aPlaceToDine – Foodie site attempting to be one-stop restaurant portal
Is there any specific reason that most of the foodie portals are seeding in Delhi/NCR region? Delhites are foodies, but given the search trends, I 
am not sure how much of success will these portals be?
Well, the latest one to join the bandwagon is aPlaceToDine.
Apart from providing the listing details, aPlaceToDine also offers following services:
- Website setup, hosting and management for restaurant owners:
aPlaceToDine’s technical team helps restaurant owners setup the website and does provides hosting and maintenance services as well (not for free) - Owing to the close online partnership, restaurants can provide powerful online ordering facility to their customers including options for online payments using any of the recognized credit or debit cards.
- Customers can also reserve tables/order online etc (also enabled via SMS).
The portal has a good and easy interface (liked their iPod styled ‘cover flow’ view) and offers discount on each order. The restaurant data is nicely done with additional information being given a very high priority.
The product has built relevant messaging (for example, instead of forcing a user going thru’ tons of listings, aPlaceToDine has added a cool text “search for restaurants that delivers to <location.>”) and is positioned more as a utility service (and not really a community portal)
Coming to the business model, aPlaceToDine will of course make money from lead generation, but relying on restaurants to create a website is way too operational (I know for sure that couple of foodie sites did try this and then stopped).
What’s your take on aPlaceToDine?
About the author - Ashish Sinha is a Startup Mentor/Product Strategy Coach, and the founder/chief editor of pluGGd.in.
He has launched/managed couple of products (consumer as well as enterprise) in US and India, and now consults with startups/small businesses on their product/media strategy. He can be reached at: ashish (at) pluGGd.in [+91 98452 06443]
Hi Ashish – its interesting that this article comes so soon after the new of hungryzone getting half a million dollars of funding. In terms of pure interface, its my opinion that it beats hungryzone hands down. You’re right, the setting up of website is a tad operational, but I think that the secret sauce (pardon the pun) lies in the ability to order online. The user has an incentive to order through this route because he’s getting discount, and the restaurant will probably give a healthy kickback for this service. It seems that these guys are already doing what I suggested HZ do (not presuming that they hadn’t thought of it already, of course!) in terms of offering a reservation service – again, in return for a kickback for lead generation.
I think another reason why NCR is popular amongst food portals is because (a) there’s a large population of yuppie-software engineers that are likely to use this product and (b) the traffic isn’t so bad so people can actually think of driving a distance to try out a new restaurant!
Gautam Kshatriya
guatam.kshatriya@moneyvidya.com
http://www.moneyvidya.com
Ashish, This is quite good that foodie websites are coming up so fast in India. I wonder aPlaceToDine is so similar to one project(Be a Foodie http://www.beafoodie.com) we are working on for last 3.5 months or so at Eulogik http://www.eulogik.com. Though, it has to be launched 1st in Mumbai( and NOT Delhi or B’lore).
On interface, there is lots of stuff to be done yet and we are definitely counting big on it. its still in alpha stage. I will be seeking advices and suggestions from you people too.
One more thing, we are seeking investors for the venture(http://www.beafoodie.com) too. Since, mumbai has a huge potential for a foodie’s social network and one place order-food -from-restaurants platform. To cover up the gala marketing expenses, awesome launch and great servers+development requirements we are seeking VCs. Any suggestions about how to approach one?
Gautam Kishore
http://www.eulogik.com
Seeking Investor for http://www.BeaFoodie.com
Thank you for this article and there were a couple of comments I wanted to respond to (I work with this organization):
1. The website generation and creation is 100% automated. We take some inputs from the restaurant and run through our engine that will create a new website for a restaurant along with the ordering, reservations and other functions. On an average it takes us 45 minutes to configure and publish a new restaurant.
2. In terms of our interface, this is only our version 1.x
Wait for our September launch of V 2.x. There are cool new templates and improvements to the interfaces that will blow you away. We also will be launching a fully integrated mobile ordering system. The first of its kind.
3. In terms of ‘Why Delhi’? Delhi is the hardest market to crack in terms of the locations, number of restaurants and also in reaching out to the people. We felt if we are successful in Delhi we can establish ourselves in other markets in India. We will be launching in 4 other cities next month and have already started working towards this. Will keep you posted!
Hope this makes sense?