Eatro: Homemade Takeaway
Allow me to introduce you to Eatro—an online food community that promotes homemade takeaway. The founders of this online platform, Bar Segal, Daniel Kaplansky, and Zifeng Wei are three young entrepreneurs, who go to work sporting joggers and flip-flops. The Eatro headquarters in Bethnal Green—also home to the men—is filled with furniture from Freecycle and Streetbank, websites that match people, who want to get rid of things, with people who can make use of them.
The Eatro boys are big in the sharing economy—a system in which goods and services are traded amongst people and organisations. “It’s exciting, that we can live off the sharing economy in the 21st century,” said Zifeng. “We’re trying to build opportunities for people so they don’t have to stow away in a nine to five job that they hate. They can do something quite exciting on the side as well.” The boys are so dedicated to the system that two of them share a bed, while the other sleeps on an air mattress.
“We are trying to completely immerse ourselves with the sharing economy so we moved into one room and we rented out the other two rooms,” Bar Segal explained as a young female that was renting a room in the flat passed through. The trio has known one another since their families moved to Budapest, Hungary when they were ten and ended up attending the same school. If they aren’t tired of each other by now, it’s doubtful that sharing a bed will tear them apart.
So how did three 20-somethings come up with the idea to provide homemade takeaway? It all started when Daniel Kaplansky became fed up with the fast food industry. Every day he left University in search of a quick takeaway lunch. All he saw were the same familiar chains, Pret to his left, Itsu to his right, Wasabi across the street and Pod at the corner. “I didn’t feel like I was getting the value for my money,” complained Daniel. “I felt like I was paying six or seven pounds for cheap processed food. So I gave this exact speech to Bar and Zifeng last year.”
After listening to Daniel’s rant, Zifeng told the boys about a French documentary about grandmothers who cooked big pots of food and sold plates for a couple of euros. “Obviously grandmas are the best cooks,” exclaimed Bar. “So we started thinking, how can we bring this online and fix our own frustration through technology. We realised that we could really democratise takeaway food and give people a better option than what’s already out there.”
The first solution was a chain of underground home-restaurants, where chefs would host dinners for foodies who desired a home cooked meal. But the boys realised that the plan had drawbacks. They thought about chefs with small kitchens, uncomfortable with strangers walking in and out of their homes and customers who wanted to have dinner at home with their friends or partners.
“The initial idea was limited because it was more like a supper club,” explained Segal. “And instead of a fancy one-off experience that happens once a month or two, we wanted this to become a daily phenomenon where people could get healthy, homemade food at an affordable price.” Daniel was in the middle of his Master’s in investment management at the time and did his dissertation on online distribution of homemade takeaway. The Eatro boys did further research on the idea and decided that this was the way to go.
So far, 80 chefs are registered with Eatro, however only 50 of them are currently allowed to sell food. The remaining 30 are in the process of being interviewed by the founders to ensure their food is nutritious and tasty, and the kitchens are sanitary. “The more personal contact you have with them—by phone or especially in person—the more you get to know them and understand how serious and how professional they are,” said Kaplansky. “We decide if we want them on the site or not based on the way the kitchen looks and how they prepare the food.”
Eatro does not charge chefs to be on the site, but twelve percent of the price of each dish goes to the business. Because Eatro is a marketplace, the chefs choose what to cook and how much they want to charge for each meal. But prices are still discussed in the interviews to ensure that buyers are getting an affordable offer. “Obviously, a homemade authentic meal sounds good, but if it costs thirty pounds, no one is going to buy it,” said Daniel. “But if it’s six pounds, why would I go to Pret to buy the same chicken sandwich I eat every day for almost the same money?”
Most of their chefs are located in East London however only a few are scattered around other areas of the capital. This makes it difficult to use Eatro’s site from places like Wembley. Eatro foodies are able to locate a chef within a reasonable distance from them by entering their postcode or city into the search box. If you enter Bethnal Green for example, you will find three chefs that claim to be the founders of a food-based company called Eatro—well someone had to sign up first.
“As soon as the site went up, we thought, lets cook and sell to our neighbors and to the shops and that’s what we did. That was really our first test. Our first sale was to an architect down the street,” said Daniel.
“We thought it was a pity buy but he became a frequent customer and he bought [food] every day,” Zifeng chimed in. “He told a couple of people around the neighborhood as well and that got us really excited about the project.”
The guys also raved about one of their oldest chefs, Christina, a Spanish native from Valencia who specialises in Spanish cuisine. “We always buy [Christina’s] food. She cooks every Thursday and Friday and all of her dishes get sold out. It’s becoming a thing to say, Friday’s here so let’s treat ourselves to something nice.”
While the idea may appeal to foodies, Eatro is not for everyone. If you are content with visiting your local ‘chicken and chips’ shop or don’t mind living off of Nandos—no judgments here—Eatro is a one-time thing. During their research, the guys approached people on the street who thought the idea was a waste of time. Some Londoners didn’t understand why they wouldn’t just pick up a sandwich, or go to McDonalds—there is one on every corner after all. “That is not who we are trying to target,” said Zifeng. “We realised that it’s for people that actually care. Our chefs are not going to get a buzz out of serving someone who eats McDonald’s most of the time. They want people that appreciate good food.”
The Eatro boys made it clear that they have a strict no fast food policy among themselves. “We always joke that when we move to an office and there are more employees, it will be in your employment contract—you have to buy food from an Eatro chef or cook yourself,” said Daniel.
Finding a chef of your liking to cook when your cravings kick in is also a complication for the guys. Eatro chefs generally cook part-time, so it is not always easy to match their cooking schedules with when people want to eat. The site is also missing a delivery service, which makes it a less convenient option to fast food. But the guys continue to stress their USP—healthy, homemade, affordable food. “Just like you would hop over to a sandwich deli (and wait in line) to get a quick bland-tasting takeaway, you [can] hop across the street and pick up a home-cooked Eatro meal,” states the Eatro website. But if you aren’t keen on the idea of hopping across a street or two, the guys are working on an app, as well as implementing a permanent delivery service within the next month.
The guys want to expand Eatro into an international marketplace. But one step at a time—they need more chefs beyond East London first. “It won’t be the worst thing in the world if the business isn’t huge,” Bar told the London Evening Standard. “[If] it’s just enough for us to get by on, but it is there for people to share food, we’re okay with that too.” It’s hard to tell if the business will blow up in its early stages. The guys have formulated an idea that seems to be working now, but will Eatro take over the takeaway industry or is this just the latest fad?
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