HungryHouse.co.uk gets Dragons Den funding

{ 31 comments… read them below or add one }

1 Andy 20/11/2007 at 1:36 am

I like it in theory, although I’m too far outside London to be able to use it. And I was deeply amused by the synchronicity that saw me biting into a slice of online-bought Domino’s Pizza at the exact moment they were talking about that particular company.

But I think Deborah Meaden made a good point about people thinking ‘I fancy a curry’ or whatever, rather than being in the market for shopping around. And the website, while easy to use, is surprisingly unappetising for a food site - it doesn’t exactly make you drool, does it?

On balance, worth a punt I think - but I wasn’t surprised to see they didn’t get away with offering an 11 per cent stake. In fact, I remember saying to Beloved Other Half “they’ll be lucky to walk away still owning half that company”.

At least, I would have said that if my mouth hadn’t been full of pizza.

2 Andy C 20/11/2007 at 8:11 am

I think it’s rubbish. Call me old fashioned but I have my favourite takeaway menus posted on my fridge. Look at menu. Place order. Food delivered.

I didn’t like your pitch. I don’t get the idea. I don’t like the web site. I’m worried about the Danish competition so I’m out.

Having said that, it will probably be a runaway success.

3 David Ping 20/11/2007 at 8:19 am

I thought the programme was very interesting as I already use another website called OrderYourTakeaway.Com who have been around a lot longer than HungryHouse but the thing that I like about OrderYourTakeaway.Com is that they offer people a way of making money by eating takeaways via their OYT Triple Money Plan (website is at http://www.oyttmp.com).

I think HungryHouse could be very good and they have a nice website but I think they have more than just one competitor as they suggested on the programme and I think that they will need a lot more than £100k to make it work.

4 Matthew 20/11/2007 at 9:19 am

I did a google search for hungryhouse last night and didnt see it but I do now.

I think the site has potential. I moved last year to a new home in a new(ish) area and still have no idea what food places are around except a couple that I have tried. If this service was in my home town (which it is not yet) then I would probably use it to hunt for something new and make an order.

As for the design… I find the home page a little cluttered. They need to make the post code box a little more prominent. After that it seems to work well.

5 Matthew Oxley 20/11/2007 at 9:23 am

Interesting ; I didnt watch the program but i’m fascinated the google ‘correction’.

I’ve always thought search would become more dependent on user-habits than relevance.

6 Matt Collins 20/11/2007 at 6:03 pm

I’m working on a related, but more low-tech idea (menulover.co.uk) which I was in the middle of discussing with a friend when the Dragons Den piece came on the TV. We couldn’t believe it when we realised what they were talking about!

Anyway, good luck to the guys. Apart from anything else, getting the Dragons Den funding gives them a nice bit of publicity. As Andy C said, though, the Danish competition could be tough. They claim to be handling 20,000 orders a day or so across Europe, so presumably know what they’re doing.

7 Marty McFly 20/11/2007 at 7:00 pm

Anyone any ideas who exactly the competition might be? They deliberately didn’t mention them by name but I wonder whether someone knows that Danish company…

8 larry 20/11/2007 at 7:50 pm

watching program now it looks good!

9 jodie 20/11/2007 at 7:52 pm

they are stupid to invest

10 Jj 20/11/2007 at 8:13 pm

I have to say I think Hungry House has it compared to the other names mentioned on here. Personally I think there name works better (which is one of the most important aspects when first getting out there. its easy to remember and straight to the point)
Also the website looks a lot nicer and is easy to use compared to OrderYourTakeaway.Com and menulover.co.uk
They have just had a huge amount of advertising just by going on the show and with two dragons behind them I can only see them getting better.
I can’t wait for them to branch out more. Getting more restaurants all over Britain I wish them luck.
Only one bit of advice, don’t forget the student users as students buy more fast food then any other demographic (as far as I understand)

11 Nodding Dog 21/11/2007 at 11:12 am

Matt Colllins: The Danish competitor mentioned is just-eat.co.uk

12 Jez 21/11/2007 at 11:13 am

The big competitor is Just-Eat.co.uk

They have over 800 shops online in the UK, and apparently over 2,400 in Denmark, Netherlands and Iceland.

