Abu Shammala added, “In addition to Oriental food, seafood, vegetarian and other meals, there are Western dishes like beef Stroganoff and breaded escalope, whose ingredients are unfamiliar to the customer. He might hesitate to buy them [over the phone], but the website offers a chance to browse through the ingredients. Restaurants have felt the difference the website has made, as these dishes have become more popular and in demand.”

When a customer signs into the website for the first time, he creates an account to identify him and his address, free of charge. Then, he can access different options and choose the restaurant and meal he wants from several food and dessert menus.

He added, “Before the website was created, customers would call restaurants directly and order the meals they want. Then, they would call a delivery service company to bring the meal from the restaurant to their houses. But this process does not allow the client the opportunity to explore what he wants to buy before paying. It also forces him to make several calls to have the meal delivered to his house. The website gives the customer the opportunity to explore ingredients, prices, different foods , duration of preparation … to have the meal delivered quickly.”

Abu Shammala , who holds a doctorate in financial management from Malaysia's University of Science and works for the University College of Applied Sciences in Gaza, told Al-Monitor that he encountered the concept in the various countries he visited throughout his academic life like Malaysia, Turkey and Egypt.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — University lecturer Sami Abu Shammala , from Gaza City, has launched Gaza's first website where customers can purchase meals online from restaurants. The website, No Call Food , the first of its kind in the Gaza Strip, began operation in mid-July, connecting customers to various restaurants from the comfort of their homes.

He went on, “Any customer can subscribe to the website, but it targets middle-class customers mainly who care about the price of the meal before buying it. The website allows them to pick what they want in line with their purchasing power.”

Abu Shammala noted that he had a group of programmers create the website and signed contracts with delivery companies like Yamama Logistics to deliver the food.

He and his team at first found it difficult to convince restaurants to subscribe to the website because it was a new idea. He said, “Restaurant owners were concerned about the efficiency of the website. Nevertheless, around a month of work later, 60 restaurants in Gaza made signed contracts with No Call Food to post their meals on it. The customers’ orders through the website during this short period reached around 420. The website is still gaining momentum.”

Abu Shammala noted that most restaurants that are subscribed on the website manage the deliveries electronically. But for some, website employees call and place the customers’ orders over the phone.

Mahmoud Murtaja, a freelance photographer in Gaza, is a frequent customer of the website. He said that the service solves problems for him while working.

He told Al-Monitor, “Most of the time, I spend long hours outside home to work. I order food from restaurants and the trouble of going to the restaurant, waiting while the food is prepared, then picking it up and returning to work is tiring and requires me to stop my work for a while. Therefore, No Call Food is practical for me.”

When asked about the way the website makes profit, Abu Shammala said, “I would like to say that the online meal prices are the same as the prices at the restaurant. Only the delivery service fee is added, and it is five to seven shekels [$1.30-$1.70] within Gaza City. The website does not make any profit from the customer, only from the restaurant, as they reach an agreement … when the order is complete.”

He added, “We are thinking of increasing our revenue later by setting a yearly subscription fee for restaurants.”

Fawzi Abu Sido, who owns the Abu Sido restaurant and butchery in Gaza City, told Al-Monitor, “We subscribed to the website around two weeks ago and noticed a 20% increase in the restaurant’s orders. This is a good start.”

He said, “We have always faced a delivery problem. Sometimes, the customer tasks a person with delivering the restaurant’s order to his house, and this person might face technical problems like not knowing the exact address of the customer. As a result, the food delivery gets delayed and food reaches the customer cold. We get complaints about cold meals. But the website handles this responsibility now as it is taking care of the delivery service.”

Right now, customers outside Gaza City cannot order food online because of the lack of an adequate delivery service outside the city. Abu Shammala said, however, “We will soon overcome this problem. We are exploring alternatives to give citizens outside Gaza City the chance to subscribe to the website and have their orders delivered.”

Abu Shammala noted that the website has created job opportunities for 20 university graduates, both men and women, including the programmers, marketing staff that visits restaurants to promote the website, photographers to take pictures of the food and post them online and social media specialists to increase the visibility of the website. The team created a Facebook page to introduce the service and answer queries.

No Call Food has also created job opportunities at subscribing restaurants, as owners are required to have an employee focused solely on following up on orders made through the site.

Abu Shammala is currently seeking to expand the website’s reach to customers via a smartphone app. He also wants to expand the website’s geographic scope to include all cities and provinces of the Gaza Strip and move on into the West Bank and to other Arab cities in Israel.