HungryHouse.co.uk gets Dragons Den funding

I like it in theory, although I’m too far outside London to be able to use it. And I was deeply amused by the synchronicity that saw me biting into a slice of online-bought Domino’s Pizza at the exact moment they were talking about that particular company.

But I think Deborah Meaden made a good point about people thinking ‘I fancy a curry’ or whatever, rather than being in the market for shopping around. And the website, while easy to use, is surprisingly unappetising for a food site – it doesn’t exactly make you drool, does it?

On balance, worth a punt I think – but I wasn’t surprised to see they didn’t get away with offering an 11 per cent stake. In fact, I remember saying to Beloved Other Half “they’ll be lucky to walk away still owning half that company”.

At least, I would have said that if my mouth hadn’t been full of pizza.

I thought the programme was very interesting as I already use another website called OrderYourTakeaway.Com who have been around a lot longer than HungryHouse but the thing that I like about OrderYourTakeaway.Com is that they offer people a way of making money by eating takeaways via their OYT Triple Money Plan (website is at http://www.oyttmp.com).

I think HungryHouse could be very good and they have a nice website but I think they have more than just one competitor as they suggested on the programme and I think that they will need a lot more than £100k to make it work.

Interesting ; I didnt watch the program but i’m fascinated the google ‘correction’.

I’ve always thought search would become more dependent on user-habits than relevance.

Anyone any ideas who exactly the competition might be? They deliberately didn’t mention them by name but I wonder whether someone knows that Danish company…

they are stupid to invest

Matt Colllins: The Danish competitor mentioned is just-eat.co.uk

Hi all! I’m Graeme, and I work for http://hungryhouse.co.uk

It’s good to see that Shane and Tony’s appearance in the Den has inspired a bit of a debate.

Just to let everyone know that we are paying attention to people’s opinions, and if you have any particular requests, advice, or problems with the site then feel free to comment here or contact us directly through our site.

I’ve been looking at the OYT triple points system with interest. What we do is an “introduce and earn” system, where if you introduce a restaurant you get a 10% discount for the next year. When we thought of this system, We hoped doing it this way would ensure that people only introduce partners they would genuinely want to order from…

Anyway, we’ve only just started with this system, so will keep an eye on results. I’m going to discuss the OYT model for introductions with Shane and Tony, as it does seem an interesting idea.

Thanks for looking at the site, and apologies for the poor load times if you visited the site directly after our TV appearance. We put in 3 new servers before the show, but really nothing could have prepared us for the traffic!

Graeme

Ive heard the rummors about 118menu too, lucking forward to it !

I AGREE WITH THAT ATTITUDE THEN YOU WONT FAIL !! PLUS I LIKE THE CARTOON ! MR MENU ??

Online ordering is alright, but for simplicity I keep using a website at http://www.thebigeat.com. I can search for takeaways by food type and it has most menus for my area (NW London). It would be good to order online, but until every takeaway is on the same site (which is unlikely to happen). I was amazed to see 100k sunk into Hungry House as the guy who did the Big Eat website offered to sell the whole thing for 5k not long ago. Just goes to show how effective a bit of marketing can be!

I have just moved to sw19 and have already used 3 times hungry house(i found them through google)and it is great.
Only problem is that there is too many currys and pizzas and no other options(wouldn’t be great to see some italian or mexican food)
But big positive is the fact you can leave feedback after your order.(works in similar way to ebay).
So i reckon restaurant managers won’t deliver bad food-otherwise they risk potential clients.
So far i am happy!

Hi people,

Hope you don’t mind me sticking my head in here. My name is Rune Risom and I’m the COO with Just-Eat. The discussion going on is very interesting and no doubt the UK market for this niche has gotten very competitive.

There are a few things in some of the posts I would like to comment on.

Firstly I would like to make it clear that we have no intention of listing restaurants on our site that has ceased to work with us or in general have closed their shop. We always keep our data as up to date as possible.

Also in regards to customer service I believe us to be on par or perhaps even better than the rest. We provide our users with access to live chat order support, e-mail and phone. Also we encourage users to leave ratings of their experiences to help others find the best quality and service in their area.

