It was inevitable that sometime it had to happen, this past saturday was the 1st time that large parts of the UK received a significant dumping of snow. Now the definition of significant dumping of snow in the UK appears to be about 1/2 an inch, but this light dusting, which would have been brushed aside by many of our European neighbours, seems to be able to bring Great Britain’s town centres to gridlock and panic anyone who is already at home from venturing outside.
Yes at about 4pm on saturday the 1st few flakes fell, and kept falling, so by an hour later we knew that we were going to be in for one hell of a night in takeaway land! You see the thing about snow is that it brings together the perfect storm of conditions to make takeaway ordering & delivery very difficult.
The obvious problems are caused from the aforementioned gridlock which prevents the delivery drivers from getting your deliveries of hot food from the kitchen to your door in the same timely manor that you would expect. With the traffic, the extra need to take care and the pressure to get your pizza delivered before it’s stone cold the drivers have to pull off nothing short of a miracle to get your takeaway delivered as you would expect.
The second issue that the restaurants face with a night of snow is that everyone who wasn’t planning on ordering a takeaway that night has looked out of the window, decided that the walk to Tescos is out of the question, so why not order in & get some delicious food delivered for us. What could be a better night to do this?
Trust me, everyone thinks exactly the same thing, so you along with several thousand other folk around the country all head in your droves to order your takeaways online. You can see now how this perfect storm combines to produce extremely high demand for takeaway food, huge problems for the drivers getting through the blizzard conditions and this sometimes leads to the inevitable extended wait times for food.
I have to say that the local takeaway restaurants and their drivers managed to cope like absolute heros on Saturday night, yes delivery times were extended slightly but nearly every order was delivered – the food maybe needed 30 seconds in the microwave, but still tasted just as good. Surprisingly the number of restaurants who stopped delivering completely for the evening was very low when looking at our figures so it was a great result all round.
On behalf of you the customer we would like to thank all of our local takeaway heros – the drivers who risked life & limb to get your takeaway to your door – and also if you ordered on Saturday, thank you to you for being understanding and appreciating all the efforts that went into getting your food to you. We can tell from the many customer reviews that we’ve had that many of you were very thankful for the efforts that the restaurants went to so it feels appropriate to thank them publicly.
So until our next dumping of snow we can all relax .
What is the world coming to?! We had some shocking news this week from Essex police who have reported on some of the time wasting calls that they receive. The call handling centre in Chelmsford recently received a nuisance call from a man who wanted police to collect a pizza from a takeaway restaurant and deliver it to his house!
It’s absolutely incredible that someone would divert the attentions of the emergency services who are required to help people in serious need. The man’s reason for calling the police to collect his pizza was “because he was too drunk to drive & collect it himself”!
Does this man not know that he can order online & the takeaway will deliver!
Alongside this call Essex police said they have also received calls from members of the public who are looking for directions, or even because their phone has run out of credit. One woman dialed 999 to report a chef in a burger restaurant who dropped the burger on the floor & still served it to the customer – Yes this is a serious offence but calling the police?! Really?!!
The one that really takes the biscuit is the lady who called the police…….wait for it…….to remove a spider from her bathroom. Wow, that is really just mad, needless to say the police did not attend!
The police have released a statement saying that they want to make the public aware that 999 should only be used in the event of a serious emergency, a serious emergency situation is defined as one in which a crime or serious incident is in progress, or when there is a serious threat of injury or damage to persons or property.
So if you know this gentleman who was desperate to get his pizza delivered, kindly point him in the direction of Appetise.com so that our fantastic emergency services can get on with their very important jobs. Thanks!
The day after our Radio 4 interview the phone rang again in the office very early and it was a radio 2 producer on the phone this time. She was from The Jeremy Vine show and they had heard our Radio 4 feature the night before and they wanted to run a piece just after the 1pm lunchtime news.
This was very exciting, the radio 4 show was pre-recorded but this was to be live! Live radio with an average audience of 5 million, WOW that’s a lot of people!
