Featured Startup Pitch: Eat24 reaches restaurant owners with a tried-and-true approach; makes it easy for consumers to order food

Company: Eat24

Website: www.eat24.com

Founders: Nadav and Haim

Headquarters: San Francisco

Year Founded: 2008

Investors: Bootstrapped

Twitter: @eat24

Facebook: facebook.com/eat24hours

Brief Company Description: Eat24 is the best free online restaurant ordering system that allows eaters of food to easily place orders for pickup or delivery within their area.

By Nadav, co-founder

Founders’ Story

Eat24 started in a small studio apartment in San Francisco, where my partner and I began signing up local restaurants going door-to-door. From the beginning we wanted a challenge so we did it old school and signed up restaurants in person. We never had any doors slammed in our faces. With our unique personality and suave good looks people just opened their doors. Since then, we’ve grown from a two-person team to a company with over 150 happy employees and a network of more than 20,000 restaurants in 750 locations nationwide, without begging to any venture capitalists.

We grew up in the restaurant industry. It’s all about hospitality and the importance of making the customer happy. It’s in our DNA to love our customers and we focus on making everything easier for them, including being able to handle grumpy delivery drivers. Unfortunately, the first class service you get at a restaurant gets lost in your typical delivery-or-takeout experience. So we fixed it by placing an emphasis on customer service, and have a dedicated, kick-ass, motivated staff that will turn any bad situation into a love story.

Competitive Differentiators

We stand out from the competition by winning our customers’ loyalty. We’re growing because of positive word-of-mouth. Our model is fundamentally different; when our restaurants make money, we make money. Signed. Sealed. Delivered.

We’re flexible with how people pay for their food. We accept PayPal on our main site, our mobile site, and our iOS and Android apps. We’re also the only company that lets you split the check between friends. So even that guy that only had one slice and has no cash pays up.
We also feature a unique 24/7 live chat feature that lets you check order status, prevent food fails and help you find out where the hell your driver is, anytime.

Marketing/Promotion Strategy

We rely strictly on word-of-mouth promotion and online local-based advertising to grow our brand. We put our efforts into showing each customer some love and ask them to spread the love. It’s amazing how much love is returned. We have highly active Twitter followers who engage with us for new deals, product launches and fun food facts, food puns and food confessions. On Facebook we posts updates, coupons, supplement your weekly dose of cute cat pictures and sexy food porn, all in our unique brand voice—Delivery. Takeout. Dirty Jokes.

Business Model

Customers type in their address, and through geo-location, you can find your old favorites and discover new restaurant choices. From there it’s click, relax and enjoy.

Our motto is Enjoy, because ordering food online and letting us handle everything between clicking and making food happen is what we do. We enable our customers to enjoy the time they get back in their day by not having to fret over making a meal. And the best part, it’s free to use.

For our restaurants we have free setup and maintenance and will even build a website for no charge. I’ve met restaurant owners; they’re not the most tech savvy bunch. They focus on making delicious food, we’ll handle the rest. We’ll host and build their own site or integrate our online ordering system into their existing site.

Current Needs

We’re always looking for talented people and are currently expanding our existing office space to accommodate our growth. We’ll run out of walls to knock down before we run out of new ideas.

Eat24 – www.eat24.com