Minor Food Group has entered the crowded food delivery application market with the launch of its mobile app 1112Delivery yesterday, competing with dominant players FoodPanda, Lineman and GrabFood.
The app only serves food from seven of Minor Group's franchises, comprising The Pizza Company, The Coffee Club, Thai Express, Swensen's, Sizzler, Dairy Queen and Burger King.
Initially 1112Delivery will only be available in the Bangkok metropolitan area, but Minor plans to expand service to other major cities like Chiang Mai and Phuket by mid-year.
According to Euromonitor International, the online food delivery market in Thailand was estimated to be worth US$1 billion (31.9 billion baht) in 2018, nearly doubling in growth since 2014. This year a new major competitor entered the scene, Indonesia's Go-Jek with its Get app, which offers ride-hailing and food delivery services.
"Minor Food was the first company to start home and office delivery in Thailand in 1989," said Minor Food's chief executive Paul Kenny. "We were the first to have call centre delivery in 1997, and we had the first web ordering platform in 2007. We're the only delivery company with this history of trust."
Although Minor is relatively late to offering delivery on a mobile app, the company believes it is in an advantageous position in the market as its brands are available across all competing delivery apps. Minor still makes money if customers use Grab to buy from Burger King.
"We would like our customers to use our app," Mr Kenny said. "But whether they order through Lineman or us, what is more important is that the quality of the product meets their expectations."
Unlike most food delivery apps that use part-time independent gig workers to field deliveries, 1112Delivery has a staff of 3,000 drivers nationwide. He said the company targets to keep delivery times under 30 minutes.
Eventually the app will enable deliveries from Minor's 1,600 nationwide stores.
In 2018, Minor Food's total sales were 44 billion baht from 2,270 restaurants in 27 countries.