The FINANCIAL — Ordering food online in Georgia has never been easier thanks to the online food-ordering portal foodpanda, which has been going viral on the local market since 2014. Since then foodpanda has established itself as the most powerful online tool for ordering food in Georgia.
foodpanda will improve its webpage and mobile application this year in a bid to simplify ordering procedures for its customers and to create additional comfort for them.
The mobile application download numbers have gone viral in Georgia, exceeding over 80,000 users.
Co-founder & Managing Director at foodpanda Giga Kerkadze declined to disclose their monthly revenue and the number of orders received in a day. He did, however, say that their mobile app is doing very well as more than 60 percent of orders are received through it.
The process of ordering food via foodpanda is very simple, fast, convenient and straightforward. On the homepage of foodpanda people can start their orders by entering their preferred city and area, which leads them to the next page listing the total number of restaurants near them.
The next step is choosing the menu for the food by selecting from the list on the left hand side of the page. Customers are free to pick their favourite food including appetizers, main dishes, desserts and drinks. After completing the order and checking-out, the request will immediately be transferred to the restaurant. The order will then be prepared and delivered straight to the customer’s home, office or current location.
As for prices, all prices on foodpanda are identical to the partnered restaurants’ fees, hence the customer does not end up paying an additional figure over the base price.
With foodpanda service customers can now order food in the major cities of Georgia – the capital Tbilisi, Batumi, Kutaisi and Rustavi.
“Currently foodpanda operates in 24 countries. Despite the fact that Georgia is third from the bottom and is a small marketplace with fewer customers, we are still doing well in terms of number of orders. Georgia has peaked really fast in a short period of time,” Kerkadze said.
Fast food is the most popular type of food among foodpanda’s customers, followed by Asian and Georgian food.
Kerkadze said that most orders are made during lunch (12:00 – 14:00) and in the evening, after working hours (18:30 – 20:30).
Q. Other players in food delivery service have been appearing on the Georgian market. How do you compete with them?
A. Our strategy while competing with our competitors is very simple and can be explained in one word – quality.
High quality restaurants; high quality webpage and application; high quality food delivery service – this is our easy strategy.
Q. How many partner restaurants does foodpanda have today? What goes into the process of selecting a partner?
A. Since our establishment we have cooperated with more than 300 restaurants in Georgia. As of today we are the partner of 150 food outlets.
Our benefit is that we cooperate with the most well-known and successful local restaurants based on mutually profitable conditions. For the restaurants this cooperation is profitable as they get new clients and increase their order numbers. We give them such a technological platform which would be very expensive for them to create on their own. I’m referring to the online platform – web and mobile application, which are designed in our head office and are created in accordance with internationally high standards. The restaurants get more loyal customers as a result, because people have everyday contact with their food via foodpanda’s application. Accordingly, the number of the restaurants’ orders increases.
The process of selecting a future partner restaurant is very simple. After choosing a high quality establishment, it is then up to our customers to make their choice. If the customers also like the restaurant it means that our partnership has a future. There have been some cases where customers have complained about some establishments and we have cancelled our cooperation with them as a result.
Q. How did the year 2016 start for foodpanda? What positive changes have there been in the company and on the market?
A. We are seeing a positive trend of establishing start-ups, new businesses. The Georgian Government is more actively involved in this process and is paying more attention to the technological sector. This makes us happy and we see the future more optimistically.
We think the technology sector is currently in the very early stages of development. We are more than happy to see new strong players and investments in this sector because it helps to develop the entire sector in general.
Q. foodpanda has won its first Golden Brand. In your opinion why did the experts name foodpanda a favourite brand?
A. I think the main reason for this success is foodpanda’s young and strong team. I would like to thank all of them for their hard work.
We received Golden Brand for achieving the utmost success in 2015.
Yes, that year was very successful for the company.
First of all we increased our business and also increased awareness of the foodpanda brand on the market. These were the two main directions which we wanted to develop and we successfully did so.
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