For those so busy that they don’t have time for leisurely lunches during workdays, the Ukrainian startup Settle offers a solution: ordering food ahead of time so it’s ready when you are ready to eat.
What started only as idea last summer is now a free application used in 20 restaurants in Kyiv. It reached almost 10,000 downloads on iOS and Android devices and 4+ rating in the Apple App Store.
Kyiv has been the testing ground, but the developers expect to launch the product in 15 restaurants in San Francisco by March.
Spending up to two hours waiting for food during the lunchtime rush “is too much time waste,” says Stas Matviyenko, Settle’s chief executive officer. “I doubt that you eat longer than 15 minutes. Waiting takes the rest of your time: looking for a free table, a waiter to take your order, the food being cooked and served and waiter bringing the check.”
After downloading Settle’s app on a smartphone and linking it to a bank card, all the customer has to do is book a table for a specific time, pre-order any item on the menu and pay for it. At a time designated by the customer, the meal will be ready.
One can cancel the order through the application up to one hour ahead of the chosen time, or by phone within the hour. If a meal is already being cooked, however, the customer has to pay for it.
Since the application does not store any banking information, security issues shouldn’t be too much of a concern.
While free for customers, restaurants have to pay Settle a 10-percent commission on each order, less than the common 15-percent commission for delivery services.
“People ask for delivery as they are scared away by the thought of having to wait too long for food in a restaurant,” Matviyenko of Settle says. “This increases chances that they will use the app to pre-order food. This also saves money for the restaurant.”
In August 2014, Russian venture capital firm Life.SREDA pledged to invest $1.5 million in Settle, but so far only $165,000 has been transferred. After the first restaurants in San Francisco get connected to the app and it has good traction with the customers, the team plans to look for a new investor in San Francisco.
According to VentureBeat, Settle is not the pioneer in making mobile payments easy for restaurant-goers in San Francisco. “Cover, TabbedOut, LevelUp, Resy, and Reserve are just a few of the startups already doing this,” the website reports.
However, Igor Shoifot, an adviser at Settle and chairman at Ukrainian tech incubator Happy Farm, says Settle might not become a “killer app” in Ukraine. “Ukrainians are not accustomed to using mobile applications, the market is very small, both sellers and consumers are rather conservative and the element of mistrust is also powerful,” he says. “But, most importantly, alas, ‘time is money’ is still not a very popular philosophical concept in Ukraine.”
Shoifot also compares Settle to Open Table, another food ordering service, and says it will find a market.
“Settle has all the chances to occupy a niche of pre-order and contactless payments in the restaurants,” he emphasizes. “Big companies rarely cope with innovation and are rarely able to withstand focused, hungry and fast-moving startups.”
Prominent Ukrainian restaurateur Dima Borisov, who manages eateries in Kyiv, has Settle running in two of his restaurants since autumn. “Payment analytics showed that the service has a good potential. Since our guests are often sophisticated gadget and social network users, mobile pre-orders are an interesting solution for them,” Borisov says.
Kyiv Post staff writer Bozhena Sheremeta can be reached at [email protected]. The Kyiv Post’s IT coverage is sponsored by AVentures Capital, Ciklum, FISON and SoftServe.
