This video made me laugh when I saw it, it has been a big hit on youtube this week. I liked it so much I thought I would share it with you all. 
Loved this youtube video about Newport, Wales!
July 24th, 2010 · Personal stuff
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Company Culture Clip and Motivation
July 19th, 2010 · Just-Eat, Personal stuff, Sales, Uncategorized
This was a interesting clip our CTO Carlos sent me that I thought was worth sharing. This is also a clip that sums everything about the team at Just-Eat from start up until present day.
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Restaurant Choice and Customer Satisfaction
July 17th, 2010 · Just-Eat, Personal stuff
As ever it has been a busy, fun and exciting week at just-eat! I really wonder where the time goes sometimes but we have made two great steps for you our customers.
Firstly we are focusing and have now built a new team that are dedicated to making sure we provide the right restaurant choice to all our customers. We have a dedicated sales team making sure that in every postcode in the UK we have the right balance of restaurant choice. At Just-Eat we want to give you ‘what you want’ not ‘what we have’ and with the help of Larissa (our very own Russian agent) we have analysed the UK so we know what balance of takeaway restaurants that consumers want in every postcode. Yes it was a great deal of work and I’m glad it wasn’t me that had to do it! Please do keep suggesting your local favourites to us because I read every one of them (i really do, I’m sad like that!). It’ll take us a few months but keep ordering and looking for the new restaurants and I am sure by Christmas you’ll see the only website with a really great choice of UK takeaways.
Secondly customer service, we have worked really hard to improve and give our customers a good experience every time they order. Operational and tech challenges that I have written about before in this blog have not always meant we have got this right but we will and we have made some internal improvements this week that fill me with optimism moving into the second half of 2010. I really like the way Zappo’s take care of their customers and in just-eat we want to be the best at everything we do, keep talking and telling us how we are doing because we do listen and I am looking forward to the day somebody writes a link in their blog to our customer service page.
On a personal level it has been a long week! I missed a train back to London from Brussels on London due to talking and spending too much time on work at the start of the week, the last train leaves for London at 20:17 and I was still talking takeaway at 19:55 sat 5 stops away from Brussels midi on the metro. It worked out well because eurostar were very nice about it and just changed my ticket with no quibble and I went back to the restaurant to carry on talking takeaway. I have also been up and down to Wales 3 times the last two weeks as my dear old dad isn’t very well but I’m sure he’ll be back home soon talking politics and football.
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One of my favourite sales mgt training clips
July 6th, 2010 · Just-Eat, Personal stuff, Sales
This is a super old film with some great sales mgt fundamentals in it. Don’t worry about the black and white bit and old fashioned script, this stuff is gold dust! Whether you work for just-eat in the takeaway industry or not, the sales lessons in this will be helpful. It is all about good leadership.
When you have a spare few minutes take a look. Click here to view.
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More Crazy Entrepreneurs
July 4th, 2010 · Just-Eat, Personal stuff
I read this in the newspaper today and thought it was interesting to share that what we actually needs is more crazy entrepreneurs in Europe and more people to back them according to the CEO of Google. One thing for sure is that how every many new ‘crazy’ entrepreneurs there are Google will benefit!
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The Pizza Wars!
June 7th, 2010 · Just-Eat, Personal stuff, Sales
Having worked in a industry before just-eat that had the cola wars, looks like I have now found myself in a industry with the pizza wars. We like a battle (one of my favourites fyi) at Just-Eat so we’re very relaxed to see things getting spicy with these two big corporates, the reality is the best pizza is found and made at the local place down the road. Don’t take my word for it, the Guardian newspaper recently did a review and said so, we’ll keep pushing and fighting for our member restaurants cause.
This was a pretty cheap publicity stunt because in reality the takeaway food market place is a relatively mature space when you look at it from a offline competitive perspective and has been for some time. We have all been able to buy a curry, chinese, pizza (frozen or not), sushi or thai from our local supermarkets for years. Let’s face it though, that isn’t a treat! The whole point of eating a takeaway is not cooking, the food coming to you and when it is out of a frozen box it never tastes the same as our local favourites does it?
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Sugar Loaf Mountain in Wales
June 7th, 2010 · Personal stuff, Uncategorized
Yesterday my wife (Gemma), brother (younger, thinner but still has the ‘Buttress hairline’ Tom) and me climbed Sugar Loaf mountain in Wales. If you are ever in this part of the world and enjoy a good walk, then give this a try, it is not difficult to do as long as you can walk from your house to the local takeaway and back! The views from the top are really good even thought the summit is not as high as some of the other mountains in the beacons. This is because it is on the edge of the national park and is therefore surrounded by lower land. The mountain gives a great landscape view down to the Bristol Channel (I guess about 25 miles away). A great way to spend a Sunday afternoon.
Having spent the day exercising we naturally spent the evening eating a lovely mixed kebab from the local takeaway, a truly balanced lifestyle.
Here we are at the summit with all the family dogs from large to small!
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Be Careful what you publish!
June 2nd, 2010 · Just-Eat, Personal stuff, Sales
Made me smile….Welsh Sign post.
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Customer Service and Culture Article by Andrew Walmsley
June 1st, 2010 · Just-Eat
I read this in marketing magazine earlier and thought it was a good, interesting read. Customer care/service is often the thing that businesses struggle to get right and scale as it is a very operationally challenging area. We are working really hard at just-eat.co.uk to be strong in this area, I know over the next year or two we will deliver something close to best in class. Click here to see the article.
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Just-Eat World Party!
May 24th, 2010 · Just-Eat, Sales, Uncategorized
One of the great parts of our social culture at Just-Eat is the annual World Party. It started last year in Dublin and this year we took the whole of the international team to Centre Parcs at Elveden Forest. Around 140 people descended on the park on Friday for paint balling, archery, laser shooting and of course to socialise and be together. We have a very diverse work force at Just-Eat with people from all backgrounds and nationalites (although we still have only one Welsh person, we may need to start some positive discrimination soon!). The great thing to see and feel was that even though we are growing all the time we have still been able to stay true to our key values. Of course we are having to grow and change in terms of our organisation and business practices, yes even ‘old’ Luddites like me, but the critical point for me as a person working at Just-Eat is that the core values of hard work, fun, no nonsense and a shared purpose/goal are as strong as ever. We can now also add to those values a higher standard of professionalism and skills, it is beginning to become the company we all hoped it would be. Thanks to all who made it happen for a fun and motivating few days.
This is the happy few just before we went off to paintball! I won’t say whos team won the paintball as nobody likes a show off but suffice to say the person was Welsh.
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