We think it’s great for HungryHouse that they got success on Dragon’s Den as it has helped generate interest in general for online food ordering, and we of course have also benefitted from this.

A little side comment (coming from my competitive nature) is that HungryHouse has only added ca. 10 restaurants to their selection since the TV show, while we at Just-Eat has added 90 :)

Kind regards
Rune Risom
Just-Eat.co.uk

Interesting to note that http://orderyourtakeaway.com/ is now closed!

Was impressed with Hungry House right up until one restaurant (Yune) failed to deliver the food.

It’s then you find out that they have no refund facility and they don’t answer any emails. Only £15 so not the end of the world, but definitely wouldn’t give them my credit card details again. Stick to paying the take-aways with cash is my advice.

Shame because the idea sounded quite good. Maybe they’re just a small company and haven’t got the hang of it yet. The idea is awesome though. I hate phoning up take-aways and being able to do it online is great. Would be good if someone professional like Amazon got into this.

Urbanbite suck. and i mean really suck

I found the hungry house website very difficult to use. I came across a site called Curry Me Home I found this site very easy to use compared to hungry house and all the other online takeaways, as the name suggest they only deliver Indian takeaway.

OK, this thread is clearly becoming a discussion between rival online takeaway providers slating each other and providing anonymous comments about their own companies.

These tactics are pretty easy to spot and we track IP addresses (which I was forced to hand over to lawyers who got upset about this thread a few months ago) – frankly I don’t have time to keep moderating this so please refrain from it in future.

LOLZZZZ Jus read this thread and am ROFL @ the takeaway sites posting here. Get a life!

I think it’s hillarious how Just Eat and Hungryhouse keep posting as though they were the only 2 online meal ordering sites in UK. Guess what, Urbanbite seems to be doing very well in London! We use their site all the time and my friends also do.

Jamie.

It was very interesting to read your commets. As a regular consumer of Just-Eat.co.uk. I can give you the following reasons to order online :

1) Its fast. You get your order within 45 mins. Which is great! in this modern busy life.
2) Its reliable and secured. The payment system is smooth and fully secured. No hassle for cash only restaurants.
3) Wide range of restaurants. Over 1750 restaurants to choose.
4) User friendly website which allows the consumer to communicate directy to the restaurants. The word “broker” was used unwisely.
5) Just-eat is promoting healthy food if you search well, I beleive you will find many many healthy restaurants. It always depends on area. Please name some healthy and good restaurants that doing home delivery in your area but not listed on Just-Eat.They will definitely take them on the board.
6) E-commerce is growing rapidly. Online business is the future for any kind of business..In UK every 1 house out of 8 got braod band. Calling take aways for home delivery is most unlikely to stay longer. People will like to memorise the website rather than keeping big menu on the wall.

Now let me answer the question of using picture of the food. It always make confusion to the consumer to choose right products when picture used.Remember its food not electronic product or house. I personally beleive you should go for description of the food that gives better idea of the food.

many many thanks and i am sure some of your suggestions will be taken to the board by these websites company.

thanks
momen

http://www.just-eat.co.uk/contact

Interesting point of view from a “consumer” there Momen. Oh and you are also the 1st person listed as Just Eat’s sales staff on the link above!

Momen Ahmed
Regional Sales Manager – South
momen@just-eat.co.uk

Hi,
I don’t live in the UK but when I visited London I went on http://www.pizza.co.uk, isn’t this the same? I know this website from other European countries!

I watched the Dragons Den Hungryhouse.co.uk episode and was surprised that the dragons invested. I wonder if the founders are on target for the sales projections stated in the presentation.

I say this because I did a quick survey on the other online takeaway order sites and this is what I found. I took RM11 (Hornchurch Essex) as a random area check:
Menu Lover – No establishments
118menu – No Establishments
thebigeat – No establishments
just-eat.co.uk – 13 establishments claimed although on checking they were all
correctly stated as RM post-codes but not necessarily RM11.
Unfortunately hungryhouse.co.uk had No establishments.
They advise (today) that they have just over 900 establishments online, which
I find a bit weak bearing in mind it has been 1 year since they were funded
by the Dragon s(assuming the deal happened!)

