Everyone loves fast-food, but as people become better educated about diet and nutrition, greasy, calorific takeaways will start to lose their appeal. But a brand new concept in fast food, launching in Glasgow this weekend, may have just the answer.
The new online business will connect home cooks with hungry neighbours within a local area, helping people to eat more healthily.
GetFed will enable good cooks to advertise their home-made lasagnes, veggie curries or comforting bangers and mash to other people in their local area.
Big players in other sectors such as AirBnB, Uber and eBay have disrupted their own marketplace models, facilitating the buying and selling of goods between individual freelance providers and customers.
And in the fast food sector, Deliveroo and Just Eat have given consumers a taste for ready-to-eat food, ordered online and delivered to the door.
But GetFed puts the two concepts together for the
first time.
Peter Gillespie from GetFed said: “Rapidly changing technology is fundamentally shifting consumer behaviour and people now expect to be able to be able to buy anything online; not just from businesses, but also from each other, including cooked food and ready meals.”
Despite the fact that UK consumers spent more than £5.5bn on takeaway meals last year, an increase of 18 per cent on the previous year, the choices are very limited.
Mr Gillespie said GetFed had carried out research that indicated Glasgow was the right place to launch the new business. He explains: “Our research identified a real frustration with the lack of choice available. About half of the money is spent on pizzas, while Indian and Chinese takeaways make up most of the remainder. Only 10 per cent is spent on anything else.
“At the moment, if you just fancy a plate of home-made mince and tatties you have to go to a supermarket and check the ready meals.
“And we also found that that people were well aware of health issues surrounding diet and nutrition, but were given few options beyond the same old pizzas and chicken tikka masalas. We think there is a real hunger for change.”
GetFed aims not only to allow anyone who loves to cook to provide healthier home-cooked options to the growing online fast food market, but it will also help to reduce food waste.
According to the Food Standards Agency, the UK households waste around seven million tonnes of food every year. Cooks signed up to the GetFed family will be able to reduce that figure by using up excess portions of family meals, or converting store cupboard items approaching their use-by date into tasty meals to share.
Although online now represents around 50 per cent of all takeaway orders, this Glasgow pilot is the first of its kind in the UK. An initial trial of the concept starts this weekend and GetFed is now recruiting Glasgow cooks to participate.
GetFed is not alone in believing it is time for a fast food revolution. Trainee student chefs at City of Glasgow College have been among the first to sign up to the new sharing economy venture and the college itself has become a partner in the initial trial.
Roy Gardner, Executive Director, Corporate Development and Innovation at the college said: “We are delighted to be partnering in this trial phase and signposting opportunities for our students.
“We are aware that, no matter how well intentioned consumers are, the temptations of fast food are obvious. Many people opt for fast food in the evening and this is particularly true of Glasgow’s very busy student population.
“This pilot offers some great opportunities to our student chefs, and to our wider student population who may want try out some of the healthy home-cooked dishes on offer.
“And finally, this is an innovative concept which could potentially provide an interesting disruptive element in the fast food market.”
Participating City of Glasgow College trainee chefs will be able to test the popularity of their recipes, and GetFed will be able to observe students’ appetite for the idea before the business is officially launched across the UK later this year.
Mr Gillespie continued: “We are confident that this will be a success. Consumers are now engaging directly with each other and responding like never before and attitudes towards this new collaborative peer-to-peer market proposition are driving rapid change. This trial will help us to fine tune the GetFed model to best meet the needs of hungry consumers looking for better variety and choice and keen home cooks who want to make a difference.”
FOR BUSY CONSUMERS ...
GETFED will offer a great way to get healthy, comforting food, quickly via getfed.net – and you can even pick it up on the way home from work.
Once the GetFed website launches, consumers will be able to choose from a menu of meals available within five miles of their address, and can specify whether they wish to collect meals themselves, or request a delivery from the cook.
Dishes will cover a range of options available from local cooks, rated by customer satisfaction.
Once the dish is selected, chilled or frozen meals will then be available immediately, and all that GetFed asks is that diners confirm the receipt of their food and answer one feedback question: Would you buy from this seller again?
Payment is made via credit card through the secure and widely used Stripe platform. And there is the security of knowing GetFed support is always on hand to resolve any problems.
So for low cost, healthy and comforting food, keep an eye out for the GetFed launch later this year and join Glasgow’s fast food revolution.
HOW IT WORKS FOR COOKS
If you stun your family with stovies, bowl people over with burritos, or dazzle with desserts, GetFed could help you to make some money on the side.
From this weekend GetFed is recruiting would-be cooks looking to sell home-cooked meals. Participating cooks are provided with a pack which contains guidance on safe food production along with attractive packaging for both storage and delivery.
From there on it is up to the cooks to decide their own menus, testing out different dishes, then letting the GetFed community know what’s on the menu.
Cooks will also be able to specify whether they wish to deliver the meals to customers, all of whom will be within a five-mile area, or request a collection in person from
the customer.
“We want to make this as straightforward for home cooks as possible. We don’t want to put up any barriers for people,” said Peter Gillespie of GetFed.
“If they make food that is well received, they will be well-rated, and they will find themselves being bought from again. It really is that simple.”
To make cooks feel more secure, GetFed provides all its cooks with advice on understanding health and safety standards, as well as all the necessary legal safeguards.
Payment for meals will be taken online and the cooks will receive their payment via GetFed just seven days later.
“For some wannabe chefs, retired school cooks, or keen hobbyists, this could be just the sort of boost they need to get them started on a new and exciting path,”
added Mr Gillespie.
GetFed is currently seeking cooks in G1, G2, G3, G4 and G40s postcodes in Glasgow, along with ML1 to ML6 postcodes in North Lanarkshire.
visit Getfed.net for more info or go to the official getfed facebook page
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