On August 22, 2019, online food delivery service Dobar Tek celebrates its 6th birthday.
Where will we get lunch delivered from today?
This is a question that was not so easy to answer in Croatia six years ago.
Namely, Dalmatinski Portal writes that the way we order food today, whether we are at home, at work or celebrating our birthday at the beach, began to change in 2013 when Nebojša Veron, then a graduate of computer science at FESB in Split, developed an online ordering service for restaurants.
Today, Nebojša’s student project – dobartek.hr – is a platform that connects over 100 restaurants with tens of thousands of users in cities across Croatia: Split, Zadar, Dubrovnik, Kaštela, Solin, Trogir, Šibenik and Zagreb. Even today, he has a dedicated team that makes sure that the users of the platform find exactly what they want to eat and enjoy every bite.
In 2013, only a few restaurants whose menus and prices were listed could be found on www.dobartek.hr, and only a few enthusiasts had the opportunity to order food online. Mislav Tomić also worked with Nebojša on the software, and shortly afterward, they were joined by Ivan Jukić and Ivan Araš, and later by Marko Marinović. It didn’t take long for them to understand that in addition to product development and design, they also needed to cover sales and customer relations, marketing, and business management segments.
“But that came later. The learning process is not easy, and new things are not mastered overnight if you want to work really well, consistently and as correctly as possible,” acknowledges Nebojša Veron.
Young, persistent, and motivated, they did not charge for their service at the outset, and later switched to a commission model from the orders completed. Because everyone had a permanent job at first, dobartek.hr would be done in their leisure time, when they would look for new clients, develop the product and explore new business models.
“The extremely dynamic and exciting food ordering market has managed to keep our interest, although, at the beginning, we only worked on our product in our spare time. We have continued to invest in the system and constantly adapt it to the needs of a growing number of users. And it is thanks to them, as well as the trust of our partner restaurants, that we are able to celebrate our sixth birthday this week,” said Ivan Araš excitedly.
Feedback from customers and restaurants is responsible for the continuous improvement of the service and its features, so over time, dobartek.hr has become a platform used daily by people across Croatia. Thus, there was a need for additional reinforcements, so dobartek.hr today has an established team of permanent employees and external associates.
“Although today the situation is much different than it was six years ago because we live in a time when we order and buy various services online, people say that they often feel safer when they receive a ‘live’ confirmation that their order has been received and that it will be delivered, especially when they’re hungry. Although dobartek.hr is a digital platform, we personally make sure that every order reaches the restaurant and that the food reaches the customer. We are constantly working on new functionalities, fixing what can be even better, and making sure the platform works 24/7. It is hard when something does not work out as we first imagined it, but we have learned that we should never give up, because often later we exceed our expectations,” said Mislav Tomić.
“Online ordering is preferable to ordering by phone because I can always review my order and I am less likely to blame the restaurant for missing something, which I did not add myself. But they can also rightly point to the restaurant for messing up if an error occurs on the other side. However, if it is written, then it is the law, and there is no such thing when ordering by telephone,” said Vedrana Biličić.
The dobartek.hr team sees great importance in supporting the community in which it operates, and proudly highlights the long-standing support of IT conferences such as Dump Days, the sponsorship of UniSport University Sports Association of Split and the futsal AFCU first team, and the #Donate FoodOnline campaign, which we can look forward to next.
“We do what is great to us, what we believe in and what we stand for, such as the #DonateFoodOnline (#DonirajHranuOnline) campaign or sponsoring student activities and teams from UniSport, which is really the only recipe for a great outcome. Sometimes we do not manage to cover everything that we would like, but that is why we always try to make every activity significant, no matter how small it may be,” Nebojša concludes.
Thus, on Thursday, August 22, 2019, dobartek.hr celebrates their sixth birthday and will honor their customers with a birthday discount, which canbe found on the website.
Translated from Dalmatinski Portal
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