Half way through discussing my online takeaway idea with a friend, what should show up on Dragons’ Den, but two guys with a different online menu idea! We couldn’t believe it! hungryhouse.co.uk are similar to just-eat.co.uk and succeeding in getting £100,000 of funding from the Dragons in exchange for 50% of their company (although with the potential to earn back 20% if they hit their targets). Good for them. It will be interesting to see how they get on versus their (relatively more experienced) Danish competitors.
The entrepreneurs came out with a few interesting stats about the UK takeaway market:
- Worth £1.2B in 2004
- Growing at approx 6% per annum
- Average orders are about £15
4 Comments
Derek · June 9, 2008 at 5:13 pm
I cannot see how they can compete with Just-Eat.co.uk, they are a global operator with a significant chunk of the take-away industry sewn up. Should be good fun to see how it pans out thouth.
Takeaway lover · December 20, 2008 at 3:29 pm
It seems like there’s a lot of these sites springing up. http://www.e-resisitble.co.uk is the latest one I’ve found – it seems to be a lot easier to use than the likes of Just Eat.
Barry · August 6, 2009 at 6:07 pm
Hey Matt,
We weren’t too far ahead of you when this popped up on Dragon’s Den – we’d just started development on http://www.niftynosh.com and although we were aware of both competitors this just spurred us on.
We’re now no. 1 in N. Ireland and growing across the UK and Ireland.
The competition is good, keeps us all on our toes and ultimately will make it easier for our customers to order takeaway online and help the local takeaways and restaurants grow their business.
There will always be competition. Don’t let the next idea slip by – just make sure you’re the best!
B
Stu Prior · June 2, 2010 at 10:27 am
We took Master Menu to the Online Dragons, they were much nicer!
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.