Assuming they started with zero vendors and the 100k investment is gone by my calculations their acquisition cost per new vendor is over $100 or if the cash is still in the bank it would have been the first bite (excuse the pun) of the income from 66 online orders (average 15.00 @ 10% x 66 – 99.00). I don’t know if that works because I don’t know their daily order averages but I do think it is a little slow for a company that states it will turnover 3.2M in year three and show 2M profit.

I would be interested hear from anyone at hungryhouse.co.uk to see if they would like to update us on the success of their marketing so far. I am not a spy for any of the other online stores and I am not a potential competitor. I am studying (in a cursory fashion) various online business opportunities that have made headway through unusual funding avenues or unusual marketing strategies. This is most definitely not a posting designed to criticize hungryhouse.co.uk. I am really just interested to see if the enterprise worked with the assistance of the Dragons Investment and expertise.

Hi John,
I was also convinced they had obtained the funding. Any idea why the Dragons pulled out?

Hi guys,

I’m Steve and I run a smaller alternative online food ordering website called http://www.e-resistible.co.uk/. We had the idea but weren’t even running when the show first aired on DD however since launching 6 months ago we have signed up 150 restaurants in Birmingham, Bristol and a few other cities. We are 3 students at the University of Warwick and have successfully established a profitable business in spite of the competition, we have also won awards and were featured in the Independent recently here: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/higher/campus-dragons-the-entrepreneurial-spirit-is-soaring-across-universities-in-the-uk-1049816.html

HungryHouse have certainly grown from strength to strength since the airing of the show. We understand that a while back they were taking 500 orders a night but this may have increased since then, Graham may enlighten us more on this ;-). It seems crazy to me that the Dragons didn’t invest in them after the show because it was obvious that once it went on BBC1 that it would be huge for them and with such a mass market that exposure should offset any risk in putting up the 100k.

Just Eat we think have gained around 200,000 customers since they started. Both businesses appear to be trading profitably and expanding relatively quickly.

Currently there are a number of smaller operators such as ourselves however once we finish our degrees in June we hope to track down these early innovators with an improved website and better product offering.

Many thanks,

Steve, E-resistible.co.uk

Just watched this and had to comment on it as it is an area close to home.

In 1998 I setup CanIOrder with some friends, the dot com bubble collapsed and we could get no cash. But a guy called Ben in North London built a competitor and it was called OrangePip, he got some investmnet and they called in UrbanByte which they then sold to Lastminute.

The nightmare of the busines is you make very little money on each transaction and ultimately you get blamed for bad food/delivery.

Doug

Doug

Hi,

Some very interesting posts on here! I have been a customer of Hungry house for a number of months and have ordered in excess of 10 times witha variety of restaurants. I found there was never a problem, everything was very straight forward, quick and easy. My only disgruntal was that they charge you for paying by card whereas the site stated that you pay what you would normally pay the restaurant, or less, this is clearly untrue. I have become more disappointed lately as it now seems to take quite some time for the order to be submitted to the restaurant, the most recent case being 30minutes from Hungryhouse receiving my order to them sending it to the restaurant. I did get confirmation the restaurant had receuived it 3 mins later, but 33mins to send the order and get it accepted?! ‘Employ more staff’ or ‘update your automated systems’ comes to mind. This is the longest ordering time i have experienced from any of the online takeaway ordering sites.

I am also becomming more disappointed as the level of customer service has slipped dramatically. Whenever i had a query, it was always dealt with very promtly before, and i had a contact number to call them if i needed to, but now, it takes several emails backwards and forwards and several days to resolve something, and the contact number is no longer in use and i cannot see a new one on the site.

If i order through a company, if i have a problem i expect that company to deal with it, regardless of if they give my order to someone else to complete, i ordered it with that company so they should deal with any problems, however Hungryhouse very quickly offset you back to the restaurant. I feel they need to take more responsibility for the orders they process, especially when you have tried to rectify it with the restaurant to no avail.