So again I headed down to the studios at Radio Gloucestershire where I was given the same headphones & microphone and connected up to the Radio 2 studios. Looking back now it was all a bit of a blur and I think you can hear the nervousness in my voice however I managed to squeeze in the name “Appetise.com” about 4 times! Our co-founder Stephen Leguillon had the presence of mind to make a screencast of the new Google Analytics feature of “Real-Time Analytics” during the live broadcast. You can actually see every person coming onto the website from when the domain name is mentioned the 1st time.
It’s all on the video below alongside the radio clip so you can see for yourself just exactly what can happen if you can gain some mainstream exposure.
Here’s the full transcript:
Peter Day – “You have enormous computer power you can actually use, people are building businesses devising apps, now they are fairly clever kids, but they are able to get a world wide marketplace for their computer application straight away. Little things like that, there are all sorts of opportunities in all sorts of places. Personal need, and you solve a personal need.”
Paddy O’Connell – “Have a listen to this, stay with me Peter. Welcome to The Jeremy Vine show Steve Barnes. Steve, I picture you nodding when you listen to Peter.”
Steve Barnes – “Yes, it makes a huge amount of sense. If you can find something that you have a need for yourself then chances are somebody else has that need also.”
Paddy O’Connell – “So it’s like what is my line here, so go on, what’s your line?”
Steve Barnes – “You mean what do I do?”
Paddy O’Connell – “That is what I mean yes.”
Steve Barnes – “Sure, I am the co-founder of Appetise.com which is an online takeaway website which facilitates online ordering to any takeaway restaurants throughout the UK.”
Paddy O’Connell – “So when did you get your lightbulb moment?”
Steve Barnes – “Our business was set up during our 2nd year at university. Myself and 2 friends had a problem that university students used to receive a huge amount of junk mail from the restaurants in the student halls. So in order to get rid of this problem we thought why not put all of the menus online. There people can browse all of the menus at their leisure, there’s none of the junk mail cluttering the halls up, the costs for the restaurants are much lower and people can check out the reviews from people who have ordered before, and then you can click through & place your order online and also choose to place their order by card if they wish.”
Paddy O’Connell – “So it’s sort of like comparethemenu.com but it’s Appetise?”
Steve Barnes – “Absolutely but it’s Appetise.com.”
Paddy O’Connell – “No, I know you want to say it!” (laughs) Peter, this is the sort of thing you are talking about.”
Peter Day – “Yes, a personal need answered by a personal response 1st of all in 1 campus, then in several campuses and now nationwide. Just like that.”
Paddy O’Connell – “Now Steve what’s your gumption factor? Were you terrified when you thought I can make this a business.”
Steve Barnes – “Absolutely not no. We set it up thinking it was a roll of the dice at university. We thought we don’t need to make money to live because we’re living on our student loans. We had some time that we could dedicate to market this to the local students. We launched with just 16 restaurants surrounding the University of Warwick campus and just went & got our friends to order and word of mouth spread.”
Paddy O’Connell – “How many people do you now employ?”
Steve Barnes – “We’ve currently got roughly about 10 people across the business in different areas, we have a small call centre as well in Cheltenham.”
Peter Day – “Now that’s a privileged story of course, but you know undergraduates are privileged people but that kind of ingenuity, that kind of seeing an opportunity in the marketplace and answering it can happen all over the place. There is help you can get from people like The Prince’s Trust to bring an idea into fruition.”
Paddy O’Connell – “Steve if you’ve learnt anything as a young man about what to do for yourself , what is it?”
Steve Barnes – “I think it’s just to throw yourself 100% into anything that you’re doing whether its helping other people or whatever you happen to be doing at that moment in time. If you give everything that you’ve got then good things tend to happen.”
Peter Day – “Steve had an interesting choice, he was doing management studies, he got his degree, he could have left university and probably got a job with one of the usual employers right?”
Steve Barnes – “That’s absolutely correct. When we left university the business had grown to a point, we were at a tipping point where we could just about take on & do it ourselves full time. We had the option of going & getting jobs but we thought that we really owed it to ourselves, we’d given ourselves, through quite a lot of hard work, this opportunity to go out and see if we could actually make the business work. I felt that we owed it to ourselves and to the business to see what we could make of it.”
