Dubai-based office lunch delivery startup ‘Lunch:on’ raises $3 million Series A to expand to Saudi

Lunch:on, a Dubai-based office lunch delivery startup has raised $3 million Series A investment, Wamda reported today, adding that the first closing of the round was led by Wamda Capital, EATventure, Arzan VC, Abu Nayyan Holding, and others. Dubai Angel Investors and AlJammaz Group also joined the round, MENAbytes has learned.

Founded in 2016 by Mohammad Al Zaben and Dana Baki, Lunch:on delivers break and lunch to office buildings and also offers corporate catering solutions. Once a user signs up by choosing an employer/address from Lunch:on’s website and entering their detials including email address and phone number, they receive a daily menu on their mobile phone as a text message with meat, veg, and lite options in the morning and have 90 minutes to reply to this message with what they would like to eat or order using the website with even more options. A little over an hour later the lunch arrives at their office.

The startup delivers food only to the offices (buildings) where it has 50 customers at least. But as Lunch:on’s website points out, they sometimes also group different office buildings in one neighborhood together to deliver lunch to all of them. So let’s say if no one is using Lunch:on in an office, they can send Lunch:on an email with a special request and the startup would try to group them with an office nearby. nearby.

The menu sent to the users has all the meals priced at 25 dirhams (about $7) but the website has some relatively expensive options as well that go as high as 50 dirhams.

Restaurants, after they get accepted by Lunch:on, can have their meals featured in the daily menu and start receive bulk orders on daily basis, to deliver them to offices near them. It is the restaurants who are responsible for delivering the food. The restaurant partners through their web-based dashboards on Lunch:on’s website can view the schedule, track their orders, and read reviews of the customers.

Dana Baki, Lunch:on’s co-founder speaking to Wamda, said, “Lunch:on, in essence, serves as your company’s food partner, and creates a win-win for both customers and restaurants. By consolidating orders by office buildings, and delivering to the same place at the same time, we are able to eliminate delivery fees and negotiate better pricing with restaurant partners. These savings are passed on to our customers, offering them a greater selection of meals at just 25 AED.”

The startup will use the investment to expand its presence in UAE and launch in Saudi and further develop its technology.

According to Wamda, Lunch:on’s prediction software and scheduling algorithms factor in user preferences and ordering patterns to pair restaurants with customers on daily basis.

“Coordinating thousands of lunch deliveries to countless office locations from restaurants all over the city, all within a 30-minute window, would not be possible without strong tech,” Mohammad Al Zaben, co-founder of Lunch:on told Wamda.

Lunch:on, according to its website currently has over 150 restaurant partners and delivers food to more than 200 companies including Samsung, GE, Namshi, Adidas, and Oracle in Dubai.

Update: Names of investors who’ve joined the round but were missing from Wamda’s report were added to the article.