cayena is integrated into the restaurant workflow, it can aggregate data from these establishments on a micro-level, which gives it a significant advantage in credit assessment.

Cayena naturally benefits from lower default rates due to the nature of its credit concession. By improving the purchasing efficiency of the restaurant’s most critical cost, Cayena captures a significant share of their wallet, fostering a strong lock-in. Defaulting with Cayena means losing access to a key procurement source.

From the supplier's perspective, Pedro argues that the primary advantage of joining the Cayena platform is the assurance of receiving payment:

"Suppliers usually spend 5% of their revenue to provide credit to clients. This includes costs related to the registration team, invoicing, collection, advance payments, and default. However, when suppliers join our platform, the default rate essentially becomes zero because we cover their payment and are compensated for it."

It is indeed working. Cayena Pay plays a critical role in the business model. It not only significantly expands the company's TAM, unlocking a suppressed demand among restaurants and reducing operational risks for suppliers, but it also increases the average ticket per user and generates long-lasting customer relationships.

Evolution: Started from the bottom, now we're here

Cold-start problem

As with any marketplace, network effects are critical but challenging to establish. They are the primary source of exponential growth and competitive advantages, but only after attracting a critical mass of users on both sides. At Cayena, it was no different.

Pedro outlined the challenges of the “chicken-and-egg” problem:

"Our first sale felt like a big stock exchange trade. We were on the phone with a supplier negotiating beans and rice while the restaurant owner stood nearby. But back in the office, we realized that this process wasn't scalable. We needed to grow one side of the marketplace artificially."

The solution was to print flyers with popular products and go door-to-door. The trio would visit restaurants throughout the day to make sales without having any inventory. At night, they went to wholesale markets to buy the products, delivering them the next day using their cars. Pedro noted that restaurant owners found it odd that they were both salespeople and delivery drivers.

Soon, their vehicles couldn't handle the volume of food anymore. One night at a wholesale store, Pedro, Gabriel, and Ray saw the store manager reading "The Intelligent Investor" by Benjamin Graham and thought, "Finally, our finance background is going to be useful for something."

After discussing financial markets for about an hour, they asked the store manager for help as they couldn't fit all the products in their car. The manager kindly organized the products and left them in front of the store. They returned with small trucks at 6 am the next day, and everything went smoothly.

That's how they grew their customer base until they had a group of around 50 restaurants that purchased regularly. At this stage, they started onboarding suppliers onto the platform, solving the cold-start problem.

Time to cook

The results were promising. From April to July 2019, they onboarded a few restaurants to an MVP, completed over 250 deliveries, and achieved significant savings per order. This allowed them to charge a high take rate despite restaurants' narrow profit margins.

Gabriel, Pedro, and Ray then hit the streets to fundraise under the name Poupachef, a Portuguese pun combining the words "save" and "chef."

Despite the early success with their "procurement as a service" tool, the trio wasn't necessarily the obvious choice to pursue the opportunity. After all, despite their impressive backgrounds, they lacked technical skills and had no prior experience building businesses.

That didn’t stop them from raising. Despite concerns about competition and a value proposition centered on convenience rather than pricing compared to large wholesale retailers, they secured a $600k Pre-Seed round in November 2019 with Canary, Norte, and notable angels like Diego Libânio (Zé Delivery) and Vinicius Ferriani (Gympass).

Though the round happened in a heated funding environment, it was far from those overheated rounds that attracted large sums of capital. Yet, it was enough to launch Poupachef.

Coronavirus Twist

Shortly after closing the round, things looked great. The marketplace exceeded expectations for customer and order growth, strengthening Poupachef’s relationship with suppliers.

But when COVID-19 hit, Poupachef’s sales disappeared:

"Three-quarters of our customers closed. Some attempted delivery but failed. In April 2020, we hit rock bottom. On April 18th, our sales were halved, and on the 19th, they disappeared entirely." – Poupachef’s Sep-20 Update.

Despite their lack of prior experience building businesses, Gabriel, Pedro, and Ray successfully operated under wartime conditions, implementing strategies focused on profitability. Their efforts paid off, with GMV growing nearly 5x from April to July 2020, all with minimal cash burn.

Perhaps being capitalized and resuming growth at this point opened up significant opportunities:

Suppliers were struggling with numerous defaults and were tightening their receivables policies, while customers faced significant liquidity issues. Poupachef seized the opportunity by launching a credit solution (Cayena Pay) in early Q3 20, allowing suppliers to extend payment terms to restaurants without carrying default risks. This move significantly strengthened Poupachef's relationship with its suppliers.

Bon Appétit

Poupachef would add a $3.5 million Seed round in Q2 21 with Picus Capital, Astella, FEMSA, FJ Labs, Canary, Grão, and Norte.

“Customers loved Cayena because it let them use their time more efficiently, avoiding the chaos of managing multiple suppliers via WhatsApp. The 150%+ GMV retention validated this qualitative thesis.” – Lucas Abreu

This consistency remained unchanged. What changed was the company's name. Poupachef quickly communicated its value proposition to the restaurants, but it failed to pique the interest of the suppliers. The team settled on "Cayena," a shorter, neutral, internationally appealing name that was still connected to the food service industry.

Over the next year, Cayena would keep growing without any hindrances. To tackle trust issues within the food service industry, Cayena hired sellers from its suppliers. These sellers, already trusted by the restaurants, could quickly bring their existing portfolio of clients onto the platform, fast-tracking Cayena's reputation-building efforts.

This strategy proved to be remarkably effective. After expanding its GMV by 5x while once again burning just a small fraction of its raised capital, it was time to pursue a Series A.

