HungryHouse.co.uk Dragon’s Den investment falls through. The best thing that could happen to them?
Back in last November I wrote about online statup HungryHouse.co.uk appearing on the BBC TV show Dragon’s Den and securing a £100k investment from 2 of the Dragons for a 50% equity share. At the time I really couldn’t make my mind up if this was a good deal or not. It seems it wasn’t meant to be though, as James Caan got cold feet and backed out of the deal.
However due to the popularity of the TV show, some other investors expressed their interest with the result being that HungryHouse.co.uk have just announced a £150k investment for a lower equity stake. So it seems that appearing on Dragon’s Den does have its benefits after all!
Press Release:
DRAGONS’ DEN WINNERS FIND THEIR ANGELS
The deal is agreed, hands are shaken, and the cameras stop rolling. But what happens next for entrepreneurs that find success in the Dragons’ Den?
Hungryhouse.co.uk, the website that makes it easier than ever before to find a local restaurant and order takeaway online, was one of the successful pitches featured on the BBCs Dragons’ Den in autumn last year. They won a £100,000 offer of investment from multi-millionaires James Caan and Duncan Bannatyne, in exchange for an eye-watering 50% of the business.
But, as hungryhouse’s founders Shane Lake and Tony Charles were to find, the investment is far from secure when you shake hands. Four months after filming, post-show due diligence ground to a halt after Caan became unsure whether the business would take off.
Now, the hungryhouse.co.uk team have finally found their business angels. Bryan O’Connell and Andrew Fuller were among those watching that night, and liked the idea so much that they made immediate contact to explore the possibility of backing the duo themselves. Bryan asserts, “We have experience in investing in similar website models, and we immediately felt that this idea had legs. On meeting Shane and Tony, we were particularly impressed with their passion for the business. The team had achieved so much with so little that it was clear that our £150,000 would have a big impact on the growth. We didn’t get the equity deal obtained in the den, but then the business has grown significantly over the last 5 months and of course we aren’t the Dragons.”
Andy adds, “We felt strong empathy with the founders in terms of our technical and business backgrounds and the way that we started our first business. It was clear that we could make a contribution beyond the obvious financial help.”
Shane Lake comments: “After appearing on TV, we had literally thousands of people emailing us. It took about 2 weeks just to read through all the messages. We were so busy, we almost missed Bryan’s initial approach - which came right at the time we realised that the offer from James and Duncan wasn’t going to work out.”
Tony Charles continues: “It was great when we were offered the backing we so desperately needed by the Dragons. The exposure of being on TV was massive for us too. But when you go into the Den, aside from the positives, the one thing you can’t expect is a good equity deal! On reflection, we’re glad the negotiations with the dragons fell through – the new deal, £150,000 for a smaller equity stake - values the business at over 3 times what was agreed in the Den. It was a long process, but we finally have the money we need for our nationwide expansion.”
-About hungryhouse.co.uk-
Hungryhouse.co.uk was launched in Putney in 2006 by Australian entrepreneurs Shane Lake and Tony Charles. The website allows visitors to read customer reviews before ordering their takeaway online – helping them find their area’s favourite restaurant without the hassle of sifting through piles of unwanted junk mail.
Launched with 12 restaurants, they now partner with 400 and are beginning their expansion beyond the M25. The website shot into the spotlight in 2007, when it attracted an offer of investment from Duncan Bannatyne and James Caan in the Dragons’ Den (view the hungryhouse pitch). It has since been nominated by Yahoo! as one of 2007’s most innovative websites.
What I’m listening to right now: Ryan Leslie – “Rescue You”
Monday, May 12th, 2008 at 10:36 am and is filed under General Ramblings, Making Money. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Welcome to my blog. My name is Kieron Donoghue and I run UK Offer Media Ltd. I thought it would be fun to post a daily (well hopefully daily) blog, writing about my experiences in Internet Marketing and more specifically Affiliate Marketing. I'll include some personal stuff too, probably about my other passions, music and cars. Please feel free to post your comments and thoughts too.
Pretty good for them and even a much better deal, but they need to get some more restaurants on board. Hungryhouse has 405, Justeat which was mention on Dragons den have over 1200, but they are also offering their service all over the UK.
I always use http://www.justeat.co.uk as I know them from Denmark where I am from and my local takeaway have made a partnership with them. Last time I called them to order food, they told me to go to justeat’s website. Justeat was bought by the owner of uk2net which is also Danish so they have quite a financial muscle behind them.