Paddy O’Connell – “Final question from me here Steve, have you ever been a Steve Barnes who’s lost heart? Although you’re telling us a successful story, do you understand to understand what it is to look in the mirror & think – you know what I can’t get out of bed, I feel very glum?”
Steve Barnes – “I don’t think I’ve ever lost heart in anything. I think sometimes there are days when you feel disheartened and when you’re running your own business it’s not an easy thing to do. It’s very very difficult sometimes to self-motivate yourself and ensure that you get everything that you need to done but it’s something that has to be done and if you don’t do it then who else is going to make it happen for you?”
Paddy O’Connell – “Steve Barnes thank you very much indeed from Appetise.com and we’ve been picking the enormous business brain of Peter Day, don’t start weeping Peter it’s true! The presenter of In Business on BBC Radio 4″
So a couple of weeks ago we had a call in the office from a producer of radio 4 show “In Business” presented by Peter Day. They were on the lookout for case studies of students who had set up their own businesses as opposed to going out and getting a job. There isn’t too much good news coming from the economy and with unemployment at a record high Peter Day wanted to explore what alternatives can be explored for young people who are struggling to gain employment.
I’ve never been interviewed on the radio before so this was a fairly nerve wracking experience! I was asked to go to BBC Radio Gloucestershire. Where I was given a studio, headphones & a microphone to speak directly to Peter in London. Even though everything was pre recorded I was still pretty nervous but Peter just took his time & we chatted for about 30 minutes about the beginnings of Appetise, the history and the story of the company and where we’ve taken it to right now. This was then edited down for the final version which was broadcast on Radio 4 on Thursday 19th Janurary 2011.
If you’re interested we’ve put the full interview below so if you wanted to learn more about where we came from then have a listen. If you’ve got any questions then please feel free to ask away in the comments.
Here’s the full transcript:
Peter Day - “One of the ways they can do this so readily is to make every possible use of the internet. Steve Barnes & 2 fellow students started an online takeaway food ordering site in their 2nd year as Management Studies undergraduates at Warwick University. They saw a strong local need and they did something about it, Steve Barnes Explains:”
Steve Barnes – “It was purely to solve a problem that we had as students trying to order takeaway. We used to order in groups of 10 or 20 and trying to organise that over the telephone is a little bit of a nightmare, whereas, online everyone can sit down individually at the computer and place their order and submit it, all in one, online. It’s also very easy to itemise out the bill to see who owes what.”
Peter Day - “And the business plan was to take a little cut of each order from the restaurant?”
Steve Barnes – “We earn a commission on each order that goes through, we put the orders through to every restaurant so we know what orders they have had. We are also the intermediary for all of the card payments.”
Peter Day – “And your area was in & around the university?”
Steve Barnes – “Certainly, we launched with 18 restaurants. We visited local restaurants and asked if they would be interested?”
Peter Day – “So what were your start-up costs then?”
Steve Barnes – “They were very low. We asked some friends to programme the website for us, we gave them a small slice of equity in order to do that. They then just developed the website & we put some money in to get some leaflets printed, it was really very low. We literally went back & sat in our bedrooms & waited for our fellow students who were in the buildings around us to place their orders.”
Peter Day – “And did that happen?”
Steve Barnes – “Fortunately it did! Fortunately (laughs)”
Peter Day – “What straight away?! You knew from day 1 or 2 that this was going to work, at least on the scale that you floated it at?”
Steve Barnes – “Yes, I think we did something like 6 orders on our 1st evening. However, from then onwards we got out & just tried to spread the word. The amount of takeaway food that is ordered to a university campus on a night is just staggering.”
Peter Day – “You can scale it up without having to invest very much money, this is capitalism with out capital isn’t it?”
Steve Barnes – “That’s the beauty of an online business. We don’t really exist anywhere apart from online, we are bringing together the customer and the restaurant in the virtual environment and facilitating the transaction of that order.”
