Big Menu: A Single Point Service For Foodies in Gurgaon
Big Menu is a single number service and an online portal to order food and make reservations at any restaurant in the city. Customers can find restaurants, which are open at their desired time and will deliver to their location. The options can be filtered on the basis of cuisine, average cost, minimum order size, past ratings etc. and the order is placed directly with Big Menu. The customers can also order from multiple restaurants i.e. a certain dish from one restaurant and something else from another in the same call. The orders are then placed with the respective restaurants that deliver it and collect cash on delivery.For table reservations, the restaurants can be filtered on the basis of cuisine, average cost, seating space, serving liquor, outdoor seating, live music, parking, payment options, happy hours etc.
Based in Gurgaon, their operations went live from November 2011 and they are currently working with approx 225 restaurants in Gurgaon itself.
Most customers, especially who are new to the city face, spend time on finding information - contact number, menus, reviews etc. before they can select the restaurant to go to or order home delivery from. Big Menu was conceptualized to address this pain-point.
“The information from Justdial and online listing websites does not fulfill all the needs - whether the restaurant will deliver to that location, what is the minimum order size etc. which results in the customer making multiple calls. The customer also faces some inefficiency at the restaurants - of calls not being answered, un-trained order takers, noisy background and no record of his past orders,” says Karan Garg, Founder, Big Menu.
Their clientele are from all age groups in the city, both residential and corporate sectors. “Our regular customers know we have all the records of past orders, they would just ask us to repeat the last order, or pick the dish from the order of last week, make it more spicy and deliver it. Besides calling a single number(0124 - 4901000), some of our more tech savvy customers place orders and bookings via email and even on twitter,” Karan adds.
Big Menu does not charge the customers for the orders and bookings made. The customers also get exclusive discounts and offers at restaurants when booked through them. Their revenue model is commission from restaurants for orders and bookings that are provided to them. Apart from that, they also earn from advertisements on their website.
They have tie ups with restaurants of all types and sizes. So be it an economical Chinese food delivery, snacks and cake for a birthday party or hosting your friends at your favorite Italian restaurant, Big Menu claims it all can be done by calling the same number.
Big Menu vs Similar Market Players:
Big Menu has competition from online ordering websites like justeat.in. However, they believe their USP is the phone interface, which is intended to be designed in such a way that it is not just a helpline number but a system to take care of the complete transaction. “In our industry, the complete process from order to delivery is completed within 45 minutes and customers are more comfortable and assured speaking and giving their orders to a real person. Besides, our USP also lies in the Restaurant Mapping we do, as per delivery area and not just the place where the restaurant is located, thereby providing more options to the customers than others,” Karan adds.
Big Menu intends to cover 10 major cities in India in the next 2 - 3 years. In their opinion, eating out is one of the fastest growing trends in India, the structure of the market is very fragmented and therefore they believe there is a need for an organized and efficient system like Big Menu.
Starting up:
Karan Garg has done him MBA from NMIMS Mumbai, followed by over 5 years of corporate experience in sales and marketing in the FMCG sector. He has worked all over the country in different roles before quitting his job to start Big Menu.
While talking to a friend who works in an MNC in Gurgaon, he mentioned that he was looking for numbers of some restaurants so he can place some orders for the team. He had the unofficial responsibility of ordering for the entire team and every time he used to follow the same process - decide the order, search for numbers and menus, call the restaurants (usually more than one), place the order and give full address and details every time. This led to the discussion of a service which could absolve all the pains and that is how Big Menu was born.
Apart from the management team of 2, they have an external team, which takes care of the tech aspects, and a team of order takers responsible for handling all the orders from the guests. Although Big Menu has been self-funded thus far, Karan is looking to raise funds for growth and expansion.
Retrospecting on his initial challenges, Karan tells Yourstory, “Convincing the first 50 restaurants about the concept and getting them to sign up was the biggest challenge. The next 100 were easier and seeing our results, now restaurants have also started approaching BigMenu!”