DealMeal

Urban working class people, employees, bachelors, and hostel students are managing their everyday meal by home cookers, catering services, or the outsider unhygienic restaurants. Among these alternatives, catering service providers play a vital role to provide them regular meals at a reasonable price now-a-days, and their market share is gradually growing. Additionally, they provide social events management services. Communication gap between the catering service providers and existing potential consumers makes it difficult to access the suitable service.

Besides, in Dhaka city, there is a huge number of under-served, poverty-stricken street people/children. Very small-budgeted meals even for a couple of time in a day can be enough for their smiling faces.

We propose a solution:  DealMeal, to present a platform that will facilitate accessing daily healthy meal, event food, and charity meal - all in an integrated manner by bridging the catering service providers with potential stakeholders in the other end.

Dhaka is the most densely populated city in Bangladesh with 47,400 person per sq.km. and growing steadily at 3.72%. An UNDP survey shows, 60% of the Dhakaite households have an average monthly income between 20,000 to 65,000 BDT. Food consumption comprises 20.1% their total expenditure.  Moreover, food processing and culinary activities taxes a lot of time & efforts, frustrating many individuals, especially professional women.   Numerous enterprises ranging from Corporate offices to business workplaces provide lunch to their employees. At present, catering service providers are the most opted to arrange the lunch in the offices. There are more than a hundred large and small venture run catering services active in Dhaka city. Lack of proper communication, planning, and logistics limitations greatly deprecate their servicing capabilities to existing consumer pool. Culinary services to the hostel or mess dwelling college/university students is another potential market which is little explored due to lack of proper communication platform.

Their is a clear inadequacy of frameworks to help enormous starving people of Dhaka city. Many volunteer organizations provide them charity food like,1 Taka Meal. Our solution could be a good platform for bridging socially responsible stack-holders with the people in need. 

DealMeal is a platform that will ensure improved food service to the consumers and guide the service providers to maximize their reach by efficiently utilizing their resources. The targeted consumer group would be largely comprised of organizations that provide daily lunch/dinner to employees, bachelor professionals, hostel/mess dwelling students, middle income elementary families, single parent families, social event organizers, and any philanthropic entity willing to donate. The service providers would be the catering services and small businesses run by an individual or small groups. Through DealMeal, consumers can easily access nearby catering service providers and order customized meals apart from set-menu. Catering service providers can reach a large consumer community,  grow their business as healthy and hygienic food providers in the competitive market. Large consumer community would get more control power to choose their desirable meal-plan. Initially,  survey in the high density areas of potential consumers, and later, consumer information, order data, customer feedback will facilitate necessary adjustments.

In DealMeal charity service, the donors can donate small-budgeted meals which will be distributed among the under-served people in collaboration with some designated service providers maintaining an open and accessible activity log of meal distribution, outcome of donations, and donee information.

DealMeal aims to bridge between a huge consumer community with the supplier. Its a web based cross platform for providing food service and charity. The basic processes are outlined in the following diagram. As the solution, we are proposing an autonomous system with human-sensitive design and service-centered intermediary business strategy  to connect the consumers with the suppliers. The system will contain a database of food package offers of the service providers. The consumers can build a customized meal plan for a week or month by selecting packages from the pool. Then, the order will be validated by the respective suppliers. The system will try to resolve or minimize the conflict between custom orders and offered packages.

Automating the whole process will show us a holistic view and insight into consumer behaviour, which in turn will  increase the productivity and the operational efficiency of the catering service providers, improve the user flexibility and enable easier access to healthy food, thus contributing towards sustainability objectives. The order collection and distribution algorithm will align the consumer demands with supplier capabilities. Package mismatch and other service irregularities will be diminished by constant case study and data analytics research. Any third party delivery service  or the delivery system of individual caterer must be committed to serve the order in the predefined time. User's transactions will be daily/weekly basis through a digital payment method as per policies.

Through our platform, caterers will build their business profiles, advertise and approach a large consumer community. Consumers can timely have meals as the demands will be fulfilled from nearby localised suppliers, make schedule plans on-demand/weekly/monthly basis and manage foods for events, give feedback, write reviews and donate meals (Charity meal) for poor people. 

For charity service, we need some infrastructure to work as distribution points where the meal will be supplied and distributed from.

