Peter Symonds - Student realises the App dream

Posted on Thursday 07 January 2016 at 12:45

Peter Symonds' student George Streten and his business partner James Anderson’s joint entry into the JLAB competition for budding entrepreneurs (funded by John Lewis and L Marks) not only won them recognition for the potential of their time saving app, but provided help from business mentors. This has all helped them to further develop the app, shape their business, and connect up with a premium network of small independent of tea and coffee house chains across London to introduce and use the time saving app, which enables people to pre-order and pay for hot drinks and selected food items for quick collection.

“Being a part of this competition with Zest, available free on the iPhone app store, has helped to take our love of apps from the virtual world into reality. We’re fusing the digital and physical worlds,” says George. “We are continuing to work on it and the next idea could see the rolling out of a coffee shop equivalent to the food drive through. Whilst the current app is currently being rolled out in London in a premium network of small independent chains in Soho, Kings Cross and Camden we are hoping its potential could take it to the coffee capitals of the world such as Melbourne and New York - the sky’s the limit.”

Customers with the app can pre-order food and beverages from the shop’s menu, as they are approaching the registered stores so they do not have to spend time queuing. They can also use it to order and re-order whilst in the cafes, again saving time. Beacon signals enable the store to identify where in-store customers are sat, enabling the store to deliver the order to the customer in a seamless, near-magical fashion.

“James and I have been working on developing this idea for almost two years now,” adds George, “but it was on the recommendation of one mentor that we changed our focus to ‘work with what we had’ rather than considering the grander plans of going into the actual café business.”

“We are now looking to expand the business further,” concludes George, “and we’ve just secured a funding round of a further £20,000 which will enable us to expand more rapidly and further develop Zest to stay ahead of this fast-moving industry.”

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