From an initial three-person team, they have grown to ten full-time employees in under two years. Lino Monteagudo, CEO of Ghop, a startup based in Santiago de Compostela, recalls the beginnings of an idea that arose from the reflection of three colleagues in Industrial Engineering who sought to respond to the demand for immediacy and convenience to do almost anything that prevails in today's lifestyle, such as shopping. Realising that our hectic pace of life means that the fact of shopping in a matter of seconds is sometimes valued much more highly than other equally important aspects such as price, these three students decided to make their project a reality thanks in part to support from Business Factory Food (BFFood).

Smart, energy self-sufficient micro-shops

And so Ghop was born, smart, energy self-sufficient, unstaffed micro-shops built from used shipping containers. Convenience stores of approximately 15 square metres offering a range of mainly food and beverage products and open to the public 24 hours a day. Shopping is very easy: just scan the QR on the door, register on the application, enter, take the products and make the payment through the selected method and that's it.

Although the initial idea was to develop a new sales channel to offer to other companies, they soon realised that first they needed to validate the model internally with their own establishments, which is why their first pilot shop was so important for the development of the business, unthinkable without the accelerator of the Xunta de Galicia with the support of the Cúster Alimentario de Galicia (Clusaga).

This first shop, which has been used for several openings in different locations (shopping centres, events, business spaces or service stations, among others) has served to test an increasingly innovative business model, whose objective is to reach 10 shops this year and which is constantly working on perfecting its technological side. Lino Monteagudo considers it essential to optimise the customer experience, and therefore the plan is to continue to improve the process: "Although shopping at Ghop is already very simple, we are working on a new type of technology that allows you to simply pick up the products and leave, saving you the hassle of going to the checkout. We want to make the experience even quicker and to make it as convenient as possible for the user".

Ghop's participation in BFFood was crucial to take those first steps that are often the most difficult. The CEO of the Galician startup encourages people to take advantage of this type of initiatives that are often unheard of and that help to overcome one of the first barriers that many entrepreneurs encounter, the need for support and funding. The start-up of any business project requires a financial investment that is often not available and that is where programmes such as BFFood make a difference, in the case of Ghop, "as important as, if they had not taken advantage of this opportunity, they might not have been able to make that first prototype a reality, which is essential for the continued growth of the company".

Business Factory Food

Ghop participated in the accelerator category of the third edition of Business Factory Food, a programme promoted by the Xunta de Galicia together with the Clúster Alimentario de Galicia, which aims to support entrepreneurship and the consolidation of specialised projects in the food sector and their transformation into innovative, viable and scalable companies.

BFFood counts on the participation of leading companies in the sector that contribute knowledge, dedication and resources, both to the dynamisation of the accelerator and to the mentoring of the participating projects.

The programme has two specific lines of support: acceleration and consolidation, designed to boost the projects according to their degree of development, from the initial idea using the acceleration programme to the consolidation of sales using the consolidation programme.