How Elmenus is leveraging the trend of Egyptian food going digital

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Egyptians are increasingly combining their love of food – the product on which they spend the majority of their yearly incomes – with the surging trend in all things digital. Entrepreneurs have responded to this trend in force, jumping to launch more and more apps and services to satisfy the needs of the fast growing group of Egyptian internet and smartphone users.

Online food ordering and delivery services like Otlob in Egypt and KSA, andTalabat in the Gulf, are on the rise in Egypt and the region, mirroring sites likeYelp and GrubHub in the US. Technology is also creeping into the Egyptian restaurant experience, as Swipe N Tap, an interactive device that links diners with kitchens and management.

Elmenus, a “food discovery platform,” is a major contender on this scene. Active since June 2011, its latest offering is an iOS app launched about a month ago that received more than 15,000 downloads in just two weeks, and whichfor a while topped the App Store’s most-downloaded list.

To help users choose among Cairo’s dizzying array of restaurants, Amir Allam decided to create a service to combine restaurant data with full menus, in order to provide users with increased access to types of food available, as well as basic information like location, opening hours, etc.

According to Allam, the platform attracts around 400,000 visitors per month who access menus updated on a quarterly basis since the platform was launched.

Allam has not relied on marketing campaigns on social networks; he attributes the platform’s quick spread to “its rapid circulation among users,” in addition to its search engine optimization. “Elmenus is often ahead of other results in searches for restaurants on Google. This helped the website appear in searches for data on restaurants which then boosted the spread of the app,” Allam adds.

Allam says: “We launched Elmenus in the wake of the revolution, and the timing was very important in spreading the idea among restaurant-goers who [were hesitant to go out] because of the unstable situation, so Elmenus provided them with the opportunity to choose their favorite foods and order them home” using delivery services.

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How Elmenus is leveraging the trend of Egyptian food going digital