Jonas Deprez participated in Battle of Talents, an entrepreneur contest for young students. After a lot of brainstorming Jonas and the other co-founders started looking at their own environment. They were looking for a certain problem or issue they could solve with a service or a product. Jonas is a cooking enthusiast himself, but when he was a student he didn’t have the time to look for new recipes. So instead he often made the same dish as he did the week before, because he knew which ingredients he needed for those dishes. That’s when they came up with the idea of Disj (first called Easy Meal Time), a package where all the ingredients are included and the only thing you need to do is cook it. You don’t have to shop and look for the ingredients and thereby save a lot of precious time. This way students can prepare different meals every week without going through the hassle of looking for recipes and going to the grocery store.

At first the co-founders of Disj started with asking advice from experienced entrepreneurs and experts in the field they were about to enter. Secondly they searched for a partner that could provide funding and infrastructure. The Colruyt Group was interested in their concept and they started to support the initiative. So after partnering up with the Colruyt Group they had the necessary resources to get started.

Values

Convencience, Simplicity , Variety , Creativity

Business Model

Initially, Easy Meal Time (now Disj) had a fully functional business plan. But after partnering up with the Colruyt Group there were some changes made to the business plan. Colruyt optimized the logistical and operational parts of the plan. The sales & marketing aspect stayed pretty luch the same.

As it stands now students order a recipe package (for next week) , they pay in advance and the next week ( monday for example) they can pick up their package at several places. The only thing students have to do is show their code they received on their phone and they can leave with their product. That’s the reason why they pay in advance, in order to avoid time loss when they go pick it up. After sales they ask for feedback to their customers, here it’s also the Colruyt Group that provides a platform for feedback. But when they started they got a lot of help from fraternities. They were able to bring Disj close to the students and ask for input from those students. Alot of social media was used to do their first marketing and sales campaigns.                 

The main USP of Disj is that they only focus on students as their consumers. Direct competitors offer products that are mostly aimed at families, while Disj can offer a foodbox to a single person. Time is also a factor that has been considered in their products. All the recipes that Disj offers can be prepared under 30 minutes.

The revenu of Disj mainly depends on their scalibility. Because they do not deliver at home, they don’t have variable costs like transport. The costs that they do have (mainly logistic) are mostly fixed. So if they can increase their customerbase they will earn more per package.

They launched Disj (with Colruyt) in Leuvenin the beginning of the first semester and are now gaining traction.. The second semester (02/2016) they started with their marketing campaign and now Disj is getting known in the student community relatively fast. Firstly they advertized their concept to students who were signing up for college in september. They distributed flyers to those students, but also to the concerned parents that would play a key role in the eating habits of their kids. Now they also advertize in th Colruyt, student houses, etc.

Growth

Disj is still very young, so it’s hard to tell how well they are growing. Because they were able to manage their backend (logistics,etc.) with the help of the Colruyt Group and the expansion to Ghent and Brussels, they are starting to notice a certain growth.

Customers

It’s obvious that the main target group of Disj are students. The concept was wildly accepted when they introduced it in Leuven but it’s quite hard to change a student’s eating habits. The price is also a strong factor, and you do pay a little bit more then usually for the extra convenience. But in general, when students buy their first “Disj” they are very positive about it and do not hesitate to buy more in the future.

Competitors

The main direct competitor in Belgium is Hello Fresh who offer a similar concept. Indirectly they face competition from the grocery stores. Students who don’t buy a “Disj” mostly go to the grocery stores themselves. But another big indirect competitor are the student’s parents who provide food for them. This means that they don’t have to go through the hassle of doing groceries themselves, so they don’t really have a need to buy a food packet from Disj.

Conclusion

The main opportunity for Disj is that there are still a lot of students that they can reach. They are based in only 3 different cities and even there their product still needs to be marketed. So a large market is  the opportunity here.

A threat could be that their concept doesn’t gain enough traction and that students in general aren’t as enthousiast about it. If they can’t scale large enough they could run into trouble.

When asked about what advice Jonas would give to young entrepreneurs and startups he told us that it’s important to have a great team. All members need to be equally invested.

It’s also very important to ask a lot of feedback from different people before you even start building your concept. That way you will have a better understand of the market needs.

When building your concept or product, do not start with adding all the features and details that you had in mind. Start with the basics so that you can have a testable product ready early on. You can always add stuff later when you see what the market demands.

The main goal for Disj the next couple of years is to be strongly present in the large student cities. They want to be known in student community of Belgium.

Posted on 13/05/2016