In this new regular series we will be speaking with the startups we helped develop apps about their business, their ideas and their experience working with Agile App CO. Today, we are speaking to Adrian, the ideas man behind Maakan, a new game changing food app.
Agile App:
Hi Adrian, thank you for catching up with us. Could you please tell us a bit about yourself?
Adrian:
Thank you for having me Ionut. Sure, I’m just a young guy from Worthing, Brighton area. During the day I work in logistics and at night I focus solely on my own company, Maakan.
Agile App:
Amazing. So what is Maakan?
Adrian:
Maakan is an app that allow users to select discounts provided directly by restaurant owners. So, for example: Say it’s a Wednesday, restaurants don’t normally fill all their tables. In the restaurant world, no diners equals no profit. And being in the food industry myself, I know that the mark-up is very high. So even if they give people 50% off, they are still earning quite an extensive profit. Let’s say that I am a restaurant owner, I check my diary and there are only 3 tables booked. In order for me to make a profit, I need at least 5 full tables. So I can easily use Maakan to put out a deal of how much I would like and then it will be available on the app. From that point, app users will be notified of the deal and will come into my restaurant to use it.
Agile App:
That sounds great. How did you come up with the idea? What was the initial inspiration?
Adrian:
The initial inspiration came from when I was travelling through Thailand with my friend. I think we were somewhere in Bangkok. One night, while walking through the streets, I overheard a restaurant owner who tried to attract tourists by yelling: “Come in, I give you 10% off”. It looked like it wasn’t working for him so at one point he gave up and said: “Why doesn’t anyone want to come in?”. I immediately thought that if that was on an app, the tourists would’ve been keener to use it. The tourists are quite young so if you mention you have an app, you automatically reach a wider demographic. I don’t know if it was just the alcohol when I was travelling but this idea just popped off in my head.
Agile App:
Alcohol or not, looks like it stuck with you. What were the steps you took from having the idea to developing the app?
Adrian:
I used to be a take-away driver while being at university, so I know what the attitude of the restaurant owners is. Thus I built a business plan. It covered everything from taxation to HR, acquisition to business strategy and bits of development. I am proud to say that my plan contained absolutely everything. After that, I pitched my idea to the directors of my day job and they loved it, choosing to support me in its development.
Agile App:
How did you come to work with Agile App?
Adrian:
One word, the Internet. We wanted a developer who is local, so we can visit them quite often. Because my IT skills are not strong enough, it’s hard for me to describe the jargons to an IT
(Adrian and Phill having a break after a hard day of coding)
specialist. So we decided that having a local supplier, in our case Agile App, is the best option. This allowed me to just open a screen and point at the monitor. That was definitely one of the key reasons we chose them.
Agile App:
And how did you find working with AgileApp?
Adrian:
It was amazing. They are very accommodating. The team is very knowledgeable and I really enjoyed working with them.
Agile App:
There are so many food apps on the market. What makes Maakan unique? How will it change the game?
Adrian:
You are right, there are a lot of food apps out there. However, if you look at Just Eat or Hungry House you could see that they are for the take-away sector. We don’t really have anything for the restaurant industry. You could say we got Groupon, however Groupon requires you to buy the deal in advance. The busiest period of the week for a restaurant is without a doubt the weekend. During that period you don’t normally want to keep tables open for the voucher holders because you can miss on maximising your profits.
What makes our app unique is the fact that it allows restaurants to provide the deal at a time they want. Once a restaurant advertises a deal, all the app users will get notified and will be able to access it in real time, without having to purchase it in advance.
Agile App:
The launch of Maakan is just around the corner. Could you let us know what your launch plans are, and what comes after?
Adrian:
Sure. Our plan is to at least get 10 restaurants on the app. After that we will immediately start promoting the app to the app users. We obviously don’t want users to download it and to find out that there are no restaurants on it, that would be no good for us, users. As said, we will definitely start with 10 restaurants. After that it will be just a problem of marketing and advertising it. Our plans are to start promoting it amongst our friends. Hopefully, they will share it with their connections, and so on. We want to start promoting it by word of mouth and then see where that leads us.
I believe that this app has the potential to become viral. It is unique because it targets an overlooked market, plus who doesn’t like to save money?
Agile App:
Thanks Adrian!
If you like the concept, we are proud to announce that the Maakan App will go live on the 12th October, be sure to check it out!
If you’d like to discuss how we might be able to help you, give us a ring and ask for Alex, he’ll point you in the right direction after inviting you for a coffee. Our telephone number is 01273 782 444.
For more information please visit https://agileapp.co/contact