A few years ago, ordering food meant flipping through menu lists, checking the costs and calling up restaurants for reservations, to get the perfect meal.
The surfeit of meal aggregators, food delivery and production services has changed all that and ensured that ordering your favourite salad and cheesecake is only the matter of a few clicks. With delivery apps and food aggregators becoming popular, Metroplus examines how these services have impacted standalone restaurants in the city.
V. Kesavan runs a small eatery selling savouries in Frazer Town. He has tied up with a few aggregators. “I think that a listing in a website such as foodpanda ensures there is more visibility and I get more orders. We face a lot of competition from services that provide cooked meals, but delivery aggregators are very helpful, especially for small outlets like us. I think that Bengaluru being the IT capital, more such initiatives would be very helpful.”
Anupam Behera left a career in IT to start the cafe, What’s in a Name in HSR layout. Anupam is also one of the founders of the Bangalore foodies club, a popular forum on Facebook. He says, “Small cafes face competition from apps that provide cooked food. I feel aggregator websites and apps provide a better platform and ensure that our delivery costs are reduced considerably.”
Kripal Ammana, Managing Editor of Bengaluru based Food Lovers Magazine states, “From the viewpoint of a consumer, I feel that apps such as Swiggy help me discover little restaurants I may have ignored. There are many places that may not be very visible but serve good food. It has not only made life easier for us, it gives customers an avenue to explore more eating out options.
The delivery charges are negligible and everyone from the restaurant to the customer is satisfied. I think that in a city like Bengaluru, something like the dabbawallah system from Mumbai will not work. Our public transport system and working culture are very different. That explains the reason food apps are very popular in the city. ”
Banker Venkat Krishna feels that delivery apps have resulted in more youngsters moving away from packed food. “When I came to Bengaluru a few years ago, I was dependent on the dabbas as it was reasonably priced. With food apps now offering healthy and nutritious food, I no longer need to be worry.”
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Take your pick
Grubbr offers customers the ability to de-clutter a restaurant menu and showcasing the most popular items in a restaurant. Sandeep Ghoshal, one of the co founders says, “Despite advances in the Indian food-tech space, a simple question, which is incidentally asked most often, is not being answered by anyone – what should I order from the menu. Since we capture information at a dish level, we are also able to show the best burger dishes / pizza dishes / biryanis in an particular neighbourhood or the city. That makes our service quite unique.
For healthy breakfast
The lack of good breakfast options in Bengaluru spurred friends Ashwin Chandrasekaran, Haripriya Raja and Nikhil Behl to create Brekkie, an online service that aims at delivering an wholesome breakfast to your home or office.
Ashwin says, “Since we were not staying at home, we faced the issues most bachelors face in the city — the lack of time to prepare a healthy breakfast. We started Brekkie to provide a good alternative and it has been very successful.
I think Bengaluru being a city with such a huge young population helped. We now have customers in all age brackets.”
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Popular food apps/aggregators
Freshmenu
Swiggy
Cookaro
Brekkie
Dropkaffe
