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Building a food delivery marketplace/Acqusition

by Nomhackd

Hi guys!

I'm building a food delivery app that will essentially act as a marketplace linking restaurants and customers. Restaurants will deliver themselves using their own staff so it's different from Uber Eats etc.

The biggest challenge for this kind of business is customers don't want to join if there are no restaurants and restaurants don't want to join if there are no users.

I have a strong value proposition as there is no app doing that in my market: only overprice UberEats kind of app who require their own staff to deliver.

How would you approach the customer/restaurant acquisition process?

Thanks 🙏

Nomhackd's avatarNomhackd
on December 15, 2020
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  1. 2

    Hi
    I have direct experience working on this, as @dsilwal pointed out, you are building two businesses and you need balance on both your supply and demand side.
    Restaurants will not stick around if you are not sending them customers and customers won't bother using you if you don't offer enough variety.
    Some suggestions:

    1. When you sign up restaurants, do it in a limited geographic area. This is to make sure that customers see a variety of cuisines.
    2. A lot of companies starting in this space faked the supply side. So if restaurants are using their own delivery drivers, you can add their menus to your site, then when a customer orders, you can call the restaurant and place the order on their behalf. After you generate demand on the customer side, you go back to the restaurant and sign them up officially, so you can start taking commission.
    dteg's avatar dteg
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    6 years ago
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    1. 1

      Thanks a lot, your comment is so invaluable!

      1. We will start with one city, and try to onboard restaurants by part of the town.
      2. The tip of faking supply and placing orders manually will definitely be a game-changer. Especially because my market payment method is mostly Cash On Delivery so it won't require a lot of cash flow, just enough to pay for Card and Bank Account payments.

      Do you have any resources to recommend about food marketplace building (especially pricing strategies) or anything that could help?

      Thanks again!

      Nomhackd's avatar Nomhackd
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      6 years ago
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  2. 2

    With respect it sounds like you are asking how to climb Mount Everest in bare feet.

    Focus on restaurants in your neighbourhood. Go door to door. Talk to them. Ask their experience wrt delivery apps.

    Validate your suggestion they would deliver themselves given the opportunity. Build a list of those who would.

    Do that. Come back here and make another post. Good luck!

    rab's avatar rab
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    6 years ago
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    1. 1

      That's basically what we are doing now. Contacting the owners of restaurants and asking for their feedbacks (CF: my answer to @dsilwal) about the app that was shut down.

      I'm working on an MVP at the same time so we have something to show.

      tl;dr : there was an app doing what I'm doing and it was acquired and shut down by one of the app doing delivery with their own staff and 20%-30% commission on revenue.

      Nomhackd's avatar Nomhackd
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      6 years ago
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      1. 1

        Ok great. From original post was not clear you had anything beyond aspiration. Who are "we"?

        rab's avatar rab
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        6 years ago
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        1. 1

          We = me as a technical guy (developing the app) and my partner who know the local market, talk the local language and is talking with the restaurants, basically dealing with the commercial side as I can’t speak the local language.

          Nomhackd's avatar Nomhackd
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          6 years ago
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  3. 1

    What market are you launching in? I have 4 years of restaurant sales experience at two of the big 3 players. Happy to help.

    kapman94's avatar kapman94
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    6 years ago
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  4. 1

    This comment was deleted 4 years ago

    DeletedUser's avatar DeletedUser
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    6 years ago
    1. 1

      Did you make any mistake that you regreted? Or something that you wish you had known?

      Thanks for the answer!

      Nomhackd's avatar Nomhackd
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      6 years ago
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  5. 4

    This comment was deleted 3 years ago

    DeletedUser's avatar DeletedUser
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    6 years ago
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      Thanks. Really detailed answer.

      I forgot to precise something. There was an app doing exactly what I'm trying to do but it was recently acquired by one of the big 3 apps doing Uber-Eats Style. And it was basically shut down (scheduled for next month) by the company who acquired it so they can focus entirely on their main business which is the Uber-Eats clone.

      So there is already validation of the idea as the app had over 1000 restaurants on it.

      I scraped the list and contacted the restaurant with the most reviews (over 1000 reviews) and the owner told me he was pissed off and doesn't want to switch to the Big 3 with their own delivery guy and really high fees.

      I'm working on an MVP now so that I can show the app in action and probably get my first restaurants.

      Nomhackd's avatar Nomhackd
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      6 years ago
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