On-line food delivery was meant to be the great e-bang, but reality is more mundane Click to view caption The "fast" part of "food" in Egypt has always had a glitch, Yasmine El-Rashidi discovers. When McDonald's first opened, for example, the cues to the cash register went on for hours. And then the hype died and the Big Mac and its brothers became the norm. Still, on-site service, it seemed, was always a few minutes too slow. Home delivery, when it came, has been much the same -- partly because of the busy phone lines and partly, of course, because of the culture. Twenty minutes in Egypt means at the minimum half an hour. And if the delivery man arrives one hour later, it is always, they insist, "ma'lish" (never mind) -- the order was sent to the kitchen late, or the phone operator made a mistake, or something else -- anything except his fault. When on-line delivery came to town two years ago, with the grand arrival of Otlob.com, the industry seemed to be on the brink of a revolution. Or so it was hoped. In reality, on-line delivery and ordering did little to speed up the process. "When you log on to Otlob to order," says Osama Kamal, organiser of Cairo Telecomp, the largest communications and information technology event in the region, "You're actually calling IT Worx," he explains. "The order doesn't go directly to McDonald's or Chili's. It goes to IT Worx and they, in turn, call up the respective places. It's one of the projects I'm looking into implementing effectively -- as it's done elsewhere in the world." IT Worx, a software development and consulting firm, sold to Linkdotnet in a mega IT merger two weeks ago, was the year's big success story, its striking orange billboard signs and banners being the first real signs of the coming of Egypt's expected portal boom. "Why aren't we advertising like that?" came the whispers of anxious portal-employees at places like Nomad and Bayt -- both hyped, by their creators, to turn into global successes worthy of the attention of none other than Bill Gates himself. Otlob, it turned out, was certainly smart, but not very efficient. "Looking at the system," says Sameh Osman, who spent several years working in Manhattan's Silicon Alley and currently owns his own consultancy firm, "It's very inefficient. You're going to a middle man before getting to the source." And sometimes, that middle man is hard to reach. "I will never forget the time when my brother logged on to Otlob and ordered Pizza Hut," Amira Mahmoud, a writer, told Al-Ahram Weekly. "They called us an hour later, said we had placed an order with them, and apologised for the delay, saying that they were very sorry but Pizza Hut's lines are constantly busy and they would not be able to put the order through," Mahmoud said. "So I just called Pizza Hut myself and made the order!" Both Kamal and Osman believe that efficient, effective and "real" on-line delivery needs to come as a joint effort between, as always, the public and private. "The ministry (Ministry of Communications and Information Technology) needs to offer the private sector an incentive package for providing consumers with an on-line service," Kamal, who is looking long-term into initiating a "proper" on-line delivery service, says. "If they want to create an e-commerce environment, and create a digital economy, they need to make it alluring. People need to find a reason as to why they want to be part of this e-culture." It does not, according to what Kamal says, sound like an excessively hard task. The key to the whole thing is offering all parties involved the right incentives. "If people buy on-line, McDonald's, for example, needs to sell them the burger for a pound or two less than its regular price. In return for that service, the government should compensate them," Kamal explains. "Other than installing the necessary equipment, they can offer bonuses -- a percentage profit calculated on the number of on-line orders." The more orders one gets, naturally, the more profit one makes. An added service, and hence, added benefits -- for both the business and the consumer. "The problem at this point," Osman says, "is the on-line payment issue. People are not going to use their credit cards yet. There is still much scepticism about the safety element." The number of credit card owners in the country is excessively low for a nation trying to transform itself into an e-based state. "It's something that needs to be addressed on a wide scale before we will begin to see any real change in the state of e-commerce," Osman says. "Sort of like the phone cards. They've become a normal part of society. Their use spreads across the social class strata. The same thing needs to happen with whatever method of on-line payment the government comes up with." The main target for an easy e-payment method has been financial institutions which have been urged by the government and private sector to come up with pre-paid credit cards which can either be re-charged or scrapped and replaced for new. "That will change e-commerce in Egypt but there's still the problem of connectivity," Osman says. In his perspective, connectivity in the country will never be enough. "Yes, the government is spreading Internet use and access," Osman says of projects such as the Internet Training Clubs (ITCs) established around the nation to provide cheap Internet access and training to rural and more remote areas. "But still, it doesn't really come into play when we're talking about e-commerce." Partly because no one is going to trek to an Internet Cafe to order food and partly, of course, because McDonald's and Chili's and Friday's -- and locales such as the Marriott Bakery -- are not household names. "It's a long-term project," Osman laughs. "The government is working on projects such as the affordable PC system scheme but we're not really going to feel the effect of it for a long time. And then there's still the question of whether or not an affordable PC will ever really be affordable." To the masses, he means. We need, he believes, a real IT revolution for e-commerce to come fully into force. The present situation, Osman adds, is a bit of a joke for a country trying to turn into a totally automated state. "I mean honestly," he mocks, "Whoever heard of an 'on-line' delivery service that is based on a phone call? Okay, so it's a clever way of making people believe it's really happening on-line, but once people understand the process, it is obscene!" Not quite obscene, but certainly absurd. Related stories: 'Where's the meat?' 23 -29 May 2002
