Technology

Online restaurant ups the game in city food business

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PeeCees Takeout proprietor John Nderitu. Photo/Diana Ngila

When you want to have lunch in Nairobi you think of a restaurant with good ambience, quality affordable food and a perfect setting for good company.

But more often than not the hustle of finding a non-crowded eatery with affordable decent meals during busy lunch hours is difficult. The next best option is to get into the cheapest joint and have something to hold your stomach for the next few hours.

Having had such an experience more than once, John Nderitu decided to find a solution for this growing problem among working professionals with PeeCees Takeout where the meals are authentically Kenyan.

“Visualise a restaurant that does not exist physically but is somewhere you like. You can go there, pick what you like visually and have it brought to you when you want it,” he says of his startup.

What the restaurant lacks in physical space it compensates for in the quality of food and service.

“Essentially what I have tried to do is to take the best practices from other industries and try to integrate it into the takeout business. Technology has brought Internet at your fingertips, your office on your mobile devices and now we are bringing you food,” he says.

The catchy name PeeCees is derived from the initials of his son’s name.

Innovative

Mr Nderitu defines himself as an entrepreneur with a conventional concept who is always full of innovative ideas and finding various platforms through which he can implement them.

He ventured into the hospitality industry albeit virtually even without having any professional training in it.

“In my 19 years in the technology industry I have sold software, hardware, Internet solutions, business ideas and concepts as well as other solutions and of all these, the most interesting have been the simplest ideas that provide solutions to the small problems that we face,” he explains about his drive to venture into the virtual restaurant.

Like many entrepreneurs whose light bulb moments are articulated in autobiographies and other leadership books, his eureka moment came in 2011.

He incorporated what he loved doing — IT — into increasing productivity of workers, allowing them to stay healthy while getting value for their money when it comes to food.

“Seeing a senior level manager walking through the office with a flask of food does not conjure up good memories. It reminds you of childhood days when our moms would stuff food in the school bag and remind us not to forget the lunch box at school when coming home,” he says.

Unlike other platforms online where middlemen link food producers to consumers, often listing meals for various restaurants, PeeCees makes its own food and delivers on validated online orders.

The cheapest meal on the PeeCees website costs Sh180 while the most expensive costs Sh350. A customer can choose from a menu of meat, lamb, chicken, beef, liver and fish while there is a different menu for vegetarians and for snacks and desserts.

The takeout also offers specials on Fridays of roast and grilled meat. Payment for the meals is made on delivery either by cash, M-Pesa or with Visa and MasterCard. The restaurant offers lunch alone and all orders must be made before 10am.

The entrepreneur says that since he does not have many overhead costs like those running physical restaurants, he transfers this to cover transport costs and does not charge his customers for delivery.

The website requires all potential customers to register for free before placing their orders in order for them to be vetted, an operation Mr Nderitu says allows him as a restaurant owner to maintain the right to admission.

“Once the customer places the order they will receive a call where we try to authenticate the details they have submitted and weigh how safe it is to make a delivery to that destination before authorising the kitchen staff to make the meals. Our current business model cannot sustain single meal orders but a group of three or four who make a minimum Sh1,000 order can have their food delivered to their offices.”

The takeout also does catering for corporate meetings, small business lunches, seminars and trainings and operates a central order station in Westlands, from which validated orders are delivered and dispatched to clients.

It has not been easy for the nine-month old restaurant, which was launched after Mr Nderitu did a pilot run with his close friends for three months.

Like many startups though, PeeCees lacks the capacity to attend to the growing demand for food.

“Business is growing every day. The number of consistent customers has doubled, mainly due to the fact that we do not cook with any spices and we now get about 10 and 15 group orders on a daily basis,” Mr Nderitu says of the concept he wishes to replicate to major cities and towns in the next two years.