Users can now check a restaurant listing, all its details and if they feel like it reserve their seat there or order the food at home with a few simple clicks. These features are available live on 1,500 restaurants and we are hoping to add many more to the list soon.

The ‘Book A Table’ option saves users the trouble of calling up a restaurant, answering hundred different questions and repeating their specifications some two hundred times (yes we like to exaggerate but it’s true! Sometimes reserving a table over the phone can be very painful and irritating).  Now they can fill up a simple form and choose their desired date, time, meal, number of seats and even make special requests.

The ‘Home Delivery’ button takes the user to a page where all the information about the restaurant is listed and while they browse through the menu, they can simply click on the dish and add it to their order cart.

If they have any discount coupons, they can enter the coupon code to avail the discount. The site gives the users complete information of the total charges and the applicable taxes. If they don’t want to wait for the standard delivery time, they can choose to pick up their food too by specifying it in the delivery options.

Once they are satisfied with their choices, they can proceed to place the order. For now the only payment option is cash on delivery.

There you go… two more reasons to keep burrping!!! As always, we hope you will enjoy these features and write to us at info@burrp.com for any feedback, information or assistance.

Here’s some of the feedback we received via twitter and on the app store:

Ashutosh Bohra ‏@ashu84
Congrats @burrp @burrp_mumbai for the new app downloading it right away woohoo @ceetee

Nischal Shetty ‏@NischalShetty
Not saying because I once worked here but the @burrp android app is fucking gorgeous!! I’m off to finding a dinner place,got a date tonight!

Gautam Nair – December 11, 2012 - Motorola Defy
Burrp it out
Excellent ..app… good or bad reviews …just burrp it out …

Neha Borkar – December 12, 2012 - LG Optimus One with version 1.0
Very helpful app
Eating out now becomes really easy!

Sohan Rao – December 11, 2012 - Version 1.0
Finally! On android
UI is quite smooth no problems there but needs some work on contents as there are very good alternatives at least for Food related suggestions…keep up the good work.

Available via the Google Play Store, there are a lot of fun features that our app offers. It makes the users life easier by picking their location and suggesting places near them. But that’s not all. Users can also -

1. Filter their search by locality and cuisine.
2. View menus, pictures and reviews by other burrpers. It’s always good to know the inside story, right?
3. Post reviews and upload pictures.
4. Share via Facebook, Twitter, SMS or email.
5. And one click access to listings marked as ‘favourite’.

The features don’t end here. The burrp! Android app is the only one in its genre which will send you notifications about what’s happening in your city. So now if you want to know what to do on Wednesday, simply use the burrp! app.

1. Browse ongoing and upcoming events including movies
2. Filter your search by type of event and locality. Food festivals, new menus, karaoke, ladies night, movies, sales and discounts, burrp! has it all listed.
3. Date, time, venue and of course price, all the details now available on your Android.
4. Share via Facebook, Twitter, SMS or email.
5. Add to your ‘favourites’ for easy access.

So the next time you want to skip the office canteen lunch or the ‘ghar ka dabba’ and need a place nearby for a quick bite, you know where to look. Or then if you’ve had an awesome experience and want to let the world know what they must do next Thursday, just ‘burrp!’ it.

Download the app by clicking here and send us your, love, feedback and suggestions at info@burrp.com

The one event that was very special to us was our birthday celebration; burrp! turned 6 in August 2012. Keeping in mind the time of the year, our theme for the celebration was ‘The Sound of Freedom.’ The site featured interesting stories like ‘6 burrp! worthy dishes in the city’, ‘6 things to do in a city’ and ‘explore your city in 6 hours.’ With the emphasis on the number 6 established by our stories, we ran a lot of contests along the same theme. Vouchers were given to users who wrote 6 reviews in a day before 6pm, users who were the 6^th reviewers of the day, twitter hash tag contest winners and the two highest reviewers got a pair of custom made burrp! shoes.

The site also had a list of top six restaurants, cafe, dessert shops, pubs and lounges, newly opened places and even the popular road-side stalls along with fun suggestions for ‘things to do’ at the stroke of 6. Since our burrpers have helped us grow and evolve, as a big thanks to all of them, we featured our top six reviewers from six cities on the site.

It was the best 6^th birthday anyone has had, and the love from our burrpers made it more special.