I had a quick look around and I can see that Justeat have an affiliate program with AffiliateFuture offering 4.5% on all sales. I have not been able to find one from Hungryhouse, but we will properly see one in the future.
Which one will I use? I will properly continue to use just eat as they seems to have more presents in the SE area of London and I can support some of my fellow Danes
Ooo so they got investment. Just eat seem to doing well although my local takeaway had a moan at me the other day about them, i think hes sick of paying 10% ! Then again he moans at me for ordering food. I also see http://www.118menu.com is now up and running , i kinda like there site, be interesting to see what happens also OYT has gone, but from what i recall the site looked like a 3 year old had made it.
I see 118menu are offering 7% of the sale sale value with there affiliate programme with a 60 day cookie. Not bad.
Interesting stuff. I’ve had a business plan for a website like this (takeaway menues) for about 2 years now.. was originally looking for about 5k funding to get it all setup but couldn’t find anyone so decided to save up and fund it myself.. With any luck the development and design will be starting in a few months after i’ve finished the Wireframe.
Personally, I don’t think their business model is right.. Technically I think there can be a much bigger reach if you ignore the online order side of things as I will be doing and go for the volume.
Interesting to see they got their funding all the same - shows there is room for this kind of stuff!
I had a look at 118menu, its a nice style but whoever has written it cant spell very well which makes it look a little unprofessional. Its a shame it could be a nice site
I love the 118menu site!
i ordered from them and despite not getting my order my card was still charged and it was charged to them and not the restauraunt as their site states, i’ve had no reply to my email and their number is constantly engaged so i would avoid using them if at all possible
118menu are adding card payments to their site and it will be live by mid oct
i order from these guys regularly. very good service. i even have 2 addresses saved for home and work! brilliant!
Guys this is about hungry house and its investment through dragon den (heading of the topic), why are we stressing about 118 menu. IF you look at 118 menu site, its looks like its done for not more than 5K.( for a big name like 118 its a shame for its investment) And today after one year 118 menu have no more than 150 restaurant. That shows that their recruitment policy is so conservative. Look at hungry house they have more that 800 restaurants today. They have a power to bargain and sell BY-Products to 800 restaurants. I think its a good time for major player like pepesi or others to support the cause like coke did to just eat. What do u reckon guys ?
Tim you clearly work for hungryhouse and you need to stop writing on blogs ! oh and you also need to learn how to spell ! There is a massive rant on blogstorm already about hungryhouse trying to get away with writing on blogs . Grow up and do some real marketing ! you loser
Hey Tim? If you look on the 118menu site 118menu. com/takeaways-and-restaurants you will see they have a exclusive partnership deal with Pepsi. I suspect that they will be announcing this to the press in the new year to coincide with any new sales activity that might be happening………. I would imagine that they would also welcome any calls from anyone who wishes to launch an affiliate program.
Hi guys,
My name is Steve and I along with two other guys have set up another website called http://www.e-resistible.co.uk/. We are all university students and are running this site whilst doing our degrees!
Now I have come clean about where I am from I wanted to respond to Rachel’s comment. If you check the Blogstorm thread again you will see that it was actually Just-Eat employees that were behaving unethically and writing as “consumers”.
We are obviously in competition with both of them so I have no leaning either way but just wanted to correct your judgement as you appear to have found the wrong party guilty!
http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/hungry-house-dragons-den/288/
Hi all,
Thanks Steve for correcting Rachel there.
As an employee at hungryhouse, I just wanted to come on and support what Steve said. If you have a look through the other blog about hungryhouse and the online takeaway ordering industry as a whole (www.blogstorm.co.uk/hungry-house-dragons-den/288/) you will see that it is a just-eat employee that was posting comments anonymously in support of their business. hungryhouse don’t get up to this kind of thing, and we never have done. It is actually illegal to do this - You can see our staff list here http://hungryhouse.co.uk/about, we don’t have anyone called tim (although i know this doesn’t really prove anything, I hope you’ll take my word for it!)
I would also suggest looking at the comments on here that 118 menu seem to still be doing the same thing on here.
Sorry that we haven’t had much time to participate in these forums over the last few months - everything is hectic at work so I haven’t had much time for this, but if you do ever want to drop us an email feel free… or check out the news section on our website http://hungryhouse.co.uk/news.
cheers all
Hi again,
Just tracked down this post about what can happen when company employees anonymously post about their company or their competitors… a couple of links about an interesting & relevant story:
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticleHomePage&art_aid=63995
http://prmediamaven.blogspot.com/2007/11/case-study-update-whole-foods-top-exec.html