Copenhagen-based impact startup Tribe Takeaway is crushing stereotypes of a regular takeaway service. The team behind aspires to fight the global hunger, and their solution operates with a unique cooperation with the Danish capital’s restaurants.
Following the outbreak of COVID-19 and the lockdown in Denmark, the country’s number of takeaway orders has been as high as never before. As a result, takeaway portals, such as Wolt and Hungry.dk, have been receiving more inquiries from restaurants willing to offer takeaway food to their customers. However, Wolt has been receiving lots of criticism due to high commission fees, especially during the restaurant crisis this spring.
In the middle of the crisis, two brothers Mikkel Mads Andersen and Kasper Nikolaj Andersen are launching a new takeaway platform to challenge the takeaway industry on their high commission fees as well as provide restaurateurs and customers with a social takeaway system. The commission fee is up to 70 percent cheaper than that of the competitors, and its mission lies not only in offering takeaway options, but also in fighting hunger.
Mikkel Mads mentions that Tribe has replaced the classic handling fee that Just Eat and Hungry place on the orders, with a fee that the UN World Food Programme can feed a child for. Instead of the charges landing on the bottom line of Tribe, it goes automatically to fighting hunger worldwide, thus supporting the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal no.2 : to stop hunger on a global scale.
“We know from ourselves how difficult it can be to make a personal difference in everyday life. That is why we want to make it easy for Danes and restaurants to help fight hunger and take a broad social responsibility – and at the same time we will not fail the restaurants with neither high nor hidden fees,” says Mikkel Mads in an interview with TechSavvy.
The platform has just been developed and the Tribe team has already connected the first restaurants in Copenhagen to the platform, which will soon be live on their website and an app. However, the team did not plan to launch so soon.
“Our plan was to go under the radar and launch with a bang. But we feel we have something to offer and help the restaurants right now. It is great to see the unity of the community and how people support locally. Now we hope that people will help us by recommending their favorite restaurants so that we can make a difference together,” says Mikkel Mads.
He also says that several of the restaurants on the Tribes platform are already using up to four other takeaway solutions and he expects it to be available quickly on the market.
“We also see a tendency for the established solutions to exploit the positions of power they gain through their sales channels. We want to give power back to the restaurants and we will soon have the opportunity to prove our value through the low fees and the high social responsibility”, Mikkel Mads continues.
In addition to exposure through the Tribes app and website, the restaurants also have access to a unique Facebook integration built on Tribes own algorithms. It allows restaurants to accept orders directly on their own Facebook page. According to Mikkel Mads Andersen, there are no similar solutions in the market and the new solution creates good synergy with the restaurants’ usual marketing.
“Many restaurants nowadays use social media on primary marketing channels. But we can turn their Facebook page from a marketing page into a direct sales channel”, he says.
