Indonesian restaurant reservation app MakanLuar offers perks and GrabTaxi rides with its meals

Indonesia has proven to be a great market for tech products related to food and fashion. With foodtech products like Qraved, FoodPanda, and Berry Kitchen making waves in Jakarta, Tech in Asia had the chance to chat one-on-one with Kunal Narang, the founding food fanatic of MakanLuar.

“While there may be a few restaurant booking services out there, MakanLuar is the only one that has, since the beginning, focused on quality of service and content as opposed to rushing out [a] quantity of content for ‘growth hacking’,” explains Narang. “When you make a reservation on MakanLuar.com, it goes through a direct link with our partner restaurants, hence delivering the quality of service consumers would naturally expect – this is not the case with other seemingly similar services.”

MakanLuar prides itself on curating content guides for consumers who are looking to dine at popular restaurants where bookings are often necessary. Narang adds that customers won’t find closed restaurants on MakanLuar. Narang also says MakanLuar benefits restaurant-goers through a loyalty program in which diners can rack up “cash points” that they can then use to subtract from the cost of the final bill.

See: Indonesia’s Qraved gets another $1.3 million investment

The icing on the startup’s cake is its exclusive deals with partnering restaurants. More often than not, diners who book online through MakanLuar will find themselves getting things for free only because they booked through the site. This can include free drinks, desserts, and discounted prices. Diners who book through MakanLuar can also get discounted rides to the restaurants through local ride service company GrabTaxi.

MakanLuar also claims to be the first mover in the Indonesian market outside of Jakarta. Narang says:

I believe our entrance into Bali and Bandung before our competitors would be a highlight […] We’ve now been operating in Bali for over a month and have partnered […] award-winning restaurants including those with Michelin Stars and celebrity chefs.

MakanLuar has partnered with more than 100 restaurants so far in total, mostly in Jakarta. The site lists three restaurants in Bandung, including Burgundy Dine and Wine, and the Royal Stag Bistro. In Bali, it lists more than 20 restaurants. While its direct competitor Qraved has 1,500 listings, MakanLuar hopes to position itself as a more exclusive portal.

No biz like the food biz

MakanLuar is a fully bootstrapped operation, but Narang says that he is in conversations with investors about the company’s first round of funding. MakanLuar monetizes through its partnering restaurants, although Narang didn’t share details about how much the restaurants must pay. Apart from bookings, MakanLuar also provides backend data solutions for restaurants to track customer order histories, spending profiles, and food preferences. This data will help to make MakanLuar’s partners more competitive in the Indonesian market with better marketing and customer retention tactics.