BizDev IDEAS

Did you order a pizza lately?

We tried Domino’s Pizza, Round Table Pizza and Papa Jones Pizza:

• Papa Jones Pizza: There was no online ordering. We have not managed to get through at once. Once we reached them and ordered pizza, we had to wait over 2 hours for it. I understand it was lunch time, but no one told us we would have to wait for so long.
• Round Table Pizza: No online ordering in our area. I had to call them. Called them 3 times and no one picked the phone. I had to order pizza from Domino’s after all.
• Domino’s Pizza: They have online ordering system – not everywhere, just in few locations, but one of those is close to us (link). Their web site is pretty confusing. And we did not manage to find a menu there with ready-to-order pizzas: you need to pick components for your pizza each time you order it. Also both times we ordered a pizza from Domino's one or two components they had on their web site were missing and we got our pizza without them.

I guess these are not exceptions. Online ordering is quite painful and cumbersome both for consumers and for small businesses.

The Idea

Why not to create an online portal that would provide a online order processing functionality for small businesses - restaurants first of all?

This service should support the following basic functions:

• Selecting items from the menu (possibly with the pictures of the dishes, nutrition facts, etc.)
• Сustomizing certain items (like without onion or with jalapenos instead of the green pepper)
• Getting a list of cross-sells (side dishes, drinks, etc.)
• Providing delivery address
• Ordering delivery for certain time
• Getting delivery timing estimate (based on the current ordering backlog)
• Credit Card Payment processing

This service might have both B2B and B2C interfaces:

• B2B service provides small businesses either hosted or web-services-based product ordering functionality, order tracking, etc.
• On the B2C side there might be a portal for the customers browsing the restaurants having delivery option and convenient online ordering in their area

There might be a lot of ways to monetize this business model:

• Basic subscription for small businesses to this service might be free (just like Gmail or Googlepages services) or priced very attractively (as something “free” might be perceived as something not quite reliable by restaurant owners)
• Once people start using this basic service, they might need additional functionality – which will end up in additional subscription to the premium service
• Also this service might provide a lot of opportunities for banner ads both on B2B side (as soon as the ads are non-competitive) and in the B2C portal.

posted by Dmitri @ 12:04 PM