EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Over 80% of all orders in restaurants and cafés are still made offline, which leads to so many annoying and expensive daily problems. An average customer wastes more than a day every year standing in the line waiting for their food orders, while restaurants on the other side can lose up to € 50.000 yearly because of inefficiencies stemming from the offline practices. Although both sides have daily pains and better technology exists, the ordering and check-out process is almost the same ever since fast-food restaurants exist. With our solution: SkipIt you can simply order through an app and skip the line in your favourite restaurant because they will instantly get your order and start preparing it. Or, if you don’t want to wait anything, you can even order ahead so when you arrive, your order is going to be waiting for you freshly made for you to pick up. So there is an app for customers, and for the restaurants, we build a Point of Sale system where they will see the incoming orders and which replaces taking the orders manually. By digitalizing the ordering process we can save time for customers on a daily basis, while restaurants will become more effective and hence spare huge costs. By talking to them, we found out that both sides are open for such a solution and the huge recent success of the likes as Snackpass and Tapingo also show that there is demand for such a service.

Goal

The goal of this project was mainly to test and validate our idea, whether it is desirable, viable, or even feasible. For the end of the course we wanted to go through multiple rounds of testings and gather as much feedback as possible on our results, while fine-tuning our business model continuously.

Methodology

In our project we used the lean start-up method, which meant to constantly generate hypothesis based on our ideas and rank them based on their importance on the startup’s success. Then, this method emphasizes testing and learning through rapid prototyping and customer feedback, rather than relying solely on traditional business planning and development. The goal of this method is to shorten the time it takes to bring the product to market and reduce the risk of failure by validating ideas early and often. It encourages startups to continuously refine and pivot their strategy based on what they learn from customers, in order to increase their chances of success.

Results

In order to validate our ideas, we went out and talked to both potential customers and businesses, showed our prototype to people and asked them about it, and conducted an online survey. All while also researching about other firms with similar concepts and trying to find out what contributes to their success. By the end of the course we figured out how we could offer the perfect value proposition for both sides. For the customers we want to offer an app through which they can order instead of standing in the line and doing it manually. By ordering ahead, they can even skip the preparation time. We found out that with any such service, for restaurants the most important thing is – not surprisingly – the commission fee. We figured out that by not doing delivery (which only accounts for less than 10 % of the industry’s revenue) and only focusing on take away, we can offer a 10 % commission fee to them instead of the ~30 % that delivery services charge. By digitalizing their ordering process with our solution, restaurants will be able to cut huge costs by sparing an employee who until now had to take the orders manually, and better forecasting demand. Also, they will be able to do targeted offers and loyalty discounts to acquire or retain customers, who until today were anonymous for them. Hence, with our solution we can revolutionize the food ordering process and create benefits for both the customers and the businesses.

Cooperation Partner

• SkipIt

Contact Person

• Bence Oláh - bence.olah@icloud.com

Student Team

• Bence Oláh

• Christoph Freisinger

• Peter Doganov

• Triumf Pllana

Project Manager

• Thomas Pannermayr, MSc (WU)

• Alexander Staub, M.Sc.