Our team has significant expertise in latest technologies and tools for web and android app development, data analytics and stochastic optimization.  We are using python django rest-framework as backend language, MySQL database, Native android application(Kotlin) and VueJS framework. We chose Python as the back-end language so that accumulated data in our system over the period of time, can be robustly applied to AI algorithms of data analysis, visualization, prediction. Our goal is to incorporate a dynamic nature to our system by end-to-end development and can be integrated in any platform (Web, Android, IOS).

DealMeal is the first platform where catering service providers and consumers can interact through system, make deals for daily meals, event food management or make donations. Catering services are an important stake-holder in service sector on account of their functions and contributions.

Foodpanda, Pathao Food, UberEats are the most successful ‘food delivery platform’ which delivers only restaurant food. There’s no unique platform for catering service providers where they can reach large consumer groups and expand their business. Individually some catering service providers like Alpha Catering, Desh catering, Baspata Catering, IqbalCatering, Raowa Catering etc provide online support but not interactive for the user. Many small catering service providers unable to build their websites/apps. A common platform to engage all catering services and consumers to create a competitive market is the innovation of DealMeal. Healthy food, quality service, reasonable price, user rating will be the key factors to promote a catering business.

User would be able to compare different catering service/package reviews and make the decision to pick up the best meal package which meets their demand.

Users or visitors of our system can make direct Charity meal donation simply by clicking a button, catering service provider would supply charity meals at the distribution points and society's hungry people could collect this meal easily. DealMeal will  encourage people to make donations for solving our social problem by promoting transparency and accountability.  Integrating this charitable endeavour into a web based for-profit business is another innovation of DealMeal.

An empirical consumer behaviour analysis of the obtained qualitative and quantitative data shows that consumers react to factors creating demand in various ways. While social and demographic features influence consumer behaviour, more control to consumer can influence consumer behaviour positively. We have discussed with some catering service providers about their operation, their policy, engagement to consumers, delivery system, payment method.

The key insights of our survey are:

•  Highly motivated to get involved with technology

• Agree to the basic terms and policies of our system

•  Committed to supply as demanded on time

• Willing to prepare hygienic, healthy food on right price

• They are open to show their kitchen to us or any hygiene inspection. 

• Prefer daily/weekly basis payment

Meal donation to the impoverished will give relief to many hunger-stricken people including street children to healthy food management for daily meals or events, increased business opportunity, supply-demand alignment is the ultimate goal of our platform. Our path to accomplish our goal is delineated below.

1. Currently serving 0 . We are in development phase.

2. One year target: 20 potential catering service providers, 1000 regular customers, setup 5 charity meal distribution points.

3. Five years target: 200 potential catering service providers, 25000 regular customers, setup 15 charity meal distribution points.

Our first year goal is to deploy our system in at least 3 areas in Dhaka city and reach a stable state with at least 1000 regular customers and incorporate 20 service providers.  Our initial impact would be to make our system familiar to the target consumers and service providers.  They will know there is an app where they can easily access the market amenities.  In addition to that, we would alto strive to enlist 5 caterers to facilitate charity deal distribution. We believe our modest target to grow a solid base would help  to build trust among the consumers that the caterer service providers with an easily accessible doorway to standard healthy food.

In the next five years, our technology will change peoples belief on catering services. Catering services will be one of the most authentic healthy food supplier in Dhaka city and made life easier to access healthy food by saving time, effort and at a reasonable price. We estimate, in five years we can reach 25000 regular customers with over 200 enlisted food service providers. We would highly encourage and support the small businesses that will model their business based on our app. It will not only transform the culinary experience of mass people, also create employments.

We will engage with the philanthropic minded people, regular contributors, and charity organisations to build a sustainable framework to provide a specified number of people daily meal from at least 15 distribution points which is our humanitarian goal.

There are several barriers which poses threat to our endeavours. First of them is the possibility of bitter competition. Almost the whole spectra of food related services has been covered by numerous ventures. Our target market of offices, middle-income young professionals and students are one of the very few markets that are yet to be automated. 

Our second barrier is the common obstacle of any intermediary business -- ‘information leak’. There is a possibility of conducting direct deal between consumers and suppliers bypassing ‘the app. Perceiving our app as an invasive meta-caterer service can also discourage service providers to join our platform. Finally, order mismatch, irregularity in delivery, fraudulent activities may slander our reputation. 

Asymmetrical pattern in donation collection would be another barrier to provide food to impoverished people on regular basis.

