Dubai: As OrderUp eyes expanding to cities across the U.S., it’s working on setting up digital franchises—online food-ordering websites maintained by people in mid-size cities. OrderUp, the Canton-based startup that facilitates ordering food from restaurants online, faces stiff competition from such bigger, national companies as GrubHub and Seamless. But in 2013, as OrderUp eyes expanding to cities across the U.S., its focus isn’t on competing directly with the reach of GrubHub. Instead, it’s working on setting up digital franchises—online food-ordering websites maintained by people in mid-size cities who partner with OrderUp, and then work with restaurants and take-out joints to offer meal specials and deals to hungry patrons who would rather place delivery orders online than by phone. In other words, forget spending close to $450,000 to open your own brick-and-mortar location of your favorite fast-food restaurant. For $42,550, you can open your own business as an OrderUp franchisee: OrderUp handles all the technology: building and managing interactive menus and providing 24-hour call center support to restaurant owners. Franchisees sign up restaurants in their cities or towns, and work with the restaurants to offer promotions to customers. Franchisees then make between 10 and 14 percent on each order placed through a local OrderUp site, while OrderUp takes a cut of 5 percent of each order. “Technology has allowed people to start businesses that are a lot cheaper,” said OrderUp co-founder and CEO Chris Jeffery. “Why hasn’t franchising adopted that? We’d like to believe that we are leading the way of … being one of the inventors of the digital franchise opportunity rather than the brick and mortar.” From its office on the fourth floor of the refurbished Broom Factory on Boston Street, OrderUp has spent the last year positioning itself to be that leader. As of last summer, it had signed up more than 1,000 restaurants in 30 locations and more than 400,000 registered users who order from different OrderUp-affiliated sites. Of his team, 12 of whom work from the Baltimore office, Jeffery said he has “never felt more confident” in them. OrderUp recently hired Kristen Nilsen, formerly of LivingSocial, as the franchisee training and support manager. An additional 13 employees scattered across the U.S.—including Hawaii—staff OrderUp’s call center to ensure that online menus stay updated and online orders are processed correctly.
