A computer science graduate from BITS Pilani who loves Chicken Chettinad, a Grilled Chicken afficiando /Business Administration graduate from Symbiosis Pune, an ex-head chef of Taj Sats who is biased towards the Mutton Biryani, come together to “change how you eat at work. Our mission is to provide you hygienic, nutritious and wholesome food coupled with fantastic ease-of-use and impeccable service.” Please meet Foodport.
Aman Gupta, who manages technology at Foodport, came across this idea when he was dejected by the lack of quality food available to him at work. Their blog takes us down the memory lane to the initial days when he and his co-founder Prateek Soni, who has a F&B background, were trying to come up with a start-up idea that they could execute well. “Together we identified a gap in the market for a high-quality gourmet food service available at affordable prices, especially for professionals with less time on their hands”. And the name? “The name “Foodport” came to us thinking about how a port is a hub of intense activity, and we wanted to carry on the same feeling of hustle with our brand.” Their founder advisor, D.K. Soni , helps them curate the menus and maintain food quality.
Tandoori Chicken with Roomali Roti and Dal Makhani
Once they were hit by the idea of Foodport, they did their market research and found that like them many people felt the need for a , “professional, customer-driven service that would really excite people to buy food every day .” The team is very clear about its objectives. They want people to get excited about their work-lunches and not feel like it was a daunting task they needed to be done with. “We did a couple of pilots at the end of last year, to gauge the market for subscription based models. We finally pivoted onto our current on-demand meals model.” They also worked around making their ordering process easy, and got it tested by their moms to see if the orders can be placed within a minute! … they did achieve it.
Go to the Foodport website and you will see options on the menu like “Paneer and Chicken Tikka Utappam”, “Tandoori Chicken & Roomali Roti”, “Chicken Cesar Salad” and a lot more. “We plan out a menu everyday-one day in advance looking at various factors like the particular day of the week, kitchen inventory, and our customer’s previous tasting experiences. Customer feedback is one of the ways that we get better at menu curation.” While they did put in a lot of effort on the menu, they also did the same with the containers/ package boxes. They did spend quite a bit of time looking for something that would be functional to them as well as their customers. All this with a low capital to begin with they elaborate- “Our biggest challenge which has turned into our greatest strength was that we had very low captial to begin with. This has made us extremely frugal and we constantly look for creative solutions to problems rather than throw money at it.”
Their hard work has paid off, with the amazing feedback that they have gotten, “The response has been phenomenal! Without spending a single rupee on marketing and an extremely small team size, we are able to attract customers with a repeat order rate of > 70%. Constant interaction between our users and the founders help us iterate towards our vision of being the best.”
With such a good response it comes as no surprise that their customers want more, which is exactly what their future plans include- “We are expanding to all of Gurgaon, and adding breakfast, dinner and evening snacks on our menu. We are conducting a couple of other experiments to gauge the market space. Stay tuned!”
I am sure people will stay tuned. Words of advice before we say our goodbyes- “Provide surprisingly good customer service, talk to your customers on a regular basis, don’t spend too much initially and make something that people want.” Sounds like the perfect plan.
We wish them good luck on all their future endeavours.
Foodport is an online meal delivery for healthy, wholesome meals currently operating in Gurgaon. Do visit their website and their Facebook page to stay updated.
Images courtesy of Foodport
Foodport is the best source of food which is provides many types of food.
Wow foodport shares a great story, it was great pleasure to know about this.