13 Graeme Horne 22/11/2007 at 2:08 pm

Hi all! I’m Graeme, and I work for http://hungryhouse.co.uk

It’s good to see that Shane and Tony’s appearance in the Den has inspired a bit of a debate.

Just to let everyone know that we are paying attention to people’s opinions, and if you have any particular requests, advice, or problems with the site then feel free to comment here or contact us directly through our site.

I’ve been looking at the OYT triple points system with interest. What we do is an “introduce and earn” system, where if you introduce a restaurant you get a 10% discount for the next year. When we thought of this system, We hoped doing it this way would ensure that people only introduce partners they would genuinely want to order from…

Anyway, we’ve only just started with this system, so will keep an eye on results. I’m going to discuss the OYT model for introductions with Shane and Tony, as it does seem an interesting idea.

Thanks for looking at the site, and apologies for the poor load times if you visited the site directly after our TV appearance. We put in 3 new servers before the show, but really nothing could have prepared us for the traffic!

Graeme

14 mark 26/11/2007 at 9:07 pm

Guys not to be big headed or anything but there is going to one clear market leader http://www.118menu.com it will be live in Jan 08 and have more choice than all the rest.

15 mr cool 27/11/2007 at 9:13 pm

Ive heard the rummors about 118menu too, lucking forward to it !

16 Andy C 28/11/2007 at 7:44 am

@Graeme: I love your arrogance. You must in in marketing. Another reason 118menu will shurely succeed. Last Mover Advantage.

17 john 29/11/2007 at 12:12 am

I AGREE WITH THAT ATTITUDE THEN YOU WONT FAIL !! PLUS I LIKE THE CARTOON ! MR MENU ??

18 Bryan 30/11/2007 at 5:35 pm

I don’t know if anyone cares… but Ive been using hungryhouse for months now, more than a dozen times. I’ve been a big fan of it as it’s simple to use and care free in general even if I try some new takeaway place (mostly pizza and chinese). Earlier I noticed the site talking about dragons den on the 19th, which I missed… I wanted to see it. I googled for it and found this blog.

Anyway… personally I think its a fantastic idea. You wont know it till you get used to using it. I myself didnt get into it immediately, it kind of takes a few goes to get addicted to this way of doing the takeaway.

19 Derek 07/12/2007 at 12:46 am

Online ordering is alright, but for simplicity I keep using a website at http://www.thebigeat.com. I can search for takeaways by food type and it has most menus for my area (NW London). It would be good to order online, but until every takeaway is on the same site (which is unlikely to happen). I was amazed to see 100k sunk into Hungry House as the guy who did the Big Eat website offered to sell the whole thing for 5k not long ago. Just goes to show how effective a bit of marketing can be!

20 Marcus 10/12/2007 at 7:09 pm

Agree completely with Brian- I love the service. Menus on the fridge are great if you work from home, but Hungryhouse lets you defer orders, so I can order from work to coincide with arrival home from the commute. Never any issues, and reviews of the assorted restaurants are usually pretty spot on. I wouldn’t invest that sort of dosh in the venture, but it can’t be faulted for my area (S London) and is WAY better than just-eat in this neck of the woods.

21 alen radak 14/12/2007 at 9:08 pm

I have just moved to sw19 and have already used 3 times hungry house(i found them through google)and it is great.
Only problem is that there is too many currys and pizzas and no other options(wouldn’t be great to see some italian or mexican food)
But big positive is the fact you can leave feedback after your order.(works in similar way to ebay).
So i reckon restaurant managers won’t deliver bad food-otherwise they risk potential clients.
So far i am happy!

22 david larousse 01/01/2008 at 10:32 am

I like the idea, but I found another website which I used called Urbanbite.com, anyone heard of it? This one is even more interesting as it EVEN lets you track your order once you made it, so it tells you when it is on its way, etc. I’ve used this one and Hungry house and I must say that Urbanbite wins hands down. The boys from HH are going to have to face some stiff competition if they are going to make it in this tough market.

