Kuwait-founded online catering ordering platform, BilBayt, has launched operations in the United Arab Emirates.
Providing a link between customers and caterers, the service was created in 2014 by Kuwaiti entrepreneurs, Ali Al Awadi, Latifa Ben Essa, and Ahmad Salamah.
BilBayt has been designed to create a casual catering marketplace to simplify and standardise the ordering process.
The company’s featured caterers include Jones the Grocer, Moti Roti, and Marta’s Kitchen.
Commenting on why BilBayt has expanded to the UAE, co-founder, Ahmad Salamah told Catering News: “Doing business [in the UAE] is much easier; it’s a large market, and people are connected and comfortable shopping online.
“Dubai specifically exposes us to Western style corporations and individuals and we felt this would be a great way to assess whether our concept could successfully be exported outside the region,” he added.
The platform has been designed specifically for the Middle East region, where consumers tend to get together regularly with family and friends in private residences for meals and gatherings.
To use the service, customers must access the BilBayt website, select the date and time of their event, choose from the list of available caterers in the search results, and place the order through BilBayt.
“We are making the catering space a lot more accessible and transparent, and growing the market in the process,” commented Salamah.
A new feature introduced to the service is ‘drop-off catering’, which is catering-quality food delivered to small groups of 3+ people.
Salamah explained: “This was an instant hit with our customers who would order cheeseboards for instance for their regular social gatherings or sandwich assortments and bites for office meetings.”
BilBayt operates across the whole of the UAE, and Kuwait and has plans to expand to the wider GCC.
“We have our eyes set on the region at the moment, the GCC specifically. This means KSA is obviously on our radar and Qatar and Bahrain as well.
“We plan to scale our operations and increase the number of suppliers onboard while still maintaining the level of curation we have now. We will also be entering a new market soon,” Salamah said.