I received an order 40mins late and when i called the restaurant i was told the driver was stopped by police, i tried to cancel as it was too late now, but either due to language barriers or sheer ignorance he spoke over the top of me and said it was because of the police. I again tried to cancel but he said it will be here in next few mins and ended the call. I received it finally 30mins after the restaurant was closed, the food was stone cold, soggy and not edible, i still tried to call to complain and request refund but was no answer, so i then contacted Hungryhouse. Maybe i should have contacted Food Standards as by this point the food was unhygienic and unsafe to eat at that temperature, bacteria doubling by the minute!
I had tried to deal with the restuarant and then went to Hungryhouse instead. Customer Services quoted in an email back to me that i can only get full refund for certain criteria, one being if i have contacted the restaurant to cancel before i receive my order, and another being if i have tried to contact the restaurant to collect the unwanted food. I did both of these and still Hungryhouse refused to refund me! Come on guys i followed your instructions!!

They then emailed me again to say they still would not refund me as it comes out of their pocket…..well if i have followed your criteria as quoted how do i still not meet the requirements for refund?!! In my eyes Hungryhouse should have refunded me, and they themselves dealt with the restuarant to get their money back, i had clearly already met 2 causes for refund. I was offered £3:00 credit to my Hungryhouse account as compensation, this was not even half of the money i lost on the order. I responded to say i had already done what they asked and had already quoted it in my original email to them.

Determined not to lose my money to this site and the restaurant, i have now once again contacted the restaurant who said they would refund back to Hungryhouse, and have since emailed Hungryhouse to ask them to send the money back to my card, yet awaiting a response. I have no confidence at all that they will give me this refund and i am now expecting they will tell me to speak to the restaurant again to get them to refund my card directly. I have no shame in saying the other sites that have been around for so long, are much better with this kind of service. I dont see how they can promote and easy and efficient service cutting out the middle man, when they leave you to deal with all the problems yourself and take no responsibility and dont even help to rectify it….in other words, they will take your money for an order plus their card fee (which the restaurants do not actually charge so Hungryhouse DOES cost you more to order with them, unless you pay cash on delivery) but they will not take responsibility when problems arise and you have followed what they have told you to do. Once i eventually receive my refund (if ever) i will not hesitate to use Just-eat or meal2go or any of the other several online takeaway sites.

I had recommended Hungryhouse to several friends who have been using it frequently, i myself several times a month, but i will be advising them all of my problems and recommending the other sites instead. I can see clearly why there are so many people who have gone back to the other sites. In my opinion, company policies and procedures desperately need adderssing, responsibility and duty of care to the customer definately.

I must say the Customer Service advisors are very nice and friendly in their emails, its clearly the policies they have to work within that is creating this impression and causing disgruntle. I can say from experience with them that it has definately slipped alot since i first joined.

Also, when can the ‘taste ‘tests’ where you get 20% off ever be used>?! The site states this applies when a new restaurant is added, to gain feedback etc, i have seen several added in my postcode area since joining but not one with a taste test. The site states you can use them on your first 3 orders, when i did not get the discount on my orders i queried this and was told it has to be new restaurants with the symbol by it, but the sit clearly says you can get the discount on your first 3 orders, no mention of only nwe restaurants. Plus, none of the new restaurants have ever had this symbol by them, my friends have also commented on this so we are beginning to feel this is a ploy to convince you to join and order. They seem very clever with words and getting out of their own statements!

Syed,

I totally agree with you and have experienced similar with that site and others, maybe we should patch together and build our own service, that actually provides a proper customer service!

‘Responding to Graeme regarding Simon’s nightmare ‘

Good on you for keeping on top of these comments, as they say “If you make customers unhappy in the physical world, they might each tell 6 friends.
If you make customers unhappy on the Internet, they can each tell 6,000 friends.” So stay on top of these and you may still have a chance at a successful business.

Hi Graham,

Apologies for a late response, i have only just received notification that you had responded on this blog. Thanks for responding to my post, i didnt actually think id get a direct response on here and wasnt looking for one but just thought id add my bit on my experiences!

After making the above post, i was in contact with Hungryhouse via the help email address you specified and Felicity, the advisor again was very quick in responding and very nice and friendly. Felicity dealt with it at each point i contacted Hungryhouse. After i had informed her that i had again been in contact with the restaurant who had agreed to refund to Hungryhouse, she sated that i would received my full refund, which did appear back in my bank account later the same day i had advised Hungryhouse which was very quick but obviously because the payment wouldnt of actually gone through to the restaurant at that point anyway. However after i had stated i met the criteria she had specified, she said that the only criteria needed is that the restaurant gives their permission for a full refund to be given, which differs from you stating that it is policy to give a full refund if i had tried to contact the restaurant to resolve it. I noticed the restaurant was then not available for ordering on the site for a few days but has since continued service.

