After relocating from Chicago, startup website Foodjunky has found a home in Detroit. The website allows businesses to order food from local restaurants quickly and online.
I sat down with the co-founder and "head chef" Travis Johnson to talk more about the business of Foodjunky, the company's move from Chicago to Detroit, and why fax machines are still important.
Lauren: Head chef?
Travis: All of our titles have a spin on the restaurant industry. So, I'm actually looking to hire the "market expansion connoisseur."
Lauren: Tell me what Foodjunky is exactly?
Travis: Foodjunky does online ordering for groups of people.
Businesses that need to order food or order food regularly... usually go around catering it, which is a bunch of wasted food that no one usually wants anyway. Or they can spend the time to go around figuring out what everyone actually wants. That's very time consuming....
In my old office we used to have Lou Malnati's pizza, because I'm actually from Chicago. We had Lou Malnati's pizza twice a week. I did that for 10 years and eventually I went "I'm not eating any pizza." You know, you'd bring your own food.
So, that's kind of a little of what spawned Foodjunky. Now everyone gets to order exactly what they want. It's easy for the administrator to handle. All the administrator does is go to foodjunky.com, selects the restaurant... and everyone gets the menu in their inbox. They order the food directly themselves.
Lauren: You said you're from Chicago? Is there a Foodjunky in Chicago as well or did you move here to do this?
Travis: I am from downtown Chicago. I went to school in Colorado, but I launched Foodjunky in August 2011. We wrote the site and had it launched the beginning of this year in downtown Chicago…. But, we were private, so we only had a few customers. It was definitely at that moment in time "fake it 'til you make it." It was me going around manually faxing restaurants orders, calling restaurants... manually typing out email receipts back to our customers.
Then we got picked up by Bizdom, one of Dan Gilbert's companies, to move out to Detroit. We spent the fist month automating our system and signing up restaurants here in Detroit. We've got over 20 restaurants now and we're adding more. And now our whole system's automated. So, I'm not longer running around calling and faxing restaurants. It's really nice.
A screenshot from Foodjunky.com
Lauren: I'm impressed that you still own a fax machine!
Travis: You know it's really interesting! Restaurants are really old school. Our competitors in the same space do the exact same thing that we do.
Lauren: So if I'm a restaurant owner and I receive an order from Foodjunky its probably coming in over a fax?
Travis: It is probably coming over a fax, yes. And then five minutes later you're either going to get a manual call from us or you're going to get an IVR call, which is "press 1 to confirm, press 2 two if you do not," so it's all automatic.
Lauren: So, you're primarily for businesses? If I want to order something for myself, it's probably not a Foodjunky order.
Travis: Technically, there's nothing stopping individuals from ordering, and it does happen, but that's not where we are focusing right now.
Lauren: Does Foodjunky deliver, then? You tell me a food ordering website, and I imagine something like GrubHub or a delivery service. Is that an option or is it just ordering then you go to pick it up?
Travis: GrubHub, Seamless -- they're not delivery services either. They're doing exactly what we're doing, they're just delivering the order to the restaurant, then the restaurant takes over from there. But, since we're business to business we try to offer a higher level of service. We're kind of a concierge to make sure the order is right. To triple confirm.
Lauren: So how then does Foodjunky make money? Are there subscription fees to order something on Foodjunky?
Travis: Our revenue model is different. Our competition charges the restaurants. They charge anywhere from... 10% to as high as over 20%, back to the restaurant.... There's are a lot of articles coming out of New York and Chicago about how restaurants are really not liking that model. It's costing them too much money.
Our model does not charge restaurants whatsoever. A major advantage of that is now I don't have any cost associated with signing up restaurants. So I can be in Detroit. There's a reason why Grub Hub has basically no presence here.
Where I do make money is charging businesses who use my system. Right now we're charging 99 cents per person....
Interestingly enough, Grub Hub and Seamless say they're pricing is that same is if you would call the restaurant. But a lot of restaurants actually up their prices to recoup their costs. What I found in Chicago was that most restaurants add about a dollar per item. So that's kind of where we came up with 99 cents per person. As long as you order one item, you're cheaper using us.
Lauren: You've been in Detroit for a little while now.
Travis: Just over three months!
Lauren: Favorite Detroit food. Have you been here long enough to decide?
A screenshot from Foodjunky.com
Travis: Let's see… My favorite restaurant in our system is Armando's. I love Mexican. They have a great service there. The owner's amazing and they deliver the food in cake boxes with your plate and your napkin and your fork and your knife and it's just great. They write your name on the box. It's great. As far as restaurants to go to? I really like Vicente's right now.
Lauren: And the classic Detroit food question. Have you chosen a favorite -- Lafayette or American?
Travis: I have only been to American! So, I have not been to Lafayette.
Lauren: We'll you'll have to try it and get back to us.
