Just Eat invests £3.5m in Flypay to transform digital experiences for operators across casual dining sector: Just Eat, the digital market place for takeaway food delivery, has invested £3.5m in mobile technology company Flypay to transform digital experiences for operators across the casual dining sector. This latest investment in Flypay follows the £7m Series A funding the business secured from Time Out in July 2015. Just Eat also joins Flypay as the latest partner on its new Flyt platform. The investment and strategic partnership with Flypay will enable the company to accelerate its growth plans for the platform. Flyt was launched to help restaurant, pub and bar operators link up the dozens of different digital solutions they use across the customer journey to create more fluid experiences. Flyt is a new kind of technology platform, which will enable integration between numerous technology-based services, from bookings and loyalty, right through to delivery and reviews. Just Eat and Flypay will collaborate to transform digital experiences for operators across the casual dining sector. The first collaboration will involve integrating delivery into operator-owned apps, blended with other key services and technologies across the customer journey. The second phase will look at providing Just Eat’s vast customer base with access to in-restaurant experiences. The final innovation in the partnership will be focused on making it dramatically easier for operators to adopt and utilise delivery technology. Just Eat chief executive David Buttress said: “Investing in Flypay will enable us to continue to build a seamless experience for consumers who will be able to order, pay, receive customer care and book delivery through the same product. The technology will help us to enhance our offer to casual dining restaurant chains, enabling them to fulfil delivery using Just Eat. The Flyt platform has the potential to transform the digital journey in the casual dining space and we see huge potential in this technology.” Flypay chief executive Tom Weaver added: “We’ve enjoyed a phenomenal start on our journey with Flyt. Just Eat is not only one of the world’s most successful and dominant food-tech platforms, but also an amazing technology pioneer. This investment, coupled with a strategic partnership with Just Eat, will allow us to rapidly advance our solutions for both operators and suppliers around the world – changing the customer’s digital journey as we know it. Flypay’s priority right now is to lay the digital rails to a broad number of hospitality environments, to enable a wide range of technology innovators to create new solutions from the tracks in place. It’s about scale, scale, scale and Just Eat plays an integral part in laying those foundations.”

Restaurants, hotels and bars help drive consumer spend bounce-back: Consumer spending bounced back last month driven by a 6% increase in spending in restaurants, bars and hotels, according to the latest data from Visa. Spending increased 2.4% year-on-year in September having been broadly flat in August (+0.1%), Visa’s UK Consumer Spending Index has revealed. Broad spending category data indicated growth was led by strong increases in recreation and culture (+6.8% on the year) and hotels, restaurants and bars (+6.0%). Household goods saw the annual rate of spending growth quicken from the previous month (+2.3%), while food and drink saw a renewed increase in expenditure during September (+2.3%) having fallen slightly (0.2%) the previous month. The only sectors to see decline in September were transport and communication (-2.4%) and clothing and footwear (-1.3%) but the rate of reduction eased in both cases. E-commerce expenditure increased at the quickest rate since April (+6.0% on the year), while face-to-face spending was broadly unchanged from a year earlier (+0.1%). Visa UK and Ireland managing director Kevin Jenkins said: “Economic concerns took something of a back seat in September, with consumers reverting to more traditional spending patterns as they took advantage of the last of the summer sun. Overall spend bounced back strongly from a broadly flat August, and was the highest level seen in the past five months at an annual rate of 2.4%. Growth was once again driven by the experience economy, as people spent more on meals out, family holidays and trips to the theatre. On the other hand, clothing and footwear suffered another fall in sales, with little evidence of the back-to-school ranges providing any significant boost. The gap between e-commerce and high street retailers continues to widen, with the former posting 6% growth, while the latter saw spend remain almost flat. Looking at quarter three as a whole, the average rate of growth was unchanged from quarter two, but below the level seen in quarter one. It is too early to say whether the growth seen in September will continue, and positive signs return more permanently following the soft patch that began in May.”