?Facebook will soon let users order food from its app

inresto by Dineout has introduced an easy 5 step order process at The Walk, Worldmark Aerocity to enable a safe and contactless dining experience for their customers.

The contactless technology by inresto is designed to suit the needs of COVID-19 and offer diners peace of mind and confidence while stepping out to dine at their favourite restaurants.

Food courts are the most occupied places, housing multiple restaurants and a bigger seating area, The Walk, in Worldmark Aerocity, therefore, have created a seamless and contactless customer journey with the help of inresto technology.

As the diners reach their table and get seated, they find a QR code placed on the table instead of a paperback menu. What comes next is an easy 5 step order process.

a.) Scan: While seated in their favourite spot, diners can simply scan the QR code placed at the table using their phone camera or simply visit scan.qr.in

b.) Select: Next up, ‘The Walk’ restaurant collection pops up on the screen, showcasing an array of restaurants in the food court made possible by inresto’s digital menu

c.) Order: Once they select a restaurant, the digital menu is flashed on their phones from where they can choose their order items and proceed to the payment page

d.) Pay: After selecting all the order items, the diners make online payment through digital wallets like Dineout pay  

e.) Collect: Once their food is ready, they are notified via SMS following which they can collect their order from the designated pick up counter

‘The Walk’, has been able to turntables for their audience safety and has become an example of how food courts can get back to business post-COVID-19. Contactless Dining brings innovation to provide a finer, smarter & safer dining experience at both standalone restaurants and the food court at The Walk, Worldmark Aerocity. 

PF Chang’s has launched its first ‘To Go’ location in Chicago, US. This is the US-based restaurant chain’s first-ever location that is focused exclusively on ordering out.

Spread across 2,000 square feet, the new space is situated in River North.

With the addition of small restaurants, the company will provide a solution for online ordering, takeaway, catering and delivery in areas that are not presently served by a PF Chang’s restaurant.

The newly opened store will enable customers to enjoy its menu at their home, office, or on the go. Its ‘To Go’ menu will be offering lettuce wraps, Mongolian beef, the original dynamite shrimp and spicy chicken. The store further serves a range of fresh sushi, salads and beverages.

The ‘To Go’ concept fulfills two goals for PF Chang's, which include expanding into metropolitan areas where it doesn't have a presence and tapping into the growth of online ordering through apps such as DoorDash, Postmates and GrubHub.

Future Plans

The restaurant chain is looking at launching two more stores in Chicago this year. It will also develop units in New York, Houston and Washington.

Chris Demery, Senior Vice-President, PF Chang’s off-premises dining, said, “We’ve seen the evolution of dining and are ready to meet market demand for easily accessible yet elevated Asian cuisine.”

“Only 25% of US households are conveniently located to a PF Chang’s and distance is the number one reason our guests say they are not able to visit us as often as they would like. PF Chang’s To Go, along with the continued delivery availability from Bistro locations, will allow us to reach more guests nationwide,” he added.

DineOut is testing differential menu pricing and in-restaurant food ordering. The company’s move is aimed towards expanding its product offering beyond deal discovery, table reservations, and in-restaurant payments. 

Sahil Jain, Co-Founder of DineOut, said, “The biggest problem the restaurant industry faces is that they still don’t recognize any customer walking into the restaurant and hence, there is no opportunity to personalize the experience.”

DineOut, which competes with Zomato and LimeTray in certain business offerings, is also planning to expand to Indonesia and the Philippines. The company has already started operating across the UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and East Africa. In India, it is eyeing to expand to smaller towns and cities like Lucknow, Indore and Surat. 

The company processes an annual gross transaction value of $1 billion, which is about 1% of the overall organized restaurant industry. It is aiming to scale up by 10 times in the next 18 months.

Ankit Mehrotra, CEO and Co-Founder, stated, “The company, which has grown to seat 12 million diners annually and 15,000 restaurants on its platform, has seen ten-fold growth over the last two years. We are on track to seat 40 million diners through our platform. Across our B2C and B2B platforms (inResto and Torqus), we process about 10 million diners on a monthly basis.”

