Food & bev. services News South Africa

Meals just a click away

Placing an order for a restaurant meal and paying for it online has just become easier. Cape Town-based OrderIn enables users to order food from a list of restaurants, pay online and get it delivered to their door (or collect it).

Launched in July last year, OrderIn wants to make life easier for urban dwellers with busy schedules.

It was founded by former Goldman Sachs banker Dinesh Patel and former Groupon COO Heini Booysen.

Want something rather fancy? (Image: , via Wikimedia Commons)
Want something rather fancy? (Image: Michael J. Bennett, via Wikimedia Commons)

"We are not changing habits. We are simply saying there's an easier way to do things. We want to save you time you spend on phones or in queues ordering food," Patel says.

Booysen says the online ordering platform will not cannibalise the restaurant sit-down model. "People won't stop going to restaurants. OrderIn is for those days when you want to sit on the couch but want a restaurant meal and, moreover, it eliminates having to speak to someone on the phone," he says.

According to Booysen, people who order online order three times more frequently and the value of their orders is on average 30% higher, which means everyone wins.

A growing trend

Ordering food online is a growing trend all over the world, particularly in Europe and the US. The trend is slowly taking off in SA. Before OrderIn, restaurants like Debonairs Pizza launched online ordering systems to give customers an option to pay online or on delivery.

Mr Delivery, which is majority owned by online retailer takealot.com, also provides an online service.

OrderIn says it offers a wider variety of restaurants, from popular fast food outlets to small cafés and high-end eateries. Its online system is also different from anything its local clientele are used to.

Booysen says ordering food online has lagged behind other successful e-commerce channels in SA.

"Customers want a quality product within a reasonable time, so the challenge has been to build a platform that can process tens of thousands of orders daily, while intelligently guiding users through the ordering process in the most efficient manner possible," he says.

Booysen, who was part of the founding team of Groupon SA, says Groupon's success, over a short time, showed him the potential for e-commerce in SA.

OrderIn features location-specific restaurant lists on its website. Users can look at menus along with special offers.

Or another pizza?
Or another pizza?

In future, Booysen says, OrderIn may add additional features that will allow users to search for restaurants according to type of cuisine, or by dietary preferences. Users enter their address, browse the list of restaurants in the area, order, and pay online. Customers don't pay a service fee, and since some restaurants do their own delivery, it is sometimes free. OrderIn charges restaurants a commission per order.

It has 650 restaurants signed up including popular brands such as Nando's, Primi Piatti, Tashas, KFC, and Simply Asia. It also lists small cafés and coffee shops.

At present, OrderIn services are available only in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Port Elizabeth and Durban, but Patel says the company plans to expand to other cities and towns and ultimately even beyond SA's borders.

Booysen says each restaurant that signs up with OrderIn is supplied with a printer that is connected wirelessly to OrderIn's server, using a mobile data connection. This alerts the restaurant's staff to a pending order. The restaurant provides an expected time of collection and an order confirmation is returned to the customer via e-mail.

Patel came up with the idea of OrderIn when he was living in New York.

"We used a service called SeamlessWeb at Goldman, which was the first online food ordering service in the world, started by Jason Finger. When I returned to SA, it was clear to me that there was an opportunity for a similar service here and in other emerging markets."

Booysen, who joined later, says he was hit by a start-up and venture capital "bug" after his stint at Groupon SA.

OrderIn is backed by individuals, as well as a hedge fund in New York.

Source: Financial Mail, via I-Net Bridge

Source: I-Net Bridge

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