Pizza app

BRITONS love their takeaways. A £4.8 billion ($7.6 billion) industry has sprung up around the dietary needs of late night revellers and working families looking for a treat at the end of the week. But the recession has tightened belts both literally and figuratively: high calorie, high fat meals that give a taste of India, China and other nations are in decline. The industry has contracted on average 2.9% annually in the past five years, according to IBISWorld, a market research firm. Their message is clear: you can’t afford a korma if you aren’t earning a wage.

There is, however, more than a glimmer of hope for purveyors of fast food: the internet and mobile phone apps are changing the industry. Takeaway food profits from laziness: whether it is the lack of enthusiasm to stand in front of a stove and conjure up a meal, or being too languorous to drive to a supermarket and pick up ingredients. Home delivery is a major inducement when ordering from the local chip shop. Faceless transactions made through the internet or mobile phones make the process even easier.

Domino’s Pizza (which sells 12% of fast and takeaway food in Britain) has been quick to exploit this opportunity. In 2011, according to the firm’s preliminary results, 44% of sales in Britain, totalling £183m, were made online. This was up 43% from 2010. More recent figures show online orders making even further inroads. They accounted for 51% of delivered sales in the first three months of this year. And although only 16.4% of that were taken through an app, mobile orders are growing fast. In the first quarter they exceeded £1m in a single week for the first time.

Yet Domino’s is not the only firm profiting from this new avenue. Competitors Pizza Hut and Papa John’s also boast online ordering through their websites, and one-click apps that make buying pizzas simple. Just Eat, an online aggregator of takeaway shops that processes orders for customers, was visited 20 million times in the five months to February 2012. David Buttress, managing director of the company’s operations in Britain and Ireland, says that increasingly “the British public is going online to get its food.” More than 10,000 restaurants—most locally-operated businesses—have already signed up with the site, which claims to boost revenue by up to 25% a year (that figure seems fanciful, but one shop in the north-east of England says that turnover has increased markedly since it joined). Just Eat also has an app and is now exporting its model to other countries, including Argentina and India.

A big reason for the success online is a happy coincidence: the demographic that spends the most on takeaway food are youngish geeks. Those aged between 30 and 49 years splash out £11.70 a week on takeaways—46% higher than the average household, according to the Office for National Statistics. They are technologically engaged, and au fait with buying items (including food) online or via smartphone applications.

But one does not need to be a techie to understand the advantages of getting food with a few clicks. Hung-over students can order a Chinese from the comfort of their bed via laptop, and never have to leave the house. Working parents can order pizzas on the commute home to feed their family using a smartphone app, quelling the fear of an empty freezer.

So thanks to technology, the decline of the takeaway industry may be short-lived. But even without the convenience of apps and online ordering, Britons are unlikely to ever really fall out of love with their takeaways—especially in this day and age. They are, believes IBISWorld analyst Steven Connell, a “source of comfort in depressing times.”

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