Easy Pan allows would-be home chefs to make their own restaurant-quality food and try out international dishes.
by Noha Mohammed
Like most startups, Easy Pan was inspired by a real-life problem. “One of our friends got married about a year ago,” recalls co-founder Khaled Attallah. “Like most Middle Eastern girls she wanted to be able to make her husband a nice home-cooked meal to impress him and cut on all the fast food options out there. However, she faced many obstacles in the process starting from finding the right recipe to cook, to sourcing all the ingredients, to cooking the meal given her lack of cooking skills.”
The young team, who are the brains behind Ariika beanbags, felt they’d found a niche they could fill. “We thought there must be a solution for that; something that eliminates the hassle from the cooking experience and here came the idea of Easy Pan. We partnered with our fourth partner Doha Tantawy, who comes from a solid marketing background working in brand management in one of the biggest multinationals in Egypt,” explains Attallah.
Easy Pan users can choose from a set menu that changes every month. Pre-measured fresh ingredients arrive in a box with cooking instructions to perfect, international standard meals. We sat down with Attallah to find out how the start-up evolved, and how the meals are kept fresh and varied.
How did you come up with the idea of the Easy Pan service and how has it evolved from drawing board to where it is today?
We, as a team, have passion for identifying a real problem and solving it. We also have passion for brand building; we love to build good brands that people can trust regardless of the industry.
Would you say there’s now a saturation of Egyptian home-cooking and that people are looking for more varied alternatives?
Yes, we are witnessing a change in the eating habits of the younger generation. Young couples and newlyweds are more into nontraditional international cuisines and more health oriented. So, in Easy Pan, we give them the variety of all cuisines and even the traditional cuisine with a tweak to revive our food culture.
When you first launched this startup, were you worried a service like Easy Pan might not take off?
We were very positive about the idea since the day we launched. Our strategy was to win from the top with the niche A class market who are willing and can afford to try new ideas and services and who are more exposed to the western lifestyle. We target the working class who are busy and don’t have time to waste on grocery shopping and cooking trial and error but inevitably won’t compromise on the quality and taste of what they eat. We’re offering them a unique service to excite their kitchen in the most convenient and comfortable way.
Who are your biggest clients?
Our biggest segments are newlyweds and expats. However, we can definitely say that there is a market for Easy Pan in every house, ranging from the kitchen disasters to home chefs, every one has its own reason to cook Easy Pan — be it to save time and effort, taste delicious food, amaze their guests or explore new culinary horizons.
Are people now more interested in cooking at home thanks to TV shows?
Yes, definitely. Egyptians are now exposed more than ever to the global trends and people are now more keen to know what they are eating. As a result, we are seeing a trend of growing home cooking vs. dependency on fast food and unhealthy options or expensive dining options.
What are the benefits from ordering from Easy Pan?
Easy Pan offers a wide range of exotic, delicious, and original meals that can be made at home using recipes that eliminate the lengthy process of recipe planning. We send the most premium ingredients fresh, pre-measured, and ready to cook so you don’t have to go for grocery shopping and waste a lot of time. In the box are detailed step-by-step recipe cards with pictures for all the cooking steps to ensure 0% errors in the cooking process. We have a flexible delivery schedule and we cover all of Cairo. Who are the chefs that you work with and how do you decide their recipes and cooking instructions are up to your standards?
We have on board our executive chef and she’s ex-Four Seasons. We have a fully fledged recipe creation procedure that is put in place starting from generating new recipe ideas to recipe tasting sessions, cooking trials, recipe card development, photography and ingredients sourcing. Our executive chef manages the full kitchen operations and ensures everything is up to our standards via detailed training of our chefs and ongoing quality checks. All our recipes are original with some sort of a tweak to make sure that we always offer an exotic, flavorful experience to our customers.
How do you ensure there is something to suit every lifestyle?
We have a strict process when it comes to recipe planning. We have set criteria for the recipes we launch every month and the menu has to incorporate different options that suit all dietary preferences. Beside the full team, we have a tasting panel that samples the suggested recipes with us during the tasting sessions. Our chef creates the recipes then we do tasting sessions with our panel. After that we get some beginners to try the recipes to test their easiness and clarity of instructions.
Since your recipes change every month, how do you make sure your ingredients are always fresh and top quality?
We’re partnering with local farms and high-quality suppliers to provide us with our daily needs of supplies to ensure the freshness and quality of all our ingredients. We have a sourcing process that is done on a monthly basis to select the top supplier for each ingredient and we are constantly looking for the best suppliers out there to offer our consumers the best and freshest ingredients out there. In addition, we do quality checkups for every batch of new ingredient we receive and for all stocks we have on daily basis
How do you make delivery prompt and keep the ingredients fresh?
We have our own delivery vehicles that we manage through our operations department to ensure prompt and flexible delivery. All Easy Pan boxes are insulated and we place ice cubes in all boxes to ensure safe delivery. Our cars are refrigerated as well to guarantee the freshness of the ingredients.
What’s been your star meal so far?
Our best sellers are the Mexican Salad, Butterfly Beef Fillet, Chicken Quesadillas, and Indian Butter Chicken.
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