On a rainy day after Helsinki's annual Slush conference, Finnish entrepreneur Ville Leppala took TechCrunch behind the scenes of a three-party partnership between Irish drone delivery company Manna, DoorDash-owned food delivery platform Wolt, and his own startup, Huuva. Huuva, whose name means kitchen hood, raised a seed round led by General Catalyst in 2022 with the promise of bringing good food to the suburbs. While it branched out of its cloud kitchen origins, its business still relies heavily on delivery tech ' now including drones. 'If available, we'll send your order with a drone.' That's how Wolt has been notifying customers ordering from Huuva's Niittari location in Espoo, which is part of the Helsinki metropolitan area, but which Leppala sees as particularly well suited for this concept. While European suburbs aren't as sprawling as those in the United States, people who work, study, and live in places like Espoo still lack the variety of options they can find in the...
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