23 Rune Risom 12/01/2008 at 2:32 pm

Hi people,

Hope you don’t mind me sticking my head in here. My name is Rune Risom and I’m the COO with Just-Eat. The discussion going on is very interesting and no doubt the UK market for this niche has gotten very competitive.

There are a few things in some of the posts I would like to comment on.

Firstly I would like to make it clear that we have no intention of listing restaurants on our site that has ceased to work with us or in general have closed their shop. We always keep our data as up to date as possible.

Also in regards to customer service I believe us to be on par or perhaps even better than the rest. We provide our users with access to live chat order support, e-mail and phone. Also we encourage users to leave ratings of their experiences to help others find the best quality and service in their area.

We think it’s great for HungryHouse that they got success on Dragon’s Den as it has helped generate interest in general for online food ordering, and we of course have also benefitted from this.

A little side comment (coming from my competitive nature) is that HungryHouse has only added ca. 10 restaurants to their selection since the TV show, while we at Just-Eat has added 90

Kind regards
Rune Risom
Just-Eat.co.uk

24 Hyps 19/02/2008 at 7:08 am

Been using Hungryhouse for a good few months now - before the Dragon’s Den thing and I find them outstanding. The range of restaurants is really good and it allows you to add notes for the restaurants. If there have been any issues i.e. my order not getting through to the restaurant within 10 mins I think it is - I got a call from Customer Services informing me of this.

Also the people or person that said there isn’t a wide enough range - just chinese and pizza - you are able to recommend the service to your favourite local and they too can be added.

I had a look at Just eat a good while before turning to Hungryhouse and was not impressed - very limited (for my area at least) selection and the website is not at all pleasant to use or look at.

Definitely impressed with Hungryhouse!

25 Richard 30/04/2008 at 12:12 am

Interesting to note that http://orderyourtakeaway.com/ is now closed!

26 Michael 02/05/2008 at 1:14 am

This is an awesome idea excatly what is needed for my flat when we seen this we were nearly jumping off the couch lol being students we would order 4-6 times a week honestly we never cook lol most nights when order we dont no what we want so havin this site would have been great but alas it has no listings were i live in saying that i looked at the site when the show was first aired and it didnt have much then and hasnt seemed to change has anything happened with this business?? or is it just based in london

27 Mark 19/06/2008 at 12:38 pm

Was impressed with Hungry House right up until one restaurant (Yune) failed to deliver the food.

It’s then you find out that they have no refund facility and they don’t answer any emails. Only £15 so not the end of the world, but definitely wouldn’t give them my credit card details again. Stick to paying the take-aways with cash is my advice.

Shame because the idea sounded quite good. Maybe they’re just a small company and haven’t got the hang of it yet. The idea is awesome though. I hate phoning up take-aways and being able to do it online is great. Would be good if someone professional like Amazon got into this.

28 Donald 21/06/2008 at 9:43 pm

Try Urbanbite, awesome and better than hungryhouse. I too had an issue once and their customer service team gave an immediate refund. Excellent service and some great restaurants.

29 James s 14/07/2008 at 11:26 pm

Urbanbite suck. and i mean really suck

30 Momen Ahmed 24/08/2008 at 11:44 pm

Hello Guys,

It was really interesting topic to discuss. i strongly beleive that uk’s home delivery method for consumer will rapidly change in a very short time. Its an amaizing progress. One most important things to know that hungry house came to uk market before just-eat but just-eat has educated the restaurant business about online ordering process. They are the biggest online ordering company in uk without any doubt.The range of restaurant and varieties of food in their website simply uncomparable with any other company. ordering food through just-eat is safe,easy and reliable all the time.

many thanks guys
momen ahmed

31 Gemma 31/08/2008 at 8:47 pm

I found the hungry house website very difficult to use. I came across a site called Curry Me Home I found this site very easy to use compared to hungry house and all the other online takeaways, as the name suggest they only deliver Indian takeaway.

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