Pune: Now food businesses get a commission-free local delivery platform – PunEOrders

Prajakta Joshi

Pune, August 9, 2020: Punekars can now order food from their favourite restaurants, home cooks and bakers in the city on the city’s own local food delivery website! In order to offer a commission-free delivery option to the restaurants and others in the city’s food industry, Pune’s social food community on Facebook, Pune Eat Outs (PEO), has launched a local food delivery service PunEOrders.

Launched a week ago, the website already has 60 restaurants and other food product providers registered with it, and there are over 500 more applications lined up. Small and big restaurants in the city, along with home cooks, bakers, vegetable and fruit vendors, snacks, spices, pet food and all other food product sellers will be available at a click away on this website.

“Our main focus is to help the restaurant and food industry that has suffered a great deal during the lockdown, build confidence to come out of this and start their business. The fear of the pandemic has made customers cautious, and they now prefer ordering-in over going to a restaurant. What we want is to provide the restaurants with a platform where they will be able to take direct orders from customers and deliver food without paying a commission to a middleman,” said PEO Founder Aniruddha Patil.

While food delivery services like Zomato, Swiggy and others represent restaurants and aid in home delivery of food, the amount of commission that they charge is not affordable, especially for the smaller restaurants and businesses, Patil said.

“These delivery websites charge restaurants upto 30-35 percent of the cost per order as commission, which leaves the restaurants with hardly anything. The profit margin is low. Moreover, the restaurants do not even get access to any information about the customers, there is no transparency,” he added.

On PunEOrders.in, the order for food will directly be placed at the restaurant through the website. The customer will get all the details of the restaurant and vice versa. Further, the delivery of the food will be done by local delivery fleets like Dunzo, Palande Couriers, or the restaurant itself, as per the preference and convenience of the business owners.

“Since the transaction happens directly between the restaurants and the customers, all the money will directly go to the businesses. Moreover, they will get the information about the customers which will help them build a database of their own. The only charges that the restaurants have to pay us are the monthly registration fees, which range from Rs 700 to Rs 1,300 only, which are the nominal costs for our services like SMSes, emails and maintenance of the website,” Patil explained.

He also added that this platform could go a long way in supporting the local economy. “The times are such that people need to trust before placing an order from a restaurant. When they are in direct touch with a restaurant or kitchen, it will help them establish that trust. This will increase business opportunities for the local food as well as delivery services,” he concluded.

Pune Eat Outs is Pune’s popular social food community that brings together food experts, restaurateurs and foodies in general since 2005.