Member Info for ART123

According to the last few RNS's it has given the contact details as:

Zak Mir, Digital Communications Officer with a phone number.

It used to give the PR Company, Blytheweigh and I don't know if they are still acting as such.

I have not come across Zak Mir in this role for any other companies. I believe he used to work closely with Justin Waite at Vox Markets but he doesn't seem to be doing their charts and interviews any more.

Does anyone know more?

I fear that come tomorrow some sad individual will have this Re: Discoeat thread deleted which will be a shame as it's brought out a few home truths.

Good news: the nationwide roll-out is due to start in September.

Bad news: there's still a week left till we get to September.

jsmith 23

As long as the nationwide roll-out starts in September, as we have been promised, then yes. We can see 10p, 20p and even 50p. And I am on about share price and not monty5662 and Aidan's revised downwards pricing of the table booking fee!!!!!!!!!

There is still all to play for here and Big Dish still have the UK market but they do need to get on with it.

Users and revenue will increase exponentially (I believe that is the correct word) which means that as the number of restaurants increase the user numbers will increase at a much higher rate as the business becomes better known.

So, for example, while 100 restaurants may attract 100 diners per month (1 per restaurant) a jump to 1000 restaurants may attract say 5000 diners per month (5 per restaurant) and 5000 restaurants may attract 125,000 diners per month (25 diners per restaurant). This happens as the platform becomes better known, through word of mouth and recommendations, reviews, etc, etc, etc. (These are just hypothetical figures to show what I am saying).

But it still all needs the restaurants to be signed up as quickly as possible.

We haven't heard a word from the directors since the Annual Report was published and that was nearly 4 weeks ago. Are they too embarrassed or have they just realised they won't be able get away with all their false claims - like the one on the Social Media job recruitment that said that "Big Dish had already started a highly successful business in the Far East".

The actual wording was as follows:

"BigDish Plc is a London Stock Exchange listed food technology company already highly successful in the Far East and after initially rolling out in the South West and South Coast is now busy signing up restaurants all over the country."

I'll leave that for people to make their own decision but they were able to get away with those sort of claims before the Annual Report bared all.

According to monty5662 in a recent post he claims that Big Dish Asia may not be charging any longer to seat diners. That is no doubt information he was given by his buddy Aidan Bishop, and may or may not be another example of Aidan not quite telling the truth or making things up to suit his agenda.

If they are not taking any revenue any more then can he please explain the "Administration Expenses" according to the Annual Report of £204,915 for Hong Kong, £149,255 for Indonesia and £52,960 for the Philippines. These are UK Pounds and not dollars. These admin expenses were set against revenue of £4,062 for HK, £859 for Indonesia and £4,420 for Philippines.

The problem with monty5662 is that he still listens to every word the management say and he still believes it all to be the Bible truth. Maybe he needs to start looking at the facts and thinking outside of the box a little more.

Beebopalula was a total "Yes" man and couldn't find any fault with the company and look what good that attitude did him.

I am not talking rubbish. And as monty5662 has pointed out in the past this concept is proven - but as we can see from the recent accounts it seems to be a proven concept only by eatigo and as I've said all along the Big Dish management still need to prove themselves and that they can run a successful business.

Big Dish Asia with running costs of £400,000 and revenue of less than £10,000 is not a success and does nothing to prove this concept and does nothing to prove that the management here are competent.

At the moment if someone decides to go and book a table at one of the restaurants on the Big Dish platform and it comes up with "No Available Discounts" and then they look for the next day and it says "There are no deals available for this restaurant" they are just going to forget about the whole idea.

Discoeats offer discounts for the next 14 days and eatigo offers for the next 30 days. This 2 day window is ludicrous.

I'll repeat my post of 8th August which is even more poignant now discoeats are live in London offering a full range of discounts from 10% to 50% with very little sign of "next day discounts" and "No available seats - see other dates - there are no deals available for this restaurant" which seem to be far too frequent on the Big Dish platform and are the result of this ludicrous 2 day booking window.

"People were talking the other day about changes, which is little more than updating and adapting the platform to accommodate the bigger numbers due here very soon.

3 things that could be changed as far as I can see are:

1) the range of discounts should be from 10% to 50% at the restaurant's discretion. A minimum 10% should be allowed to try and get the restaurants to keep the offers open even on their busier evenings and weekends rather than just to say "No discounts available". 10% isn't going to break the restaurants and it will secure Big Dish a booking fee.

2) the 50p cheap rate wants to be kicked into touch as the bigger cities come on board. That is just stupid and far too low. A £1 to £1.50 sliding scale according to the discount level seems to be much better.

3) I personally cannot see the point of making this just a last-minute booking concept. Other successful yield management companies allow booking for up to 30 days which is fine. The discounts are always the same week by week anyway if you study the platform so to allow bookings for 1, 2, 3 and up to 4 weeks in advance makes common sense. I can imagine that if some of the restaurants that have delisted during the last 2 months had bookings to look forward to they would still be on board. Also this will benefit families that want to book tables for all manner of special occasions but don't want to leave booking until the last minute in case they miss out on the tables. Without the 30 days they will probably just book in advance with the restaurant and pay the full price which is fine for the restaurant but not much good for Big Dish. This is a wasted opportunity restricting booking to only 2 days. Imagine if airline and hotels did this - it would be a disaster.