A woman who reported that she was abused by a Swiggy delivery boy was sent a ‘sorry’ note and a Rs 200 coupon, prompting her to demand action against the culprit, instead of closing the case with mere apologies.

The delivery boy allegedly abused the woman and sought sexual favours from her.

The Woman on Saturday posted on social networking site Facebook that she had ordered food from Swiggy on Thursday.

As the delivery boy arrived, he said something that she could not hear properly. As the boy repeated it, it dawned on her as he was abusing her and asking for sex. “I was taken aback. I had to literally snatch my food package from him and shut my door on his face. I was disgusted to let alone eat, but to even look at the food,” shared the woman on her post.

The woman made a complaint to the customer service and "sorry” and a Rs 200 coupon was what she got as compensation.

On Facebook, Swiggy authorities apologised for the unpleasant experience and sought details for further action.

Online food ordering and restaurant discovery platform Zomato has acquired a Bengaluru-based startup TongueStun Food. The cash and stock deal is fixed at about $18 million. Tonguestan works as an online marketplace and is a caterers and restaurants aggregation platform.

The startup has so far raised less than $5 million from Uniqorn Ventures, a hospitality fund run by investment bank o3 Capital, and Haresh Chawla, a partner at private equity fund True North.

Deepinder Goyal, Co-founder & CEO at Zomato, said, "We don't see the ceiling to how big this market could become just yet. What we know is that this market is very high frequency, and customers are very sticky as they end up placing more than 20 orders a month on the Tonguestun platform." 

Founded by Manjunath Ramkrishnan in 2012, TongueStun has over 1,000 curated food partners along with 1,500 companies on its platform in six cities including Bengaluru, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Gurugram, and Pune.

Zomato will integrate TongueStun app into it. TongueStun’s acquisition will help it to scale its business in the corporate segment.

The TongueStan acquisition for Zomato marks its 12th such deal. Last year, the company, in one of its bigger deals, had acquired hyperlocal logistics startup Runnr to add muscle to its delivery capabilities.

Nusra

Zomato has partnered with some of Mumbai's most notable restaurants enabling millions of its consumers to seamlessly order food online using its platform.

The restaurant discovery and food ordering app launched their online ordering services in April 2015 and has soon become the go to app for ordering in from that favourite joint by your office, premium restaurants and even legendary places in Mumbai.

“Mumbai is one of our strongest markets and with these marquee brands on board we are certain we will continue to drive immense value for our customers across the city.” said Tanmay Saksena, Global Business Head, Online Ordering, Zomato.

Some of the top restaurants you can order from on Zomato are Maroosh, Café Moshe's, Cafe Zoe, Gaylord, Salt Water Cafe, Smoke House Deli and Wok in the box.

In addition, some of Mumbai's classics like - Zaffran, Bademiyan, Mahesh Lunch Home, Jaffer Bhai - can now be delivered to a users' doorstep through Zomato's platform.

Through its investee company Grab, and logistics partner Delhivery, Zomato will also service the delivery logistics for some of these top brands.

“We are really excited about partnering with Zomato for their online ordering platform and are hoping to cater to a larger target audience through this association.” said Shobita Kadan, Director, Marketing and Strategy for Impresario Entertainment and Hospitality Pvt. Ltd.

Zomato currently offers online ordering services for 15,000 restaurants across 14 cities in India. Zomato has also recently introduced an in-app chat feature, enabling consumers to chat with the team at Zomato for any order-related queries. This feature is currently available for users in India and UAE. With this update, Zomato has also included a host of new features and performance improvements to make the online ordering experience even better.  

By RI Bureau

TinyOwl, the Mumbai based food ordering service has partnered with payments solution start-up Citrus to power its own in-app digital wallet called MyWallet.

The new feature will allow customers to make payments and also get instant refunds on cancelled orders.