Being first to enter the market with a sustainable and resilient system would be most helpful to gain an upper ground. Establishing mutually beneficial contact with the service providers is extremely necessary to gain initial success. Long-term success will obviously lie with maintaining a satisfied consumer group. Our system design to provide customers more freedom to build their own meal plan will help us break the second barrier of ‘direct dealing’. Customized meal plans makes sure that the probability of one service provider providing meals daily to a customer is very unlikely, hence any direct dealing between them will cease the freedom from the consumer. Furthermore, we would enclose only packages and rating information to the consumers. Demand mismatch will be mitigated by extensive case study and data analysis. In any such case, the concerning stakeholder will be compensated by means of monetary recompensation or free service. The responsible party would be penalised accordingly. Irregularity and fraudulent activity will be tracked by analyzing user feedback data and necessary actions will be taken.

Donation is totally dependent on the trust among donor, service providers and ourselves. Their preference for location and other conditions like donating food to certain marginalised people, non-profit organisations like religious institutions will be respected in any circumstances. We would encourage people to raise donation funds among socially responsible people, organizations, personally or religiously inspired philanthropists. A transparent record keeping and accountability will be ensured. We will arrange the meal distribution facilities and engage volunteers and donors.

"DealMeal" team has 3 full-time dedicated team members working under the consultancy of one Associate professor.

Consultant:

Dr. A. B. M. Alim Al Islam

Associate Professor

Department of Computer Science and Engineering, BUET

Team Members:

Joyanta Basak

Researcher

Graduated from Department of Computer Science and Engineering, BUET

Rejaul Islam

Sr. Software Engineer

Graduated from Department of Computer Science and Engineering, CUET

Mia Md. Raihan

Jr. Software Engineer

Graduated from Department of Computer Science and Engineering, BUET

In the field of Human-Computer Interaction(HCI), our consultant is recently working with  Human-centered design, User Centered Design (UCD), Value Sensitive Design (VSD), Persuasive Design Model, etc for facilitating sustainable solution to street children, unprivileged urban people. 

As the goal of our solution is partially align with his research work, he can supervise us to design and develop our solution sustainable and resilient enough to accomplish our goals. Moreover, our team members are highly experienced in individual’s perspective area. As an AI researcher,  Joyanta Basak has excellent knowledge of problem solving, critical thinking, analytical skills, decision making capacity and business oriented knowledge. Rejaul Islam has 4 years hands-on industrial skill as a software engineer and highly experenced in Android development. Mia Md Raihan has been working as a Python Developer in a software company for the last 1.5 years and experienced in rest-framework and data analysis.

Although we are not sufficient to solve this massive problem but we have the potential and efficient team-worker to make it possible. We are planning to recruit business analytic, UX designer and field level representatives (we call them ‘Dragon’) to accelerate our progress.

"DealMeal" follows a hybrid of Market Intermediary Model and Market Linkage Model to facilitate service providers to access maximum “clients” while maximizing the consumers control over the service, their satisfaction and service quality. Most demands for regular food services in Dhaka can be categorised into two types: a) Lunch for offices b) Lunch or Dinner or both in hostels, mess and bachelor households. In our solution, we would meet the demand by acting as an intermediary between consumers and service providers while creating an integrated environment. We would collect orders from consumer which will be distributed among the service providers. The service providers themselves will serve the order and deliver it. By specified time, preferably weekly, the consumers would pay to "DealMeal" which will be in turn paid back to the service providers after keeping a cut as the service charge. Additionally, the service providers may use advertisement. However, these advertisements are for their own publicity only. It will not affect the automated order distribution. The service charge proportionate to the order price and advertisements would be the main revenue generating source. So our solution will be generating revenue as soon as it hits the market. According to first year goal, we would service  1000 people daily. If each of them buy meals worth 100 BDT. on average twice a day, with 10% service charge, it would accumulate 6,00,000 BDT ($7500) monthly from service charges alone. 

Charity services will be exempted from any profit.

As discussed in the barrier section, reaching the market as first ever platform for regular meal solution is absolutely necessary for gaining success. For this reason, we need to conduct field level surveys, establish contact with different catering services, conduct in-depth market analysis, and develop sustainable marketing strategy. At present, our solution is still in development phase. As our team comprises of three Computer Engineers with entrepreneurial mindset, we are experimenting with its business implications.  So far, we have addressed the issue from our cs perspective. To jump off to next step, we need both pre-seed capital and assistance in planning a sustainable business strategy capable to meet the market expectations.

SSLCOMMERZ , They will support us as  payment gateway partner.

JAAGO Foundation , They would help to promote "Deal Meal" from social welfare aspect to reach the donor.