Brand Tasmania Newsletter, June, 2008, Issue 83

One hundred thousand visitors to Tasmanian-devised website mealopedia.com have discovered that a simple click can answer the timeless household question: “What’s for tea, Mum?” Student-entrepreneur Toby Simmons, then 21, and his brother Josh, 25, launched mealopedia.com in November 2007 to provide weekly menus and shopping lists that remove the hassle from household catering. Simmons said: “mealopedia.com helps people to achieve affordable and painless grocery shopping. It creates a menu for the week and supplies an accompanying shopping list, so clients can buy only the ingredients they'll need for the week. This saves them time and money - no more repeat supermarket trips to pick up forgotten items and no more compromised meals with key ingredients missing. And it’s Australian so you don’t go out on wild goose chases looking for items that are only stocked in Harrods in London or in some American supermarket chain.”

mealopedia.com also looks after people who have ingredients in their fridges or cupboards that they don't know what to do with. The site’s new Recipe Finder offers a range of dishes to match most ingredients, as well as exotic recipes to meet that occasional craving most people have for something out-of-the-ordinary.

Old-fashioned research built a basic inventory of recipes and now there is a constant flow of additional recipes from customers enthused by the concept. “mealopedia.com seems to generate enthusiasm among people who visit the site,” Simmons said. “Lots of people send us recipes and some of them really take ownership and become serial submitters. It would be interesting to run focal groups to understand the motivation for this more clearly.”

The web site is well-designed, easy to navigate and not loaded down with multimedia bells and whistles. Toby Simmon, who is Marketing Director of mealopedia.com, said: “The original concept was to help everyday Australians find simple, healthy and appetising meal ideas, to select serving sizes, create a shopping list and source ingredients in their own locality. We’re constantly adding new features. Every menu now has accompanying nutritional data so people can see at a glance the calories, protein, fat and other elements of the planned meal. In light of the obesity epidemic, we believe this is fundamental. We also supply wine matches for meals, an interactive glossary and a function that allows users to provide comment and ratings for meals. Anybody who needs to watch a wallet or a waistline can get a benefit from mealopedia.com. It’s free and we’re confident it’s the most intelligent online food service available to Australian consumers.”

mealopedia.com’s present revenue derives from advertising. “Unless you’ve got a good business model it’s very hard to make a dollar on the internet,” Simmons said. “There’s so much competition, but we’re profitable after seven months and that’s unusual. Advertisers like the fact that we’re able to segment our audience geographically – by area codes. This means an advertiser does not have to pay to reach segments of the population that are irrelevant to his business. For instance, if an advertiser only wants to communicate with people in Launceston, we can arrange to send his message only to our clients in the 7250 post-code area.”

Toby Simmons moved from Melbourne to Hobart two years ago and has filled management roles in the hospitality and fitness industry while completing his Batchelor of Marketing degree at the University of Tasmania. He now hopes to undertake a Masters degree on a part-time basis, while further developing mealopedia.com. He sees potential in integrating the mealopedia.com system with retailers, so customers can be provided with pricing information. “Food price increases are an important issue for many of our customers,” he said. “Our original objective was to integrate our system with one or more retail systems so people would be able to search by price. This is complex, of course, and is still under consideration.”

Simmons would also like to explore the potential of partnerships with groups like the Tasmanian Vegetable Marketing Task Force and Wine Industry Tasmania. He has established a dialogue with Brand Tasmania.

One hundred thousand hits in the first seven months of operation suggest that the Simmons brothers are on to something. One satisfied customer sent in this blog: “Heard about this site on the radio and thought I would try it. What a change it has made. I am able to buy the correct ingredients each week for our planned meals and then put the recipes [for each day] in clear sleeves on the kitchen bench. Whoever arrives home first can see exactly what we are having and start the cooking. The whole family is in to it! Great going!”

Toby Simmons wants to turn those 100,000 hits into 1 million and you wouldn’t bet on him missing his target.

More information: www.mealopedia.com