North Texas Daily

Matt Payne | Staff Writer

It’s a question that has built and broken civilizations, and turned the best of friends against each other.

“Where are we going to eat?”

Enter food vendors looking to answer that question for you. Aspiring business entrepreneurs are starting to catch on to the factors that play a role in the all-important decision of where you decide to spend your money on food.

While traveling out of state in Baltimore, Maryland, BCIS senior Sharukh Mithani heavily relied on GrubHub, one of many online food delivery services, during the Baltimore riots following the death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray

“It was especially helpful during the Baltimore riots.” Mithani said. “Except for when the curfew started, of course.”

When considering the heavy influx of commute Baltimore receives daily, Mithani said ordering through GrubHub was less stressful than venturing into the city.

“There was a huge selection of restaurants, and I sorted by rating to find the best ones,” Mithani said. “I placed the order online and they texted me when the food was ready, when the driver, left, and when the driver was there.”

The startup website EatGreedi serves a similar purpose, but to residents of Denton and Frisco.

Started in October 2014, EatGreedi works in tandem with several restaurants in the area to provide delivery of various restaurant’s food previously exclusive to the brick-and-mortar locations. Places like Fuzzy’s, Mr. Chopsticks and Hypnotic Donuts are among the eats to choose from.

“We’ve garnered a lot of success catering to the Denton community,” EatGreedi co-founder Nyalls Carlton said. “Working with many of Denton’s most popular restaurants, we’ve created a mutual relationship that benefits them as well as us.”

Carlton said the city of Denton has been key to their expansion. He and co-founder Dominique Bookman learned this first-hand, polling students at both UNT and TWU about their thoughts on the potential service before it began.

“We didn’t want to assume anything about this demographic,” Carlton said. “Instead, we got out and talked to our market.”

Carlton said they found many students didn’t have cars or simple means of transportation.  This led to the development of a delivery service with market-friendly driver commission fees.

Any resident within a Denton or Frisco ZIP code can log onto a computer, pick what they’re in the mood for and build their order.

The convenience provided by EatGreedi benefits not the only the hungry Dentonite, but the restaurants involved, Carlton said.

“We handle our Greedi orders the same way we handle our orders for in-store customers, so it mainly affected the quantity of orders,” Hypnotic Donuts owner Raelynn Walker said. “Greedi has definitely helped us reach more customers.”

Walker said because their donuts carry a unique visual presentation, it’s ideal for first-time customers to pay a visit to their store in order to familiarize themselves with the sort of pastries Hypnotic has to offer.

“For our customers who already know what they like, Greedi is helpful because you can get what you want without having to find parking or wait in line,” Walker said.

Featured Image of the EatGreedi app. Matthew Payne | Staff Writer