What need was Chatfood born from?
ChatFood was born out of the frustration of food businesses losing control of their online business.
Aggregators led the way in shifting consumer behaviour to order online.
While this created many opportunities for food businesses, it also came at a high cost. Suddenly, they were paying high fees to sell online, and even worst, quickly lost direct access to their customers.
ChatFood’s mission is to empower food businesses to take back control. Enabling them to access best-in-class technology to sell online directly, own their profits, customer relationships, and thrive sustainably.
Over the last 18 months, we helped more than 6000 of them open their online store and drive more than AED100 million in sales. More than 1 million customers decided to support their favourite businesses by ordering direct.
What does a sustainable future for homegrown food businesses look like?
A future where technology serves homegrown food businesses and not the other way around.
We believe in a future where homegrown food businesses get rewarded for their work. A future where we can enjoy the convenience technology brings to our lives, and food businesses can grow without sacrificing their hard-earned profits.
Food businesses have always been the propellers of communities and the local economy. They were started by dreamers, challengers, and optimists that do not settle for the status quo.
These business owners are constantly pushing the boundaries to create recipes that bring affection and put a smile on their customer’s faces.
The industry is currently going through a breakneck pace of digitisation. With innovations that range from food delivery to takeaway and dine-in experiences to virtual restaurants, it’s hard to deny the convenience it all brought to consumers and the number of opportunities that arose.
While these advancements are changing the game for the food industry, convenience has come with a high price. And food businesses are often paying for it alone.
We aim to create a recipe that enables these businesses to benefit from technology while growing their businesses sustainably.
When passionate food business owners lose the motivation to fight against the odds or can no longer afford to provide great food to their communities, we all lose.
It’s time for food businesses to get empowered.
What’s your strategy?
To succeed, food businesses will have to take every opportunity to connect directly with their customers and delight them with a simple and personalised experience. As a business, whether your customers browse your Instagram page, chat with you on WhatsApp, visit your bar, your bakery, or your restaurant, you need to leverage technology to build deeper connections with them.
From building your online store on WhatsApp or Instagram, accessing reliable logistics, enabling pay at table experiences, building a database for efficient marketing campaigns, ChatFood offers an integrated suite of easy-to-use technology for ambitious business owners to grow their business sustainably.
What are your goals?
Our next goal is to help food businesses transform their on-premise experience.
The next wave of innovation will happen on-premise. The ordering and billing experience when going out for dinner or drinks with friends hasn’t changed in decades. You still struggle to find a waiter in busy places, you wait long minutes to get your bill, and you go through this awkward moment when you want to split bills. On the other hand, most venues currently have no ideas of who visited their restaurants, are unable to personalise the experience based on guest preferences, and still pay crazy fees for online transactions. Fast-forward to a post-pandemic world, food businesses now have a unique opportunity to embrace technology to delight their customers with fast and easy ordering and paying on-site experiences, increasing average spendings and loyalty. All the information they collect about their customers will also enable them to have their staff focus on providing social and unique interactions while building important insights about their customers to help them market themselves. We have been piloting this for a few months now with some of our key partners and the results are incredible. On average, 30% increase in the average check. We are now launching in large venues and food halls such as Social Distrik. This will be key to ensuring sustainable growth for food businesses in the coming years.
