David Buttress – Inch by inch…

Edin from Firezza, Pak from a Chinese supplier here in the UK, Josh from Eatstudent, David Power who does my job in Canada for just-eat and our good old CFO the one and only Mike Wroe attended the Wales v South Africa rugby game last week in Cardiff.

A fun day was had by all, although once again Wales managed to grab defeat from the jaws of victory! Here we all are having a few drinks before the game, talking about takeaway and sport. A healthy combination.

I am looking forward to next weekends game against New Zealand, I hope the entire All Black squad eat a dodgy kebab on Friday night and give Wales a chance.

Great news for the growth of online takeaway food ordering! Josh Magidson started eatstudent.co.uk while at university and has done a great job to build a student focused takeaway website. We loved both him and the concept, as a result Josh and we made a deal to buy the company. The real advantage of eatstudent is that it is specifically focused on recruiting student focused restaurants and special deals. Just-Eat.co.uk has always been for everyone and will remain that way, we hope this helps our business to connect with more student customers than we already do.

Josh remains in control and will continue to run and grow the company independently. We know we are far too old and boring these days to pretend to know anything about being a student.

Good luck Josh and keep up the great work.

eatstudent

I am thrilled to announce that the Belly & Brain iPhone game has just been personally approved by Steve Jobs and is now launched all over planet Just-Eat!  We really hope you enjoy it. The two little guys are a fun part of our brand and company, this game really brings them to life.

How to get the game?

1. The official website is here: http://www.bellyandbrain.com/ – follow the app store link
2. Alternatively you can open App Store on your iPhone and search for “Belly and Brain”

How to review the game?

The iTunes link where you can write a review if you like the game is here – please don’t feel you have to give it 5 stars but if you love it then why not!

I recently watched the BBC documentary about how David Cameron and Nick Clegg made a deal to share power and make a coalition government.  It provided a few interesting insights into how the balance of power was decided post the general election, but what I hear you ask does this have to do with Just-Eat.co.uk or takeaway? Well actually quite alot, let me explain.

The amazing thing about the deal the two chaps made is that it is not founded on close political ideas or a meeting of economic minds, in fact what was evident throughout the documentary is that the two parties were a long way apart on some major issues.  It all came down to one major factor and one meeting that was held 1-2-1 at Admiralty House on The Mall, (one of my favourite roads to wonder down) the major factor was relationship.

Clegg and Cameron have a natural rapport and that meant they could see themselves working together for 5 years, common ground on policy would have to be found but on a fundamental level they could work together.  This struck me as a amazing example of how important relationships are, the deal to run a country came down to the fact that two people could see they would have a good relationship. It is often a factor that is overlooked, undervalued or neglected because it is something that is hard to measure or put into a process so it can be replicated.  My dad has said to me you can’t put in what god didn’t and to some extent I agree with that, however everybody can learn to be decent at understanding how to build relationships.  Unfortunately for Gordon Brown the lesson may now come too late.

From day 1 of www.just-eat.co.uk I have tried to make the time and focus on building solid, meaningful and sincere relationships in the trade we operate in as well as with internal and external colleagues.  To me this is a part of the job I enjoy the most, many of the first QSR’s I recruited in the UK still have my number and we talk to find out how the summer is effecting each other and ask how much we are paying for menu cards! It is this spirit of partnership and relationship that is key at Just-Eat.co.uk, we are here to be good partners and build great relationships.  I am sure at Just-Eat we’ll never forget that the key to great business relationships with our partner restaurants isn’t the prices we charge but the mutual understanding, trust and empathy we have for each other.

I read this today courtesy of an old takeaway friend Mark Hall. It made for interesting reading in terms of restaurant website products. More to follow when i’m back off holiday, otherwise Gemma is going to kill me for sitting on the laptop when I should be sat talking to her.

This is a interview that I did recently with Food and Drink Digital magazine. It is great to see Just-Eat more and more becoming the voice of independent takeaways.  The more we can help and drive the awareness of our member restaurants and sector the better!