Online fast food ordering startup Just Eat has acquired Meal2Go, a maker of electronic point of sale technology tailored to the restaurant sector, in a move aimed at growing its business by offering its takeaway partners additional services.
Just Eat has not disclosed how much it’s spending on the acquisition of Birmingham, U.K.-based Meal2Go.
“This deal will enable us to provide an even better service to our takeaway restaurant partners,” said Graham Corfield, UK MD of Just Eat, in a statement. “We know there is huge demand amongst takeaway businesses for great value, high quality EPOS technology, which we will now be able to offer.
“This move is part of our wider strategy to make the bolt-on acquisitions and partnership deals that will ensure we continue to innovate and drive further significant growth for our takeaway restaurant partners.”
Meal2Go’s technology will allow Just Eat to offer the takeaways that power its online food ordering business a central system for managing orders — whether online, ‘walk-in’ or over the phone — incentivizing them to continue to work with it, and luring more restaurant partners into its fold.
In the U.K., Just Eat currently has some 20,000+ takeaway restaurant partners. While Meal2Go, which was founded back in 2006 and is apparently the first online food ordering EPOS network in the independent restaurant sector in the U.K., has more than 1,100 takeaway restaurants signed up to its services nationwide — the majority in the Birmingham region.
That leaves plenty of scope for Just Eat to grow usage of the Meal2Go EPOS tech within the U.K. — and presumably beyond. Globally, Just Eat is now active in 13 countries, with more than 36,000 takeaway restaurants signed up to its platform.
“Meal2Go’s EPOS offering has been tailored to the takeaway restaurant sector’s specific needs,” said Just Eat when asked for more detail on the EPOS tech it’s acquiring. “This system can accept online orders and has the required speed to cope with numerous orders at a given time, while also possessing the flexibility to add in special orders and requests.
“It’s operational in a number of different languages and uses specially selected robust hardware designed for a tough environment, making it ideal for a restaurant’s working environment.”
“We will be offering this service to new and existing restaurants and certainly see it as another compelling reason for restaurants to join us,” it added, noting that the EPOS service will be ” very competitively priced”.
“We’re offering our takeaway restaurant partners the great value, competitively priced EPOS technology they need to better manage their orders and their business. This expands the overall service we offer our takeaway restaurant partners, adding to all the great benefits they already get.”