How Lebanon’s food scandal spurred startup solutions

The Lebanese are all over the world, and more often than not their cuisine acts as the ultimate ambassador for the tiny Middle Eastern country.

Tourists flock for gorgeous scenery but also giant plates of hummus.

But this isn’t la la land. The food and beverage sector is a very real one, not always concerned with Guinness World Records, affected by the country’s economic instability.

Research shows that price surges in real estate, especially in various parts of Beirut, like Hamra, Verdun, Gemmayzeh and Achrafieh, plus a lack of parking areas, have left restaurant owners struggling to cover rent cost, leading them to raise their menu prices, or worse, shutting down.

It doesn’t end there though. Add into this the the national food scandal that rocked the country earlier this year. Supermarkets, restaurants, and bars, were scrutinized, to the point where customers were suspicious of any food vendor, whether it met the national health standards imposed by the Ministry of Health, or not. This took the problems for restaurateurs to a whole new level.

The effect?

Unsurprisingly these events have brought around a shift in consumer behavior.

“Orders dropped by 70 percent during the first week of the scandal,” said Abed El Kader Majzoub, country manager at food delivery app Onlivery. “People would contact us asking whether we’ll be sending them a hospital bill as well,” he jokes.

After orders began to pick up again, Majzoub said, “they went towards specific places. People before [the food scandal] would try different choices, now they only go to the places they know.”

As a frequent restaurant goer, Danielle Issa, who blogs at Beirutista, was cautious during the scandal and made sure to stick to the “venues with verifiable or visible standards, particularly those that have open kitchens […] My appetite for trying new places diminished, and I clung to only the tried, true and blemish-free.” This new shift also led SerVme, an industry platform for booking and restaurant data analysis, to add a list of popular places to their newly improved app, from casual to fine dining venues.

Original article by Reine Farhat

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How Lebanon’s food scandal spurred startup solutions