“More than 75% of our customers order food through mobile phones.”



Mariam Nihal

Saudi Gazette

Hellofood Middle East is the leading online food delivery service, popular with more than 450 active vendors in Saudi Arabia.



Their mantra is quite simple. Hungry and need to order in? Log on to www.hellofood.sa but careful of the minimum delivery charge.  You can even download the free app, which is available on all major mobile platforms: iOS, Android, Windows, Nokia X and Asha. And the best part is you can place orders without creating a customer account.



Consumer foodservice in the Kingdom has an estimated current market value of EUR 5.4 billion. Delivery and Take-Away capture slightly less than 25% of which online food delivery makes approximately 0.3% or EUR 4.1 million. By 2020 it is expected to grow 41 times to reach a value of EUR 168 million. Beschir Hussain, CEO of Hellofood in the Middle East has his eyes set on this lucrative market.



“We offer consumers the widest gastronomic range and the convenience to order food online. At the same time, we enable partner restaurants to become more visible in the online an mobile world and take evidence-based decisions that are relevant for the operations of their businesses,” Hussain told Saudi Gazette in an exclusive interview.



Hellofood is a two-sided marketing business that connects customers and restaurants. Customers can choose from a variety of partner restaurants based upon their location. Currently, there are more than 450 active vendors in Saudi Arabia that people can choose from. Once a selection has been made you can choose between cash on delivery and online payment. “Food preparation and delivery is usually done by our partner restaurants. Delivery characteristics, like the minimum delivery amount, delivery time and delivery fee are set by the restaurants themselves. However, we do provide feedback and statistically relevant data about the correlation between these characteristics and the number of orders. Ultimately, the vendors make the decision,” Hussain added.



Since the launch of its app, the number of downloads has been on the rise. “We have seen tremendous growth and we also noticed that the highest number of downloads and most in-app activity comes from iOS and then Android,” Hussain said.



The remodeled version has an integrated online payment capability, as part of Hellofood’s goal to offer the most convenient way of ordering food online. The app allows potential customers to read about recommended restaurants, go through their reviews and ratings and browse through current deals and promotions. Also, returning users can access their order history for fast and convenient re-orders.



When asked if the online facility was launched as a private enterprise, he said it was the need for market efficiency.



“The overall goal of a restaurant is to increase its total revenue. Once the area in which the branch operates becomes saturated, the chain starts looking for other areas to open more and more branches and increase its sales. Setting up a branch, however, is very costly and associated with various risks. One way for restaurant chains to work around this problem and still ensure a high geographical coverage of their service has been to start food delivery. This is the first trend we observed.” Hussain said the increasing numbers of a young and tech-savvy population with rising purchasing power, Internet connectivity and modern lifestyles is an emerging trend in the Kingdom.



“A marketplace like Hellofood can function as a single-destination point for all types of food ordering. The possibility to order online and get the food delivered to the customer’s home or workplace is convenient and fast. Our service reduces the interaction frequency via phone, which our customers highly value.”



Talking about the growing demand for the platform over the years, he said: “The world in general is becoming more mobile. In the Kingdom we are witnessing a significant increase in smartphone users and usage. The Kingdom is considered to be the top mobile market in terms of time spent per day. This has obviously changed the way people order their food. When we launched Hellofood, we put a lot of effort into the development of a customer-friendly mobile application that guarantees a convenient, fast and fun order experience. We did not focus on competitive products, but rather on what customers need and would value. The result is clear: More than 75% of our customers order their food through their mobile phone.”



Discussing expansion plans, Hussain said: “Over the next three to six months, we will be expanding to more cities and areas in the Kingdom, increasing the number of restaurants and the variety of cuisines. That is how we are aiming at providing our service to more and more people in the near future. At the same, we will continue working on innovative food ordering solutions for companies and other institutions like universities, schools and hotels. Many hotels do not provide room service for their guests to avoid high fix costs in a business that is characterized by high seasonality and fluctuation. That is the reason Hellofood decided to start building room service for hotels. The feedback from our partner hotels has been exceptional; we are very excited about the rollout.”



So what gap is Hellofood looking to fill? “I would rather speak of potential instead of gaps that we are looking to tap. Previously, our service was confined to partner restaurants with an own delivery service. This has two implications: First, we were not able to control and improve the performance of the delivery itself, while customers still conceived the delivery as an integral part of the order experience; Second, we could not partner up with restaurant chains that do not have a delivery service yet. These limitations have made us study the possibility of entering the same-day delivery business. We finally decided to start building our own delivery operations. This project is currently being tested in Jeddah with one of our partners. I personally believe it has the highest potential in terms of order value growth but also in terms of quality across each step of our value chain.”