We spoke to Anca, one of our top developers to find out why she loves working here, what her day is like and how Krumpet the office pug handles the daily standing ovations the team gets at 5pm!

It finally happened, we made it. Last week, we hosted our long-awaited Team FOODit BBQ Celebration (shorter name recommendations, welcome!). And it was worth it.

As much as we love talking about culture and working on different ways of growing it organically at FOODit, it is always good to have a bit of an external push every once in a while to gain some perspective and a breath of fresh air.

It seems hard to take a ‘virtual conference’ as seriously as one where you’ve had to travel somewhere, wear a name tag, and drink bad coffee with strangers. But the quality of the presentations is what really matters, and the presenters lined up were all well-known figures so we thought it seemed a good opportunity to hear some new ideas...

As we mentioned in the first part of this article, FOODit employees work from home whenever they need to and it has been serving us really well so far. However, let’s not forget about the elusive faces behind the screens, entrenched in mystery and never seen by anyone in real life: our permanent remote workers.

Similarly to Apple TV, Marmite or Coldplay, ‘remote working’ is a concept provoking many different responses and generating both followers and opponents in equal numbers. While some people try to avoid it, quoting diminished productivity levels and loneliness (!), others swear by it and see it as the way to the future. In fact, according to a survey by Office Angels, a third of employees think commuting will be unheard of by 2036.

We can talk about our work and services all we want, but nothing speaks volumes as strongly as customer feedback. Over the years we have established some strong working relationships with numerous restaurants as we watched them grow and develop.

As a young, but quickly-growing startup, we embrace change and always try to improve on how we run our business by trying out new things. One of our means of doing it are our OKRs. OKRs, meaning Objectives and Key Results, are a method of tracking and defining shared objectives and their outcomes.

Everybody knows what a good Christmas get-together is all about: great people, tasty drinks and amazing food; which is the exact recipe we decided to follow for our Christmas party 2015.

At FOODit we’ve been working with independent restaurants long enough to know that those that don’t keep on top of their marketing are often far less likely to survive.

With the help of our most successful restaurants and takeaways we’ve identified some simple steps that independents can take to build loyalty in their local area - making the most from their website, their Facebook site, and their existing customers to grow their sales.

We have just released some great new features for our restaurant websites, including dish photos on menus! FOODit customers - take a look at the list and contact us if you would like them on your site.

A restaurant EPOS is a valuable asset for any food business, old or new, large or small. With new technologies making systems cheaper and more flexbile than ever, the benefits that a good EPOS can offer owners and managers are well worth serious consideration.

You have a lovely restaurant, serving great food. The front window looks inviting, and you have your phone number clearly displayed there. So why do you also need to have a professional website?

What kinds of developments in restaurant technology are happening in 2015? We’ve taken a look at some key areas of and it’s clear that technology is playing a bigger and bigger role in restaurant operations.

In the competitive marketplace that restaurants and takeaways share, keeping customers happy is of the utmost importance. Unsurprisingly most restaurants will say that they aim to do this. But how can they be sure they are getting it right?

When trying to decide whether an app or mobile website is the best option for your restaurant, cost is of course a very important factor. However, other aspects such as functionality and effectiveness are equally crucial to avoid making a costly mistake.

Have you ever wondered about the importance of placing particular consonants and vowels in particular places? No? Neither did we - that’s how we ended up with the name FOODit. However, for our food discovery website CentralDish, we dived into some serious linguistic, phonetic and etymological research.

When we found out that Joel Spolsky, the founder of Stack Overflow and Trello, was coming to speak at the Barbican as part of the London Tech Week, we knew we wanted to be there. We’ve been fans of Spolsky here at FOODit for a while and read his Smart and Gets Things Done as part of our book club.

It was FOODit’s birthday this Spring and we celebrated in style! With the time of year keeping the weather chilly, we decided to take matters into our own hands and generated a Hawaiian heat-wave ourselves.

With FOODit becoming officially 2 years old this Spring, we’ve been reflecting on what has been an exponentially busy year. This time twelve months ago 4 of us were based out of a makeshift office outside the City, armed only with determination and self-assurance that we were working towards a noble cause. 26 of us are now residing in Shoreditch with more on the road evangelizing FOODit’s products and signing up more new businesses per week than ever before (April 2014 we were looking at 4 a month, we’re now getting that per day).

There's no denying that the right Christmas marketing campaign can make a huge impact on any businesses' profits and popularity.

There’s no doubt that more and more people expect to be able to book tables online at their local restaurants – and the easier it is to do, the better. If your restaurant offers table dining, no matter how few tables you have, this service is a great way to save time on the phone and keep your customers happy.

So here at FOODit we’ve been hard at work adding table bookings to our restaurant websites, and can now proudly announce that this new feature is ready to go!

With the taste of free samples still fresh in our mouths and enough complimentary pens to stock the office for a year, the FOODit team have returned from the Takeaway Innovation Expo.

Create customer loyalty with online branding which reflects the personality of your restaurant.

Restaurant marketing is changing. With the ever-increasing popularity of websites like Yelp, Foursquare and TripAdvisor, it has never been more important to establish and cultivate an online presence.

Want to save time, money and improve your restaurant business in just one day? Visit the Takeaway Innovation Expo at Olympia on 17-18 September.

JJ Food Service wins big at 2014 Grocer Gold Awards.

Find out what drives people to keep coming back--then focus on it.

Know your best assets and brand the hell out of them.

Offering online ordering on your restaurant’s website can boost sales.

Start thinking in customer-centric terms and move from good to great.

As explained in my earlier post, in summer 2013, I built the same minimum viable product (MVP) three times on three different continents. It was an experiment with a purpose: To evaluate three platforms and three teams at the same time; and to utilize the “lean way” in using validated learning to build my new company’s first product.

I built the same product three times. It wasn’t an act of insanity. It was my way to get my product ready in three weeks.

Follow FOODit's real-time growth, in all its painful, messy, exciting glory.

FOODit now has a brand (and a sweet little chef mascot, named Foodie).