Eat Now Brighton, Order food online

How it all began!

Eat Now Brighton was founded late Autumn 2006 by Simon Augier & Tracey Allum. The concept originated from the frustration of searching for takeaway menus, having to wait forever on the telephone listening to engaged signals, and then receiving incorrect orders often generated by rushed telephone conversations, with busy restauranteurs.

"We're not ashamed to admit that we regularly order more than one takeaway meal each week. Why should we be?", says Simon over a mouthful of Chicken Tikka Massala.

"In today's hectic lifestyles, tight work schedules, meetings, deadlines to be met, shopping, children to care for and household chores to be done, why not take advantage of anything that can ease the pressure?" he asks.

Simon and Tracey collectively have vast business experience as well as a background in the PR & marketing industries. Living in Brighton with the extensive global choice of restaurants on their doorstep the idea seemed an opportunity simply waiting to happen!

Why the restaurants need us!

Small takeaway restaurants are very good at doing what they do: cooking and delivering fantastic food! However, the majority of them do not have access to a computer and certainly would not have the time whilst running a demanding business to consider having their own website built, not to mention the finances to create an online delivery service...

...and so our research into the online food ordering industry began.

Our pilot scheme

Early in 2007 Eat Now Brighton ran a pilot scheme to see if our idea had mileage. Our two local takeaways, Hasina Tandoori and Harley's Pizza were happy to come onboard. We trudged the streets along with several fabulous helpers to flyer our service to the local community. After a few thousand leaflets had been posted through letterboxes, many faithful customers (who we will be forever grateful to) ordered their meals online. At this stage the orders came to our home computer and we literally ran over the road with the orders. But we realised our concept of ordering food online would succeed!

The future...

Our greatest weakness was our website - it was a primitive affair - and as Eat Now Brighton was a web-based business Simon and Tracey sought out new help. It was here that local web designers Chris Baker and Alex Hooper-Hodson entered the picture, with their company Redback Web Media.

They were, like Simon and Tracey, enthusiastic, imaginative and creative - very much in the Brightonian spirit. With their support, Simon and Tracey brought Eat Now Brighton to a new level.

With the working web site in place Simon and Tracey soon realised that they missed the energy and web-wise ways of the Redback duo, and that running Eat Now Brighton was more than a two person job.

In July 2008 Simon and Tracey went into partnership with Redback Web Media to form a more dynamic and flexible Eat Now Brighton.

By now many competitors had begun to appear in the marketplace and for Eat Now Brighton to succeed they realised that they were going to have to offer a service of un-paralleled excellence with features that their competitors simply could not provide.

By October 2008 the Eat Now Brighton website had yet another new look and so did our business plan. New marketing incentives such as free beer deals were formed. New categories such as alcohol delivery, groceries and healthy options were added to the selection on the site. Special features that allowed students at the Falmer campus to order with ease were also incorporated.

Today Eat Now Brighton is the leading online food delivery website in Brighton and for good reason. We're local, we have the biggest selection of food and other items for delivery. Most importantly we care about our customers, not only are they the backbone of our business but part of our community as well.

With that the www.eatnowbrighton.co.uk concept began.