“We have seen that across industries, major customer dissatisfaction happens due to challenges in refunds, “said Harshvardhan Mandad, co-founder and chief executive, TinyOwl.

MyWallet is a closed digital wallet solution, meaning users will not be able to use funds stored on the service on platforms other than TinyOwl.

Other players such as ride-hailing service Ola, too, have launched their own digital wallet services, which after gaining certain amount of traction the company opened to other e-commerce services as well.

The digital payments space is growing ever crowded with players such as Paytm, Mobikwik and even traditional banks that have launched wallet apps.

It is to be seen if TinyOwl makes a similar move to open up its mobile wallet service to third-party services in the future.

RI Bureau

Swiggy, the Bengaluru based food start up has raised $ 16.5 million in series B round of funding.

The start-up has raised funding from a group of investors, including Norwest Venture Partners (NVP), SAIF Partners, Accel Partners and an undisclosed global investment entity.

Founded by Sriharsha Majety and Nandan Reddy, boths BITS Pilani alumni, Swiggy is a food-tech company with its own delivery personnel equipped with smartphones which enables the company to pick up orders from restaurants and deliver to customers.

“We have seen a 10x growth in order numbers over the past few months and this investment will help us expand exponentially as we intend to establish ourselves in several new cities by the end of the year,” said Majety, CEO, Swiggy.

Started in 2014 end in Bengaluru, recently Swiggy also expanded its services to Gurgaon and Hyderabad partnering with over 100 restaurants in both the cities.

According to the statement, more than 50 per cent of daily orders have shifted from the website to the app in a short period of time.

“The funds will primarily be used to support the next phase of growth, including expanding Swiggy’s footprint to other cities in India. The financing is also expected to fuel growth towards establishing a stronger brand platform and capturing an increased share of the burgeoning food delivery market in India,” added Majety.

Zomato, the restaurant discovery and food ordering website is opening subsidiary companies in over a dozen countries even before it launches operations in markets where it aims to gain a headstart.

The Gurgaon-based company has opened "on paper" companies in Mexico, Sweden, Germany, Finland and Norway complete with a bank account and other legal requirements, as it hastens global expansion to compete with Germany's Foodpanda which is present across 40 countries.

"A ready 'company' makes our entry into that market easier either by organic or inorganic means. Opening a bank account for a company is a difficult process in many countries and takes several months, we have decided to smoothen our entry into major world markets in the next four years,” said Deepinder Goyal, Cofounder and CEO, Zomato.

The six year old company currently operates in 20 countries including India, Dubai, UK, Brazil, Canada, Australia, Turkey, Poland and New Zealand.

However, with on paper companies, Zomato's presence has crossed to over 40 countries in the world.

foodpanda, the online food delivery marketplace active in 40 countries across five continents, has secured another round of funding of USD 110 Million.

The sum comes from Rocket Internet AG, as well as other existing and new investors. Since its launch in 2012, the company has now raised more than USD 200 Million.

After acquiring key competitors this year in India, Mexico, Russia, Brazil, Eastern Europe, Middle East and Asia, the company will now further invest into product and technology, and continue focusing on customer service and loyalty for becoming the most convenient and most user friendly way of ordering food delivery or take-away.

“Over the last couple of months we have become the leading online food delivery marketplace across the most promising and fastest growing emerging markets. The new funding allows us to fully focus on user experience and customer service with the aim of completely disrupting the way people order food by establishing a real alternative to pizza flyers and phone calls,” said Ralf Wenzel, Co-Founder and CEO, foodpanda.

Rohit Chadda, MD and Co-Founder, foodpanda said, “We have seen excellent growth over the past year attracting new users from all corners of the country. This round of funding will allow us to scale up and strengthen the foodpanda brand across geographies. We are strongly rooted in the belief that ‘customer is king’ and will continue working harder to reinforce our status as the prime choice when it comes to online food ordering.”

foodpanda offers ways to order food via the mobile app or online. Globally, foodpanda partners with over 45,000 restaurants in 40 countries, being market leader in 32 of those countries.