But i am happy that i received my refund eventually. I then used my refund and contacted the restaurant directly that day and explained to them i understand that it was not their fault directly because of the police and that i would still use them, as i did not want bad relations with a restaurant i do use alot! I then placed exactly the same order but paid cash on delivery. I received the food in less than half the time it usually takes and it was piping hot, had no complaints whatsoever. This has made me feel slightly more that i should just call them and pay each time instead of using Hungryhouse. The £3.00 credit i had received was then used at another point ordering through Hungryhouse but from a different restaurant and this is the only time i have ordered that way since.

I am still disappointed with what happened and feel it should have been rectified sooner, and after my first email which clearly stated i had contacted the restaurant etc, and feel that a refund was necessary and an offer of total replacement meal would of been more appropriate than less than half the cost in credit towards a meal, after all this would offer the customer a free meal to have a good experience to make up for it. If i am totally honest, i probably wouldnt of even made that post if i had got a refund and replacement meal at the time. But i am satisfied that i did not lose out on any money and may continue to use Hungryhouse still if a little less confidantly.

I was also advised i can leave a review for the order, which i always do anyway and the advisor commented how majority of the restaurant reviews were good and so felt they should not be removed, however, alot of those reviews were mine, and if you actually read the comments about the restaurant from mine and other peoples reviews, they are 90% negative about food and delivery and wrong orders! I also recieved the email notification that my review was published, and followed the link to check but it was not there. I would not wish to see the restaurant removed as some problems are to be expected with such a late night delivery service and they did agree a refund, but as im sure you understand it was the experience and very slow resolution, or a the time no resoltuion and what i feel to be inadequate sevice and compensation from Hungryhouse that made things worse.

I have not emailed the help address after reading your response as i have received the refund as stated, but my order reference number was 4243494 and the restaurant was Star Diner. I do not wish to post my full name publically but if you are not able to access the emails and details of the problem with that order number i am happy to help another way privately at the email address quoted in sending this post.

Regards,

Simon

Just-eat is the best, very easy ordering process clean interface. and good for beginers.

Response to Rune Risom, COO with Just-Eat.

You claim in regard to customer service that you believe Just-eat to be on par or perhaps even better than the rest. You claim your site provide our users with access to live chat order support, e-mail and phone.

Have you used your own website?

I placed an order on 27th July. It never arrived. I called the take-away who said they could not find the address. I called them FOUR times to give directions to what is an incredibly easy address to find. After two hours I discovered that their driver had just given up. Nobody told me. I used the live chat service you mentioned. Just-eay said I should contact the take away. I explained I had contacted the take away many times. They asked me to wait and wait and wait…. The person at Just-eat with whom I was ‘speaking’ could barely grasp English but managed to tell me I was being rude when I questioned why they were not answering my questions. I asked for a refund, which I told was processed and that I would have funds back in my account within 3-4 working days. The refund never came. I then emailed but got no response. Last Monday, 3/8/09 I contacted your customer services by phone. They said they had no record of my refund request or the email I had sent. I asked again for a refund and was told it was processed. Another week has passed and still no refund has been credited to my account. I am out of pocket for the phone calls I made to just-eat and the take-away, and STILL do not have a refund. If this so-called ‘customer service’ is “better than the rest” I’d hate to see how awful the others are….
Have closed my account and will be passing the word to all those

My boss had a go on Dragons Den Online, Great for FREE PR!
We started up this company whilst at Uni, http://www.the-master-menu.com we distribute over 300,000 Master Menu Brochures per year at over 10 Universities. UK’s best local takeaway menus online and offline serving Pizza, Indian, Thai, American and Chinese food with over 50000 orders; pay by credit card or cash

@JAMIE! your comment re Urban house did make me smile considering Just Eat have recently acquired them. LOL. Guess that means your now a Just eat fan. :)