Anton Ego’s all over the place

Building businesses in Latam offers exciting edges. By blending simplicity with pragmatism, companies can adapt successful trends from the world's most developed markets to the local context.

Meli excelled at adapting trends. Latin America begged for its own eBay. Meli successfully addressed this need. Inspired by Amazon, Meli prioritized logistics management to offer fulfillment and free shipping, creating a significant moat, boosting platform engagement through faster speed delivery and better coverage.

Although Cayena was outperforming expectations, investors were highly concerned when it decided not to handle the logistics of each order.

Outsourcing delivery to suppliers could offer advantages by improving Cayena’s margins and scalability. However, local investors would evaluate it in comparison to successful cases in the B2C marketplace space in Latam, like Meli, arguing that handling logistics directly was key to establishing a closer relationship with customers, increasing engagement, and ultimately leading to higher take rates.

Time to eat

Despite these and other concerns, a $17.5 million Series A would add Vine Ventures, Clocktower, Gilgamesh Ventures, Endeavor, and Canaan to the cap table while ensuring a comfortable runway for an aggressive push for market share.

Viewed as a whole, Cayena’s strategy has undoubtedly worked.

Realizing it could significantly scale its operations by assigning suppliers to handle deliveries instead of acting as a logistics operator has proven to be a successful bet so far. Cayena quickly expanded its presence to +100 cities, yet +95% of orders are delivered within one business day.

Building a close relationship with customers? Cayena recognized the significant financing challenges faced by restaurant owners in Latam. With Cayena Pay, the company addressed this major issue and has already achieved a brutal penetration as a % of GMV, ultimately increasing customer retention.

Cayena is reaping the rewards of economies of scale. Thanks to the growing network effect of its marketplace, Cayena significantly increases suppliers' volume, which not only boosts their revenues but also gives them greater bargaining power when negotiating with input sellers, ultimately reducing costs for them. Onboarding new suppliers onto the platform—with higher take rates—is no longer a challenge.

Future: Execution

Cayena certainly shows signs of being one of the next major tech success stories in Latin America. To make it a reality, Cayena has various growth avenues to explore, but they must be executed with precision.

Geographic expansion

Currently operating in Greater São Paulo and nearby cities, Cayena can easily replicate its model in other regions of Brazil. By outsourcing logistics and inventory management, Cayena can quickly scale in new cities.

Expanding into cities distant from state capitals may pose challenges due to limited supplier availability near potential Cayena customers. This could reduce the solution's value proposition in terms of product offerings and next-day delivery logistics.

However, as a trusted and relevant demand driver for these suppliers, Cayena can encourage them to open branches in cities with significantly suppressed demand, ensuring a positive ROIC for these new locations. This strategy would not only allow Cayena to achieve optimal supplier density in new cities without expending large sums of money but also help their suppliers grow.

Broad fintech offering

We don't have to search far to find benchmarks of marketplaces that used their mutually beneficial relationship with their customers to provide credit on their platform. Drawing inspiration from Alibaba with Ant Financial, Tencent with WeChat, and eBay with PayPal in its time, Mercado Livre shines as the regional success story of a marketplace that created a financial infrastructure for its merchants.

In 2017, Meli’s survey showed that 75% of its merchants needed financing, yet only 18% qualified for bank loans. With its prior knowledge of merchants and extensive behavioral data history, Meli saw the potential to offer credit.

What began as support for the marketplace evolved into a standalone division. As Meli underwrote credit for merchants, it empowered them to invest in inventory, expanding the range of products available on Meli's platform, increasing sales. Providing credit also reduced seller churn and raised NPS. On the other hand, offering credit to buyers increased consumption on the platform, boosting the company’s GMV.

Somewhat akin to Meli, Cayena, with its broad access to consumer data and clients’ limited access to financing options, is well-positioned to become a financial backbone of the food service industry. Cayena Pay’s BNPL is widely adopted by its clients, but there is room for much more. Expanding financial solutions could increase customer LTV, ease acquisition, and further solidify Cayena's role as the preferred partner for restaurants, bars, cafes, and any other food service establishments.

What's intriguing about Cayena's opportunity is that, similar to Meli's, it doesn't directly compete with traditional financial institutions. Instead, it fills a specific gap that banks typically avoid: serving small-scale businesses with extremely short-term debt.

Cayena could probably move in a dozen other directions should it wish to, including long-term loans, POS solutions, and many more, benefiting both restaurants and suppliers. In the process, Cayena facilitates growth for both parties, leveraging the GMV and the take rate of its platform.

Data leveraging

Due to the food service industry's fragmentation, major CPG and FMCG players lack detailed consumer behavior insights. As Cayena rolls out its presence, it becomes a comprehensive data aggregator gathering valuable data from an increasing customer base that makes recurring purchases on the platform.

Cayena can seize the opportunity by offering valuable trade marketing and data intelligence tools to consumer goods manufacturers, providing detailed insights into restaurants, bars, and cafes—something that has not yet been cracked in the food retail industry.

Latam Expansion

Many Brazilian startups follow a similar pattern: expand into Mexico and then target smaller markets such as Argentina, Colombia, and Chile. However, despite companies like Mercado Livre making regional expansion look easy, venturing beyond Brazil is not a simple maneuver. Differences in language, consumer behavior, and countries' infrastructures may require different approaches.

With so much on its plate just in Brazil, Cayena has a long way to go on both the marketplace and fintech fronts, not to mention trade marketing and other data-related initiatives. However, with over 3.6 million food outlets generating over $165 billion in B2B food purchases, nearly five times that of Brazil, there is a clear underlying potential for a Latin American expansion.

Yet, Cayena could potentially soar to a multi-billion dollar empire without even crossing Brazil’s borders.

Published by: Pedro Teo and José Cacheado.