Late-night restaurant delivery service Feast HQ builds hotel offering

Simon Pusey, a former broadcast journalist, launched Feast HQ after working for a TV channel in London’s Trafalgar Square and being unable to order-in food late at night.

“I was doing night shifts and realised you couldn’t get any food delivered. I thought that was weird when I knew there were restaurants open late at night across London,” he said.

After posing the idea of a delivery service to 24 hour restaurants such as VQ and Balans, Pusey set up a website, bought a bike and tried out his idea to deliver restaurant food to customers within a two-mile radius between 11pm and 5am.

The start-up soon received funding, allowing Pusey to pursue his business full-time. However, his target market has shifted over the last year, which he said is why he now sees the hotel sector providing potential for growth.

“When I set up I thought the market would be students, which it is, and city workers,” he said. “We get some orders from the city, but we’re noticing that more orders are from hotel guests who order when the hotel’s restaurant is closed and either room service isn’t available, or the options aren’t what they want.”

Hotel trial​

Feast HQ is currently being trialled at the Club Quarters hotel in Trafalgar Square with menus from Feast HQ-listed restaurants available in rooms. Its Lincoln’s Inn Fields hotel is set to follow and trials are also set to start at Hub by Premier Inn in Covent Garden and Amba Hotel Covent Garden.

“We’re trying to do things more formally, rather than guests finding us through Google and ordering that way,” said Pusey who is in the process of setting up a page on Feast HQ’s website specifically for hotels.

Currently hotels select the restaurants they wish to work with and charge guests £2.50 per delivery, but Pusey thinks hotels could maximise profit by increasing the prices of dishes on the menu and taking commission from the order.

Pusey says the service is ideal for hotels who want to offer guests a quality late-night room service offering with minimal effort.

“At the moment I don't think anyone wins. If hotels have a late-night offering then it's not likely to be a chef putting it together, so it’s not cost-effective for the hotel and it’s not giving the guest the greatest experience,” he said.

“If you've got all these great restaurants open around the corner and us ready to deliver their food to guests, then what's to lose?”

Feast HQ & hotels: how it works ​

• Hotels select whole menus or dishes from Feast HQ-listed restaurants within a two-mile radius and put menus in bedrooms. They can opt to charge the same price as the restaurant, or charge more with the chance to keep the difference as commission.
• Guests order their selection through a hotel’s front desk or directly through Feast HQ who send the order directly to the selected restaurant. The nearest delivery driver is simultaneously notified of the order.
• Whoever has sent the order through receives a text message from Feast HQ at every step so they know where the order is until delivery.
• The delivery is made to the hotel within 30 minutes of being ordered. 
• Hotels add a service fee for placing the order onto a guest's final room bill and hotels are invoiced monthly by Feast HQ for providing their service.