Groupon + Threadless + Food = HungryDeals.sg

Started by three people with similar background in arts, online food portal HungryGoWhere had tough beginnings. The developer in the company at any time was the only technical person and thus dictated the web startup development. 4 years on and 16 people later, Hungry is leading the pack with its flagship site having inked a partnership with xinmsn, and spurned dedicated portals with HungryDelivery and HungryBBQ.

Despite its current leadership position as the default restaurant review site for most in Singapore, Hungry is not a team that stays still. The founders have observed the changing market and are working on a new Groupon-style offshoot, HungryDeals.sg that aims to launch next month. We speak to Dennis of HungryGoWhere.

Back when the founders were not the bosses

Founders Dennis, Hoong An and Yung Yih were highly dependent upon any developer they could attract to join them back in 2006. Because they were just a startup then, the developers that came on board refused equity stakes and only looked to the position as a temporary one with which they could earn some upkeep as well as get their foot into Singapore.

Back in the day, at any one point, there was only one developer to the three cofounders. Being the only technical brain in the company, the developer was “effectively the boss”. Developer after developer joined and left, while the three men struggled to pay them a salary, all the while maintaining their vision and continued hanging on.

Now looking at Hungry’s current growth and success, taking equity would have been the smarter choice for those developers as Hungry is expanding yet again.

(Check out our interview with Hoong An about a year ago.)

Introducing HungryDeals

To be launched next month, HungryDeals is a site dedicated to offering discounts and deals to users daily.

Mockups sent to me by the Hungry team:

Taken a leaf out of daily deal site Groupon and crowdsourced teeshirt design company Threadless, HungryDeals will feature daily food and beverage deals and users will also be able to vote for deals they like, allowing Hungry to resurrect popular past deals if there is enough demand.

This represents a huge marketing research opportunity for restaurants – they could throw out to HungryDeals various permutations of discounts and sets of dishes and see which one works.

On Groupon changing the way marketing and advertising is done

Dennis: “With the phenomenal growth of Groupon, it has showed everyone that social networks can translate into action on the ground. This is one example of hype becoming reality. Even those with traditional mindsets have realised this shift.

Social media is moving mainstream and will not end at Groupon. This shift is towards being community-based rather than top-down.

We are already in the business of getting the community talking amongst themselves, but what the group buying model has shown is that the feedback mechanism can be heard from the ground much faster.”

Plugging Groupon into an ecosystem

Dennis: “But while group buying sites are great by themselves, there is a need to link them up to an ecosystem.” And this is something that Hungry has ecosystem of users, diners and restaurants painstakingly built up over the past 4 years.

Therein lies the power of already having a dedicated user base so passionate about a particular type of product, namely wining and dining, that having a Groupon-product makes so much sense. You are selling to a user whom you know already wants your general product, but it’s whether (s)he wants that very deal, price-point and all.

Leveling up the Hungry ecosystem

When HungryGoWhere first started, the goal was to unite the global food community. Key in achieving this goal is to help relationship building amongst the stakeholders in the industry: restaurants and diners.

Hungry has helped restaurants understand their customers better and build up relationships but HungryDeals aims to bring this one level up.

For a restaurant, if you know who keep buying your vouchers, you know you’ve got a fan there. You will now be armed with the knowledge to convert these fans into evangelists.

With HungryDeals, both restaurants and diners derive more value and the Hungry ecosystem is made even stronger. Each new datapoint made only feeds back into the ecosystem, strengthening the web of relationships.

HungryDeals on the go

And another level up? Mobile HungryDeals.

While location-based deals are not in their immediate plans, Dennis didn’t rule them out as he believes firmly in mobile. He sees mobile as a key relationship builder between restaurants and diners – fitting into their ultimate goal.

Talking about how resistant he was initially to an iPhone, but after getting one and seeing his mum and grandfather get one, Dennis’ viewpoint on mobile shifted to one of a true believer (especially in the iPhone…), “I have seen for myself clearly that mobile is changing things and has changed things. Mobile is the gateway and the relationship between a restaurant and diner is even closer because everyone uses mobile.”

Dennis gave me some statistics on the mobile usage of HungryGoWhere so far: 3 years ago in 2007, 100% of all HungryGoWhere’s searches were done on the PC. This year in 2010, 1/3 are now made through phones.

To him, there isn’t a doubt that mobile is important and on that, in addition to their current iPhone app, HungryGoWhere intends to roll out an Android one soon.

Hungry for more cities

Though Hungry has been “lying low” this year, come 2011, Dennis and his team will be rolling out across new cities aggressively. Their aim is to reach a new city with every quarter.

Currently, Hungry has content across Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong, Sydney and Melbourne and will be targeting ASEAN for its new rollouts.

I think HungryDeals is a great step forward as daily deal sites aka Groupon clones aren’t sustainable in the long run. Destination sites will pass away and this model will become more distributed and run to where niche content with returning users lie.

Look out for updates here on SGE on HungryDeals.sg! Check out their Facebook page.

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