DISH:-21 Nov 2019 11:04
The real problem here isn't Sanj, or the TM's, or the restaurants but the two directors - Bishop and Boer - who live in the Philippines and are trying it on in the UK. They are out of touch and flitting from one bad idea to the next without any level of business acumen and they have no idea where this is heading at all.
They started a discount card scheme in Asia about 5 years ago, which actually according to the revenue in the results at the time was reasonably successful. Then they changed the business model to copy Eatigo but since then they have failed to get any reasonable level of revenue.
Initially, they were going to RTO into Nyota Minerals and that was first announced a full 18 months before they finally IPO'd in London. In the meantime, they spent a year or so in a beta phase in Asia.
Then when they finally floated in London, in the Main Market when AIM would have been quite good enough, and at a vastly overpriced IPO, they had no real plan at all. That was the point at which they should have known exactly how to proceed and to have been recruiting all the necessary staff with the IPO funds. Instead, they didn't have a clue and in the absence of any plan just started another beta phase.
Finally in October Sanj got in contact with Bishop and said he was looking for a job and they took him on, only to overpromote him a few months later to CEO, when it is very apparent that he has no CEO qualities at all.
Then they finally had 2 successful TM's on the ground, adding 25-35 restaurants per month and then instead of adding another territory and having 3 up and running and then a bit later another and so on, they flipped their lids and decided to do a full nationwide roll-out. This has now turned out to be an absolute disaster, though they do still have 2 TM's on board, albeit different people working in different territories.
Now they have had another bird-brained idea to get all the restaurants on the platform via telesales. Whether this will work or not we shall see but it would certainly work for a discount card scheme where they need to get hundreds of thousands or even millions of members.
I feel though that for restaurants it would probably work better to make an initial call via telesales in areas where they have a TM and then book an appointment for the TM to call in person and sign up the restaurant.
Bishop and Boer have managed to come up with some of the worst and worst-timed ideas that I have come across in a long time. These include:
Brand Ambassadors - the less said about this crackpot idea the better.
Account Management - far too early for this as can be seen by all the restaurants dropping off.
Last-minute bookings - what a crap idea. What about Xmas bookings for example.
Just 2 discounts levels at 25% and 50% - another stupid idea that has resulted in the "No Seats Available" instead of the restaurants giving a reduced discount at their busier times.
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