Case Study
By Ibrahim Zaghw
When it comes to catering companies in Kuwait, Banquet Catering is a staple that has earned its position in the Kuwaiti market. It has a diverse selection of products, targeting multiple segments simultaneously.
With that said, its foray into the online world started with intermediaries, such as Talabat. Unfortunately, Banquet Catering felt these partnerships had their problems, including operational issues, lack of control over data, and compromised end-customer experience.
So, Banquet Catering partnered with Zyda to create its own platform.
No sooner had the ink on the contract dried than the partnership started bearing fruit. First, Banquet Catering was better able to manage its operations through its Zyda site. Second, its end customers enjoyed a better experience.
None of this is to mention all the other features Banquet Catering benefited from. For instance, the analytics tab in its Zyda dashboard has provided it with valuable insights that have helped the company make strategic decisions.
Today, Banquet Catering uses Zyda to process around 52% of its total orders and 91% of its online orders.
Problem
Banquet Catering has been serving the Kuwaiti market for over 10 years.
It has such a wide selection of products that it caters to almost anybody and everybody in Kuwait. On the one hand, if an individual wants to order a single meal from the catering company to eat during their lunch break, said individual can do that. On the other hand, if a few friends are celebrating a special occasion, be it a simple birthday or a large wedding, they can reach out to Banquet Catering.
Not so long ago, Banquet Catering sold to its customers through one of the following channels:
A. Direct calls
B. Direct messages through a platform like Whatsapp
C. Online intermediaries and platforms
However, these channels, especially the online intermediaries and platforms, posed a few problems to Banquet Catering:
1. Intermediaries can be challenging to manage for a business like Banquet Catering. For instance, intermediaries don’t always grant restaurants access to all the data. And, if a company or a restaurant wants access to specific data or to change something, it has to hand in a request and wait to see if it gets accepted or rejected.
2. Banquet Catering was also having some trouble setting preparation time and managing customers’ expectations. The issue is that some of their products may take up to three hours to prepare, something intermediaries wouldn’t accommodate. As a result, Banquet Catering only listed on intermediaries the products that could be cooked in under an hour.
3. The end customers themselves, those ordering from Banquet Catering, sometimes struggled with intermediaries. For instance, said customers occasionally could not pick the salad of their choosing from all the options that accompanied a specific order. This lack of versatility forced Banquet Catering to call the distressed customer and manually take their order in.
Solutions
The solution came from Banquet Catering’s management. They decided to launch a website where the end customer could order directly.
They went to Zyda for their website based on a recommendation from another Zyda client who had liked the experience.
Once they joined Zyda, the effect was instantly positive:
1. Banquet Catering could manage their timings better on their Zyda site. For instance, they could set the preparation time to two or three hours if needed. Consequently, they were better able to manage the customers’ expectations on their Zyda site.
2. Another positive is that Banquet Catering had better control of its menu. It could display its entire menu rather than being limited to a specific selection. Also, it could easily add or remove items on its Zyda site, and it could also change the food arrangement, choosing what came before what. With its Zyda site, Banquet Catering never had to hand in any requests to anyone.
3. The end customers also had more options and ways to customize their meals and orders. They could tailor their meals through the platform without ever having to call and contact anyone from Banquet Catering’s team directly.
“We found our Zyda platform easy to manage. The website itself was user-friendly, and everybody from Zyda’s end was accommodating.” Natasya Calip, head of Operations at Banquet Catering
Check out their Zyda site below:
Impact
As of this writing, Banquet Catering processes 52% of all of its sales through its Zyda site, representing around 91% of all of its online sales. As a result, Zyda is the principal contributor to their online sales and overall sales.
Moreover, Banquet Catering makes the most of the many features offered by the Zyda dashboard:
1. It uses the analytics tab in multiple ways. For example, it monitors its retention rate, ensuring that every customer orders at least twice through the platform.
2. It keeps track of its top-selling items and compares them to the rest of its products. This comparison gives it an excellent overview of how its products are performing on the whole and which products should stay and which ones ought to go. With Zyda, Banquet Catering also compares how its different products are performing on various platforms.
3. It measures its average order value and experiments with different ways to increase it.
Over and above, Banquet Catering leverages its Zyda platform to experiment and launch new products, which is critical as the Kuwaiti market is ever-changing when it comes to F&B. Additionally, Banquet Catering places any new products at the top of its menu on its Zyda site, highlighting these new launches and giving them a much-needed boost.
“Zyda helps us a lot with launching new products. It helps us notify our customers which products are new. In fact, some customers check our Zyda store to see the new products that we offer. Accordingly, we can get quick feedback concerning our new releases and find which ones are in line with Kuwaiti taste and which ones need a bit of tweaking.” Natasya Calip, head of Operations at Banquet Catering.