Restaurateurs go app frenzy!
Restaurateurs go app frenzy!

Over the years, e-commerce buzz is heating the fast evolving restaurant space in India. Gone are the days, when people are restricted to ordering food via certain aggregators or players like Zomato, Dineout amongst others. Today, not only customers’, but restaurant owners also look at ease of experience to their loyal and regular customers’.

Making the ‘mobile’ way

“We have a high repeat customer base, and wanted to offer them ease of use for all their Chaayos experiences, be it takeaway pre-ordering, home delivery or their loyalty program information. The delivery app is the first step to improve your experience at Chaayos,” shared Raghav Verma, Co-Founder, Chaayos.

With number of Smartphone users rising in India, the m-commerce market to reach $19 billion by 2019, leaving behind unexplored opportunities to grow smooth business.

According to a report, “right from user research to product anytime and anywhere, smartphones are an emerging point of purchase changing consumers shopping pattern.”

Recently, Big Fish Ventures, which runs some of the wackiest cafes and restaurants in Delhi has come up with their own app making their customers’ more loyal towards their brand.

"Most firms are focused on creating single brands with standardized formats like, for example, a McDonald's or a KFC. We are building a cluster of concept--based different brands across genres and large formats," pointed Umang Tewari, Owner, Big Fish Ventures.

Neck to neck competition

However, this trend is very niche in restaurant business scenario in the country, but it may set a trend for large multi format restaurant chains and cafes developing their own apps and eventually posing competition to the specialized dining and reservation app operators like Zomato, Dineout, Easydiner and Reserveyourtable.

"We will bring over 2 lakh customers on our mobile app by end of 2016 and will be doing over 5000 table reservations per day by June 2016. We plan to invest over 3-4 million dollars over next 3 years," added Tewari who is excited with new development in the country.

As consumers are much more focused on buying or ordering a product or getting the best offers through their smartphones, this may push the industry to experiment with the app opportunity. Likewise, Chaayos, which was the first cafe in India to have their app gets majority of their delivery revenue, comes from Chaayos app.

“The response has been amazing, we have 300% higher repeat orders than our other channels, and a majority of our delivery revenue comes through Chaayos App,” pointed Verma who sees Zomato and Dineout as partners and not a competitor.

However, these promotions are marketed through their own cafes and through social media marketing, it could gain more traction capturing the younger generations.

 
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