Peter Day – “So when they came to the end of their university careers they knew what to do next”
Steve Barnes – “It wasn’t really an option. I saw that we had worked hard while we were at university and we had given ourselves this opportunity so I thought that we owed it to ourselves to fulfil that and follow it through to take this business further forward.”
Peter Day – “But you have to professionalise this, and you need to go nationwide do you?”
Steve Barnes – “By putting in call centre staff we were able to expand and sign up new restaurants, we certainly got a lot more into the marketing side of things so rather than marketing ourselves via leaflets the majority of our traffic now comes from the search engines.”
Peter Day – “How much of Britain have you signed up so far?”
Steve Barnes – “We’ve got 650 restaurants currently, a lot more than the 18 we launched with, but we’re expanding rapidly so we’re signing up about 10 every week at the moment.”
Peter Day – “Now you launched in a recession and it got deeper and more uncertain”
Steve Barnes – “I’d love to know what a boom feels like to be honest, I don’t really know what to expect. When you’ve got such a small start-up business I don’t think it’s going to be affected at all, there’s plenty of opportunities in a recession.”
Peter Day – “Advice to other very young people, thinking perhaps about doing this?”
Steve Barnes – “I do think that more people could be setting up businesses, it just takes a leap of faith to do it. You have to be the sort of person who is willing to potentially work for 6 months or a year or maybe even longer and not necessarily get anything tangible back for it, but know that you are going to be richer for doing so and for trying. If you don’t try then you never know if you could have succeeded or if you couldn’t. ”
We’ve got some big news from all here at your favourite online takeaway website. We’re changing our name!
Wow that’s big news for us so we thought we’d tell you a little more about why we’re changing and what it means…
For starters this is JUST a name change, absolutely nothing else about the website is changing at all. The look and feel will be exactly the same, all the restaurants are the same, your login details are the same, and should you need us we have exactly the same friendly customer service staff standing by to sort out any issues with your order .
So Why Are You Changing Your Name?
This is a response to feedback from you, our users. Whilst many of you came to love E-resistible and we have an attachment to the name unfortunately many people found it difficult to spell, hard to remember and having a dash caused an immeasurable amount of confusion.
Why Appetise.com?
Well why not? To be honest it wasn’t easy to find a domain that everyone agreed upon but we think we’ve hit the nail on the head with this one. It’s clear, concise, food related and most of all memorable, we all want our food to be “appetising” so what could be better than appetise.com.
Will My Login Details Work?
Yes! Everything will stay the same, from the email & password that you use to login, to your saved address and your securely stored card details.
Will You Give Me A Discount Code To Try Out The New Site?
Well seeing as you asked! We’ve got a discount code to give you 10% off any orders you place for the next 5 days. We’re putting this on our facebook page so click here to like our page & the 10% off code will be revealed.
Will I Gain Eternal Happiness From Using Appetise.com?
Yes*
All that remains to say is thank you for being a user of E-resistible.co.uk, we hope that you will continue with us as we go on our journey to become the best place to order your takeaway online. If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to drop us an email to team@appetise.com.
EDIT: Foodlivraison.fr has since become Appetise.fr, at the same time E-resistible.co.uk became Appetise.com
While the UK team have been busy working away here to bring you new restaurants, exciting features and other awesomeness, just across the English channel a small team have come together to launch the online takeaway concept to the french market. We’re tremendously excited about bringing the online takeaway concept to the new market and wish Stephen & his team every success as the E-resistible family grows.
If you can speak French then check out the Food Livraison blog or you can read a translation of the press release below
FoodLivraison.fr : an E-resistible story
With a British background, but a French heart, FoodLivraison.fropened up it’s website’s door to the public a couple of weeks ago.
Any entrepreneur will tell you that a good project relies on two things : a strong concept and a solid team dedicated to a common vision. FoodLivraison.fr is a perfect example. It’s concept ? Simplify the relationship between restaurants and their clients. The solution? A website from which an order can be placed in 3 steps and delivered within the hour, to your home or office.
