Industry stalwarts, Karan Tanna, founder, Ghost Kitchens, and Pawan Shahri, founder, One Hospitality, have come together to start a platform for the food and beverage industry called ‘BroEat!’ the first-ever platform to use WhatsApp as a medium across any industry category. BroEat! is a menu discovery platform aiding restaurants, home chefs and small businesses to get orders from customers and can enable contactless delivery using the merchant's own staff or third-party last-mile service providers to handle deliveries. The brand comes with integration of all popular payment gateways and last mile delivery service providers.
In a first with an attempt of unbundling of services, the platform gives excellent autonomy to small and local food businesses in the following manner:
Restaurants will receive orders from BroEat! and then they can choose their own fleet or any third-party for the choice of delivery.
All the customer data will be owned by the respective merchant partner.
Customers will get delivery rider details and invoice on WhatsApp through an auto-message from official BroEat! WhatsApp business account.
Restaurants control their own discounts and will not be pushed for any platform discounts.
In a bid to save the beleaguered hospitality industry which includes everything from national restaurant chains to small food businesses including home chefs in the times of Covid-19, BroEat! will be supporting local & independent businesses. In the words of Tanna, “These are tough times for the industry, and we wanted to do our bit for our fellow restaurateurs. BroEat! enables restaurants to save substantial margins on food delivery orders which in-turn helps them to save jobs. We encourage restaurants to re-skill their current staff (instead of laying them off) to also do home delivery. This platform is made for our community and we all need to come together and support each other.”
The platform is integrated with most of the popular POS (point of sale software) in the market. Merchant registrations have already started, and has got confirmation from over 1,000 stores including brands like Mad Over Donuts, Goila Butter Chicken, Cheelizza Pizza, Shiv Sagar Group of Restaurants and many more. Saransh Goila, celebrity chef & founder of Goila Butter Chicken, says, “These are difficult times for restaurants and any cost saving measures are great. With BroEat! the data transparency will help us know who our customers are and will help us to build direct relationships with them”
The brand will on-board 10,000 merchants in the next 4 to 6 weeks, before going live to take customers orders. Registrations can be done through its website.
The platform commits to not charge any fee on transactions from restaurants for the first 100 days of operation (till August 30, 2020) to help them in the current tough economic climate. Post this period, a minor cost starting Rs 5 will be charged on every order. The restaurants will receive their payments transferred within 48 hours of sale.
Talking about providing economic & employment help to the industry, Shahri states “There are approximate 5 lakh restaurants across India generating a total employment of over 75 lakh people; We believe saving jobs is of primary concern for all of us to help stabilise the economy. If customers order directly to restaurants, they get safer food as restaurants monitor their orders from start to last mile delivery; they get best prices as restaurants save on commissions and in that process restaurants also earn better to help their employees. We are a menu display platform that acts not like an aggregator but a parallel support system for the community.”
The company is bootstrapped with the founders having invested their own funds to begin the business. The company’s purpose is to #SaveRestaurants & #SupportLocal. It is also seeking volunteers across India to help to spread the word for the good cause to save restaurants in every neighbourhood. This platform is the first in any industry that has been launched by the community, for the community to fight the Covid-19 crisis.