Local Focus: Eat Local app taking on Uber Eats for regional hospitality

Eating food that someone else has cooked is top of many people's wish lists now that we've moved into alert level evel 3. And it's going to be made a whole lot easier thanks to Eat Local NZ, a Kiwi-built web app taking on the global giants.

"Obviously Covid hit and everything went bonkers," said Tim McLeod, founder of Eat Local.

"All of our local venues were all closed. We were walking the streets past all these venues we know and love closed up with the Covid notices on the door.

"I pivoted away from my day job and my usual work, [and] tried to create a solution that would be better for businesses and better for New Zealand."

This app is a money saver for regional hospitality businesses - one of our heaviest-hit industries.

"We're not going to just focus on main centres," McLeod said. "We've created this as a community platform, so it's fitted for customers, venues and drivers anywhere in New Zealand."

And it's attracted plenty of attention, thanks to Nigel Latta giving it a shout-out.

"It's a funny story, he just called me out of the blue. I've been taking phone calls from anyone I can pick the phone up from - cafe owners, anyone really. He gave me some advice - use a few more words, tell your story and this is what I'd like to do. I was like 'yeah man, go for it'.

"I got up this morning, saw some activity on social media and thought 'right, I'm gonna take the advice'."

Eat Local NZ takes just a 5 per cent charge for commission and delivery, as opposed to the much higher rates charged by some international platforms. For restaurants and cafes in the Eastern Bay of Plenty, innovations like this could be the difference between their businesses surviving, or not.

"It's the small businesses that always find it the hardest to create an online shop, then take orders and deliveries - it's way more than any business of that size can really sustain," Mcleod said.

"So we've templated that and made it as easy as possible for them to do it themselves. I'd like to be surprised, I'd like to see people use it in ways I haven't anticipated. But the simplest is get online, take orders and don't get screwed by extortionate fees."

Eat Local NZ will launch around New Zealand next Monday.

Made with funding from