Hungry Hub offers a fixed-price dining service through its app, focussing on a la carte eateries

Thailand-based buffet app Hungry Hub announces that it has raised US$450,000 in funding from Expara and 500 Startups.

With a fixed-price dining app concept, the app’s offering includes exclusive buffet deals and sharing set-menus at restaurants with average per-booking spends of US$80.

This is the first funding that Hungry Hub has received after a period of bootstrapping, claiming to be profitable for the last eight months.

The company said that the seed funding will be used to speed up on the restaurant acquisition process to 1,000 restaurants in an 18 months goal.

In the next 12 months, Hungry Hub is planning to raise a Series A round and to reach international cities as part of the expansion plan.

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Hungry Hubs offers mostly deals and set-menus such as All You Can Eat exclusive buffet promotions for restaurants that usually only offer a la carte menus; Party Pack, an exclusive set menus for groups of two to four diners with a minimum of 20 per cent discounts on eateries that do not usually offer discounts; and Buffet Plus, a menu option for Hungry Hub-customers-only that are offered on top of existing buffet promotions. It just added Hungry Lunch, a weekday all-inclusive set lunch options.

“Hungry Hub wants to allow diners to be able to know upfront before entering any restaurant as to how much their food bill is going to come to and for restaurants to drive more revenue through sustainable promotions,” said Hungry Hub Founder & CEO Surasit Sachdev.

According to Sachdev, there has been an untapped potential of group bookings, whether for celebrations or corporate dinners, with budgets that can be controlled whilst ensuring the location, cuisine, and atmosphere are right.

“Customer engagement in food service needs to go beyond the marketing function. Customers are more and more demanding as they have more choices,” Sachdev added.

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Established in 2014, Hungry Hub first served as an online restaurant reservation app. However, in 2016, the startup pivoted and redefined itself into a fixed-price dining offer app.

“Whereas competitors are focused on discounts, Hungry Hub helps the restaurant to up-sell and increase revenues while also giving them exposure to a large pool of customers, who directly fits their target market with the ability and willingness to pay,” said Anix Lynch from Expara in regards to the decision to invest in the company.

Currently operating in Bangkok and Chiang Mai, Hungry Hub is looking to expand to major cities in Thailand and planning a regional rollout in 2020. The company claimed to have seated more than 430,000 diners to date.

Hungry Hub is the first winner in the Pitch Corner event of The Seedstars World Summit 2018 in Switzerland.

It was also named the top startup in The Pitch competition for the e-commerce category at the Echelon Asia Summit 2018 in Singapore.

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Image Credit: unsplash.com/@susieho

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