All just my opinion. An update on progress would be nice particularly with details of when and where the sign-ups are going to recommence."

More to say about discoeats later.

In the meantime I have said all along that all Big Dish need to do is concentrate all efforts on signing up as many restaurants as possible as quickly as possible. That is the key to the success of this business.

Well discoeats seem to have their tech working alright and they have only been going since August 2018. While Big Dish floated at the same time Big Dish Asia was in business for a year or two before that so Big Dish have had plenty of time to get their tech working by now. Maybe it has just got a bit rusty because they keep going so slowly!!!

Also for what it's worth discoeats seem to have their tech team working in Berlin so the cost cannot be that prohibitive.

Don't talk bunkum. Haven't you seen it on the TV. The restaurants will all be shut and boarded up.

And is there any logic to signing up restaurants behind the scenes and then putting them on the App in one block?

Actually there isn't because once a restaurant is signed up and live that restaurant can take bookings and earn Big Dish some much needed revenue whereas a restaurant signed but not live cannot earn a penny until it goes live.

So any argument for signing them up and not listing them straight away is pretty much bunkum. Question is what the **** have the territory managers been doing for the last month if they haven't been signing them up behind the scenes????

Yes and whoever gets them signed up first wins. That is what I have been saying all along.

Eatigo have all the best restaurants signed up in Manilla, Hong Kong and Jakarta. Big Dish never got a look in and were never even heard of hence the **** poor revenue. They were well beaten. But they still have the chance to be number 1 in this country if they now get a move on and this country has far better potential than the Far East. Look at all the trouble in Hong Kong at the moment - who wants to eat out there? - no-one!!!!!

Eatigo now have over 5000 restaurants in 10 cities in 7 countries and their App/website is truly an exciting and vibrant experience but I can assure you that if/when Big Dish get 5000 restaurants signed and live in this country it will be much busier and bring in much more revenue than eatigo. Eatigo have to get known and used in all those different countries. One big splash in the Sunday newspapers will do all of that and more for Big Dish all in one go.

After Ron Trump was scaring everyone here recently with talk of Open Table I have looked into their business. They seem to have a pretty good revenue stream already. The info I read was that they charge restaurants $99 a year to be on their App (not sure if that is worth it!!!!) and a booking fee as well so they are not likely to want to change what is probably a sound revenue steam for something that is largely unproven. Also their restaurants are a bit thin on the ground with even less in my area that Big Dish despite the latter having not really even got up and running yet.

Also in their recruitment discoeats seem to be targeting Germany rather than the UK with plans to operate in several more large cities there.

As I've said all along here Big Dish need to get a move on and be far more flexible in what they are offering. If a restaurant isn't happy with a 50% discount but is okay with a 40% or 30% discount then fine, let them on board.

Wake up Big Dish.

Looks to me like discoeats were founded by a German entrepreneur who used to work for foodpanda in the Far East where he probably came across eatigo and in exactly the same way as Aidan realised that this was quite a good idea - unpatented, copyrighted, etc and copyable - and so he has he just started his own business up with a friend.

On the plus side for Big Dish they seem to want to operate in the same way as eatigo targeting major cities in different countries. Hence they are in Berlin, Cologne and London with future vacancies in Chicago, New York, San Francisco, etc That is fine but I reckon that by targeting the whole of the UK Big Dish will get known much quicker, get a better name and do much more business. Eatigo operate in 10 cities over 7 countries. Much better to operate over 10 or 100 towns/cities in one country.

So monty5662 please enlighten us re what was discussed about discoeats 6 months ago. Maybe then they didn't have 87 restaurants live in London with a 2 weeks booking window and discounts of between 10% and 50% which seems to be enticing enough for their restaurants to offer discounts even on the busier weekends.

For your information Big Dish still have 0 restaurants in London, have a prohibitive 2 day booking window and offer just either a 50% or 25% discount which seems to lead to many of the restaurants on the APP not offering any seats at all on the busier weekends.

Mind you if they do add 200 restaurants in one block in September as Sanj has said then that will probably be the same as adding 2000 to the management who don't seem to have much of a head for figures.

On the positive side it may even double the share price overnight - to say 6p. That seems possible - treble the number of outlets on the platform and double the share price.

Bring it on!!!!!!!!

Personally I would have trained these new geezers up for a few days at the beginning of August and then put them straight out in the field signing up new restaurants.

I know the company billed this as the launch of the "Nationwide roll-out" in September but really this is no big deal. Yes, if they had 2000 restaurants all ready to launch on 1st September then wait and make a big deal of it but this is more a case here of a roll-out that is going to start in dribs and drabs and then continue at whatever pace they can muster.

And as for the argument that these restaurants don't want to offer discounts in the summer because they are too busy I have never heard such dribble (drivel) in my life. I happen to live in the south/south-west and know all of these towns and cities very well and that will never be the case. That is just feeble management rot that was fed to the easy believer monty5662 and he keeps repeating it here. There is no credibility to it at all and it is just a big excuse for all the inaction of the last year.