今天吃什么？Seamless告诉你!
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Seamless对人们的饮食习惯很有研究。例如：投资银行家偏爱寿司，而对冲投基金人士更钟爱烤牛排、三明治等熟食。下雨天，人们更喜欢选择希腊食品。任何时候，汉堡的销量总是好于热狗。Seamless的客户每订购八个汉堡才会订购一个热狗。Seamless在过去几年挖掘、积攒了丰富的类似数据，它已经从面向公司加班员工的订餐服务商转型成为面向普通大众的餐饮配送服务商。Seamless的关联餐厅数量超过1万家，业务遍及伦敦和美国50多个城市。 过去几年，许多新兴企业纷纷涌现，它们成功地改造了传统行业，把它们的服务转移到互联网上，Seamless正是其中的代表之一。想寻找一位皮肤科医生吗？ZocDoc能帮你找到医生，进行预约。想预定一家餐馆庆祝结婚纪念日？试试OpenTable吧，它能帮你寻找、预定一个浪漫的用餐地点。Seamless的竞争对手包括位于芝加哥的GrubHub，这些公司在一起共同角逐价值250亿美元的外卖市场——如果把食品回收业务计算在内，整个市场可能突破750亿美元。Seamless对用户是免费的，其收益来源于合作餐厅，它们会为每个订单向Seamless支付佣金。Seamless首席执行官纳森•扎布斯基称，2011年公司收入已超过4亿美元。 Seamless最初名叫SeamlessWeb，如今的配送服务让它获得了第二次生命。Seamless成立于1999年，当时，纽约律师杰森•芬格和朋友们一起成立了一家外卖订餐服务网SeamlessWeb，主要客户是经常加班到很晚的律师和投资银行家。2006年，位于费城的自助餐厅经营者爱玛客（Aramark）将SeamlessWeb收入囊中，后者当时已然是美国企业员工主要的餐饮提供商。不过在接下来几年里，爱玛客减少了对SeamlessWeb的投资，GrubHub等竞争对手也开始抢占后者的市场，芬格随之也离开公司。到了2011年，在扎布斯基的带领下，SeamlessWeb从爱玛客脱离并从私募投资公司Spectrum Equity Investors手中募集到5,000万美元投资。SeamlessWeb改成了现在的名字Seamless，耗资1,500万美元收购餐馆目录服务商Menupages并开始进行大量广告宣传。（纽约地铁站也能看到Seamless的广告：“幸福就是就算忘带午餐，也能马上订到更好的美食。”） 如今，飞速增长的个人业务已远远超过企业业务，尤其是越来越多的订餐者开始使用移动设备。今年最繁忙的时候，35%的订餐请求来自电话以及Seamless最新发布的苹果（Apple）iPad应用程序。扎布斯基预测，移动业务将继续扩大订餐市场，因为它能满足消费者在路上订餐的需求：诸如送一份披萨到公园里，或是在步行前往餐厅的途中订一份沙拉，借此避开中午的用餐高峰。 与此同时，扎布斯基还从成千上万餐馆中看到了潜在的大好商机——特别是那些缺乏良好网络技能的小型夫妻店，这些餐馆与Seamless合作，把菜单展示在互联网上。这些企业真正能从Seamless搜集的海量数据中受益。扎布斯基称，随着时间的推移，Seamless的平台可能成为餐馆管理自身业务的关键所在，帮助他们寻找新的客户，管理忠诚度计划，并提供折扣和每日特价菜。扎布斯基说：“我们认为这一套服务将继续增长。如果我们能帮助商家更高效地竞争，它将创造更多的消费需求。” 但要做到这一点，Seamless需要变得无处不在。不错，该公司在纽约已经占据了主导地位，该公司华丽的新办公室内有一面触摸屏墙，带有谷歌（Google）地图聚合应用，Seamless的雇员可借此放大任一市场的天气形势。然而，在其他大城市，Seamless的实力仍然不足。于2004年成立的竞争对手公司GrubHub去年也获得5,000万美元资金，还收购了小微新创企业Dotmenu。GrubHub的网站号称在300个城市拥有业务。这样激烈的竞争将推动快速创新。我们期待最好的服务能够最终胜出。 译者：项航 |
Seamless knows a lot about the way we eat. For example: Investment bankers order more sushi while hedge funders prefer deli options -- roast beef sandwiches and the like. On rainy days, people order more Greek food. And hamburgers have it over hotdogs anytime. Seamless customers ordered eight burgers for every dog last year. This kind of rich data has accumulated in troves over the past few years as Seamless has transformed itself from a meal service for corporate types working overtime to a restaurant delivery service linking more than 10,000 restaurants to hungry diners in more than 50 U.S. cities and London. Seamless is just one of a host of new companies that have emerged in recent years to reinvent traditional industries by translating their services to the web. Looking for a dermatologist? ZocDoc lets patients find doctors and book appointments. Want to make a dinner reservation for your anniversary? OpenTable (OPEN) will help you find and book a romantic spot. And along with Chicago-based competitor GrubHub, Seamless is chasing the $25 billion takeout market -- a market that could expand to $75 billion if you count food pick-ups as well. It's free to users; the listing restaurants pay a percentage of each order to Seamless. CEO Jonathan Zabusky says the company brought in more than $400 million in revenues in 2011. This service marks a second coming for Seamless, which was originally called SeamlessWeb. The company got its start in 1999 when New York lawyer Jason Finger collaborated with a few friends to start a web-based takeout meal service for the legions of lawyers and investment bankers who routinely worked late. By 2006, when Philadelphia-based cafeteria operator Aramark bought the startup, it was the de facto meal provider for American corporate workers. But in the years that followed, Aramark was slow to invest in the business. Competitors like GrubHub began to cut into its business. Finger resigned. Then in 2011, under Zabusky's leadership, the company spun off from Aramark and took $50 million from private equity firm Spectrum Equity Investors. It rebranded, paid $15 million for Menupages, and stepped up advertising. (Witness the ads plastered in NYC subways: "Happiness is forgetting your lunch and instantly ordering something better.") Today, the growth in the consumer business far outpaces the corporate business, particularly as more diners order from their mobile devices. On this year's busiest days, 35% of orders have been placed on a phone or the company's recently launched application for Apple's (AAPL) iPad. Zabusky predicts this mobility will expand the market as customers order on the go, having a pizza delivered to the park, say, or ordering a Chop't salad as you walk over to the restaurant so you can bypass the lengthy noontime line. Meanwhile Zabusky sees promising business potential among the thousands of restaurants -- often small mom-and-pop shops without sophisticated web skills -- that work with the company to put their menus on the web. These businesses can really benefit from all that data Seamless collects. Zabusky says that over time the Seamless platform could become core to how restaurants manage their businesses, helping them identify new customers, manage loyalty programs, and offer discounts and daily deals. "We think the suite of services is going to grow," says Zabusky. "If we can help merchants compete more effectively, that's going to create more consumer demand." But to do this, Seamless will need to become ubiquitous. Although it dominates New York, where the company's flashy new office sports a touchscreen wall with a Google (GOOG) map mashup that lets employees zoom in on the weather patterns in any given market, Seamless has a smaller footprint in other big cities. Launched in 2004, competitor GrubHub also took $50 million in funding last year, and it acquired tiny startup Dotmenu. The company's web site boasts its presence in 300 cities. It's the kind of sharp competition that will force fast innovation. May the best service prevail. |