FoodLivraison.fr is E-resistible’s French subsidiary. The site enables you to order food online. It was started in 2008 in student bedrooms at Warwick University. Stephen Leguillon, Steve Barnes and Velin Djidjev, entrepreneurs aged then only 18, worked passionately to create E-resistible.co.uk.
Three years down the line, E-resistible has become a reference in the UK market. After feeding the hungry bellies of English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish customers, the team is now starting in France with FoodLivraison.fr
On opening day, Stephen Leguillon’s objective in France is clear : position the site as a leader in the French market within 6 months. With the team’s strong experience in the UK and the support from restaurant owners, web developers and the sales force, the FL-Family will soon feed the hungry frenchmen !
Bon appétit! About foodlivraison.fr
Created in 2011, foodlivraison.fr is the French subsidiary of E-resistible.co.uk, an online takeaway ordering website. The website enables users to order all types of cuisines, delivered to their homes in 45 minutes.
So it’s that time of the year again, the central heating has been on full blast for weeks, the kids will be off school, some parts of the UK have already had a light dusting of snow and like it or not you’re going to be offered mince pies at every social function that you attend from now until the new year!
However I was just reading The Guardian’s Food Blog and discovered young chef Ashley Palmer-Watts’s creation. Whilst I’m definitely in the pro mince pie camp I’m not sure that deep frying it would add that extra something! Either way it’s all part of a big competition for charity so you can actually bid for the deep fried mince pie!
A christmas gift with a twist for someone perhaps… Is there any christmas food that you think would taste better deep fried?!
What’s new in your neighborhood this week? Here are just a few of the brand new spots we’ve added to E-resistible during the week.
See what else is new by entering your postcode at E-resistible and checking who delivers to you!
Spice Kitchen 2(44A Newlands park, London SE26 5NF) This Indian restaurant based in South London offers an endless menu capable to satisfy almost any hunger on earth. They offer a wide range of curry dishes, plus some classic british food. Check out their seafood specialties…thumbs up!
Mega Bite(Selly Park, 1052 Pershore Road, Birmingham B29 7PX) A paradise for late night appetites, Mega Bite propose highly convenient meal deals and special offers on their pizzas, kebabs, wraps and chicken dishes.
Super Pizza (90 St. Marys Road, Southampton SO14 0AH) These guys took the pizzas and made them fit to the british habits like no others. Tasteful and freshly baked pizzas are waiting for you in Pershore Road.
Passage to India(232 Gipsy Road, London SE27 9RB) Indian specialties including great selection of typical starters, tandoori delicacies and a wide choice of special vegetarian dishes.
Wok Inn(Camden Town, Hampstead Road , London NW1 7JE) Some true wok masters are working here. If you want to try one of the best rices dishes in town, don’t miss Wok Inn, chinese restaurant based in North London.
Beer is one of the most common and eldest alcoholic beverage in the world.
How it is done
It is produced by fermentation with strains of ”Saccharomyces cerevisiae” or “Saccharomycescarlsbergensis” (hence the name of a famous Danish beer brand) or sugar derived from barley malt. Barley malt is germinated and dried. Other ingredients are also widely used, however: wheat, cornand rice, usually in combination with malt. Other plants that are used are the roots of cassava, millet and sorghum in Africa, potato in Brazil, and agave in Mexico.To produce beer, malt is soaked in hot water, which - thanks to the action of certain enzymes in the malt itself and because of germination - converts the starches to fermentable sugars.
After it can be flavored with herbs, fruit or more commonly with the hops. It then uses a yeast that starts the fermentation and leads to the formation of alcohol, withcarbon dioxide (which is mostly removed) and other wastes resulting from the anaerobic respiration of yeast.
In this process, different ingredients are used: the production method and type of yeast can be used to classify beer into ale, lager or spontaneously fermented beers.
History
The history of beer is closely linked to that of its ingredients, as well as technological advances that made this drink the beverage that we know today. The first cereal crops, including barleyand spelled (one variety of wheat), were documented in 8000 BC in Mesopotamia.
Thanks to this great representation created by Maggie we attempt to reconstruct a map of the existing different types of beer.
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