Ask any entrepreneur in Egypt and they will tell you right away that one of the biggest challenges faced when starting up is finding solid market research data. You are expected to understand how big the market you’re getting into is, how much you should spend on marketing and if it’s worth being part of it in the first place. 

This of course affects your valuation, investors’ appetite to invest in a certain market, and how aggressively you can approach your idea. Armed with some creativity, gut instinct and connecting some data lying here and there to make sense of it all, making decisions based on said data becomes more of an art, and less of a science, for entrepreneurs with already a lot on their plates. This is not restricted to just tech startups, it’s the same across most industries you will come in contact with.

At elmenus we’re obviously heavily involved with the restaurant industry. We’re aware of problems they can have in attracting customers and very often this is down to a lack of data. That’s where our work as a 'food discovery platform’ is providing startups, investors and existing restaurateurs the ability to seek out the right customers, and provide better dining experiences. 

An example of a popular conundrum for startups in the food industry is where they should be setting up, then, how much they should charge for their dishes. It can make or break a restaurant, no matter how good their menu is, if they’re not catering to the right crowd, at the right place. This is what good research backed by data can help solve.

With this infographic, our first, we have collected and analyzed data from the hundreds of thousands of interactions on our platform, and come up with insights and trends about the restaurant industry in Egypt, over the past year. As evident by the number of new restaurant openings this year [almost doubled] we can safely say that this industry is booming, about to get more competitive, and more interesting.