Food-delivery customers in the United States now have their orders taken in Cape Town! In 2016, S2YD LLC, doing business as Mr. Delivery USA, established a secondary call centre in Rondebosch to service its customers back home. A challenge was to ensure consistent uptime, call quality and clarity. In this regard, fast, reliable Internet bandwidth is imperative. The Stellenbosch-based ICT solutions company Adept has proven a reliable service provider, partnering with Mr. Delivery USA to connect them to their US markets and helping make the global village a little smaller.
Food delivery 2.0
Before the Internet, food delivery was offered by takeout and delivery-only restaurants, or sit-in restaurants with their own delivery service. Times have changed, and the industry is no longer driven by people but by technology.
In 2016, the US food-delivery market was a $5 billion share of the broader $30 billion delivery market. The highly competitive space is dominated by industry giants such as GrubHub, Seamless and Eat24, as well as well-funded newcomers including Uber Eats and Amazon Restaurants. In the US, 44% of consumers used food-delivery services at least once a month in 2016, with 43% using an online platform and 13% an online app.
By delivering anything from pizza to gourmet treats right to your doorstep, these services save their customers time and offer convenience in a time-constrained age. In this competitive arena, smaller businesses need to be creative if they want to expand their services while keeping their prices down. From ordering to dispatch, monitoring to delivery, speedy communication rests on a connected web of modern information communication technologies (ICT).
For Mr. Delivery USA's South African-born CEO, Laurence Levine, technology is both an enabling factor and a business risk. In the latter part of 2016 he decided to set up a secondary call centre in Cape Town in an attempt to expand his labour force with minimal cost to his service offering.
Mr. Delivery USA comes to Town
Laurence Levine started Mr. Delivery with his last R10 000 in Sea Point, Cape Town in 1992. In 2012, he sold his stake in what had become a nationally recognised brand, which was subsequently rebranded Mr. D Food, under the Takealot group. Levine moved his interests to the USA where he became the CEO of Straight2yourdoor, a small food delivery company he acquired in 2010, that focused on servicing college campuses and featured a proprietary system of utilising smart phone technology to communicate with its drivers. With Levine at the helm, the company was renamed Mr. Delivery USA, adopting the iconic Mr. Delivery chef as its logo and the slogan "making food fun".
Mr. Delivery USA offers a comprehensive solution to expand the reach of restaurants with the support of online tools, dispatch and marketing services. Dispatch relies on a centralised call centre located at its headquarters in Austin, Texas. In order to extend his company's cost-effective services, Levine's call centre requires "more bums on seats", or hands on telephones. To avoid the increased cost of labour in the US, the CEO decided to establish a secondary call centre in South Africa due to a favourable rand/dollar exchange rate and the good work ethic he associated with his homeland that offered an English-speaking workforce.
Finding an adept ICT service provider
Given his business's reliance on soft technologies, like Voip, Levine's biggest concern with moving across borders has been Internet bandwidth. Uptime, call quality and clarity, as well as operating outside of South African business hours, are all factors that put his investment at risk. According to Levine, a somewhat bumpy journey has been made easier on account of the impeccable service provided to his company by South Africa's own Adept ICT Solutions.
Established in 1996, Adept is one of the oldest independent service providers in South Africa. Situated in Techno Park, Stellenbosch, the company caters for, among other things, managed ICT services, connectivity, hosting and voice services. Levine first came into contact with Adept when he was renting premises in Techno Park. Adept was integral in providing the hardware needed to set up operations and meeting the challenge of providing the reliable Internet bandwidth necessary for a transnational business operation of this nature.
While Mr. Delivery USA moved operations to Rondebosch, Cape Town after a few months due to logistical issues, Adept was, according to Levine, always ready to help when a crisis came knocking. Levine recalls when he was confronted with a power failure mere hours before the US dinner rush. Adept's Ricardo Williams was on the scene to lend a hand, organising a generator to ensure uptime at 23h00 (SA time).
It is this kind of service, in Levine's words, that sets Adept apart as a "customer-centred service provider, willing to go beyond service".
How far we have come
The popular notion that globalisation is turning the world into a global village remains debatable. However, the next time you are passing through Rondebosch, take a moment to consider how far human communications have come. Thousands of kilometres away, residents of Bloomington Indiana, USA may just be snacking on a pizza that has been dispatched from Cape Town, South Africa. This is a feat made possible by the human drive to communicate across borders via technology, by the innovative endurance of entrepreneurs like Levine, and the committed provision of services by the likes of Adept ICT Solutions.
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