Scotty Yemek

What did it do?

Scotty Yemek was the food delivery service launched in January 2018 by Scotty, the Istanbul start-up that began in 2017 with a motorbike ride-hailing service. Users ordered through the app, and the nearest motorbike rider picked up the food from the restaurant and delivered it directly, one order at a time. Orders could also be placed from restaurants without their own delivery service, and deliveries could be tracked in real time.

Why did it shut down?

In December 2019 Scotty announced that it was halting its food service and removed the food section from its app. According to the company's statement, its efficient growth strategy for 2020 was to drop the food service and focus on rides and courier services. The service had got off to a fast start and quickly passed 300,000 orders. Even so, food delivery remained a second front alongside Scotty's core business of motorbike rides. In a market with entrenched players such as Yemeksepeti, it is fair to conclude that keeping this front going was costly.

The story

Scotty set out in April 2017 claiming to solve Istanbul's traffic with motorbikes. Founder Tarkan Anlar's idea was to carry single passengers with motorbike riders. Once the rider network was big enough, the company thought the same motorbikes could be put to another use: carrying food.

Scotty Yemek launched in January 2018 in Üsküdar, Kadıköy, Bağdat Avenue and Bostancı. According to a report by Uzak Rota at the time, the service delivered more than 5,000 orders in its first 10 days, with an average delivery time of around 20 minutes. The model relied on taking each order individually rather than batching them. Users could track the courier on a map and also order from restaurants without their own delivery service.

In November 2018 Tarkan Anlar told Marketing Türkiye that they had quickly received more than 300,000 orders across Istanbul. According to Anlar, the aim was to end hours-long waits for food and give restaurants an easy way to reach new customers. According to a September 2019 report by Webrazzi, the Turkish tech news site, Scotty was operating in three separate markets at this point: rides, food delivery and courier services.

Fighting on three fronts at once was not easy. On 10 December 2019 Scotty removed the food section with an app update. In a statement reported by egirişim, the company wrote that its efficient growth strategy for 2020 was to halt the food service and "strengthen ourselves further by focusing more on our Ride and Courier services".

The Scotty Yemek story shows both the appeal and the limits of taking an existing asset into a new market. The motorbikes and riders were ready, and there was demand. But food delivery was a separate battleground dominated by an entrenched player such as Yemeksepeti. In the end the company chose to pull its resources back into its core business.

Lessons for founders

• Using your existing rider network for a new service looks easy, but every new vertical means separate competition and separate operations.
• When growing on limited resources, focus can be worth more than adding new products.
• Order numbers alone are not a measure of success; work out separately what the service contributes to the core business.

Sources

1. Scotty ends its food delivery service (egirişim, 2019-12-10)
2. Scotty will now deliver your food orders too (Uzak Rota, 2018-01-11)
3. Scotty, the life-saving friend in our users' pockets (Marketing Türkiye, 2018-11-06)
4. Scotty: You are not beaten when you lose, but when you give up (Webrazzi, 2019-09-12)

This section is compiled from public sources (Wikidata, news archives and company announcements). Figures are given as they appear in those sources; unknown fields are left blank. If you spot a mistake in an entry, you can send us a correction.

Is something in this entry wrong? Request a correction → Method