With a promise to give our burrpers the best and keeping in mind the importance of Oktoberfest to our bellies, we launched an Oktoberfest micro site for all things beer. This was active across six cities; Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad, Chennai, Bangalore and Delhi. The site carried information of all the beer festivals in these cities along with stories that even informed our users how they can use beer to attract pretty butterflies to their house!

But it didn’t end here. What kind of a celebration would it be if there was no real beer involved? We gave away lots of vouchers for beer tasting sessions and unlimited beer events. And we made sure they would get ‘legally drunk.’

And finally November was the month to splurge and indulge without spending a single penny. We organized our very first Chef’s Table. With YES BANK as our presenting sponsor, we tied up some of the best restaurants in Mumbai, Pune, Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad and asked the head chef to create a special menu for us. The table for 10  was hosted by the Chef himself, where he interacted with the burrpers and answered all sorts of questions about the food. Our burrpers could book one seat at any one table of their choice just by writing seven reviews in one day. The response was overwhelming and some of the people who attended a table just to try it out, were so impressed that they made it point to attend a few more tables by writing more reviews.

For all those who didn’t get a chance to attend it the first time around, don’t be disheartned. We have a second edition of the Chef’s Table coming soon.

Watch this space to know more about the next Chef’s Table and all fun things happening at burrp!

A special shout out to Vipin Sachdev whose restaurants – Tuscana Pizzeria and Kryptos By Willi – recently won The Miele Guide awards for being the finest restaurants in Asia. This is what he wrote to us when we sent him a congratulatory mail…

Thank you for your wishes. Coming from burrp! it means a lot to us. I love interacting with guests. I believe our restaurants are loved only because the guests feel at home in our restaurants. I personally answer 99% of the guest feedback on our own Facebook page & the burrp.com page.

Another pleasant surprise was when we found the following share/post about one of our articles from know.burrp.com. Why was it a surprise? Well, believe it or not we are constantly debating and discussing whether you burrpers really enjoy reading all the stuff we post on Know Your City. Thank you iaintwoeyes for this…

burrp! knows all there is to know about your city

When we released our Blackberry App, this is one of the first e-mails we recieved…

Hello burrp team,

The application you have made for blackberry is just awesome. Its really helpful and I have already made 100 people download it. Just a request there is a slight error in the working of the app. Whenever we want to search a hotel or spa , the search is area wise. So we have to change area again and again till we get the perfect spa. There should be an option where the area selected can be mumbai and entire mumbai hotels and spas can be displayed just like the website. Thank you! This problem is from all of us!

Rest assured the team is working on this and many other suggestions raised by you guys. So thanks and keep the feedback coming!

But these are not the only ones… here are a few tweets that definitely made our day!

H @iWanderluster - @burrp_kolkata u guys were of great help in figuring where to eat at goa. Cheers.

A few highlights that may interest you:

• Auto-location detection – automatically shows you top rated places wherever you happen to be
• All burrp! listings available with reviews, photos and menus
• Details of events happening across the city
• Movie rating, review and schedule
• Oh! And it also allows you to add photos and reviews from the app itself

Since we love to make your life easy, here’s the link to the App Store… http://bit.ly/v2z7mT

Don’t waste time trying to find out where, when what. We have all the dope… simply burrp! on the go. Happy burrping!!!

For your convenience, the details page gives you all relevant info upfront. This includes photos, menus, events, and reviews, in a cleaner, clutter-free interface. For those who want to check out the facilities/services available, the entire wealth of information will still be available in the overview tab.

Once you log on to burrp.com, look no further!

P.S. : Don’t forget to burrp it! Let it out! Write a review.

Yup, it’s a virtual battlefield with burrpers from across 8 cities out to Write A Review and win some cool burrp! merchandise. 25 burrpers across 8 cities have so far won goodie bags in our First Come First Served contest. So are you going to be next?

Mumbai is leading but then gluttony is one of the city’s favourite sins. While burrpers in Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai and Pune are at least attempting to put up a fight, Kolkata doesn’t seem to have any true-blue foodies. And we thought Bengalis loved eating just as much as they loved writing or discussing politics. Burrpers of Kolkata… where art thou? Delhi is another disappointment. What happened to all the Dilliwalas and their love for khaana-shaana, daaru-vaaru?

A special shout out to RaviSHAH123 from Pune and rahulbasu16 from Hyderabad for being burrp! loyalists. Special gifts coming your way soon! For the rest of you’ll click on your city below, be the first to review and win some burrp! goodies now.

Mumbai

Delhi

Bangalore

Hyderabad

Chennai

Kolkata

Ahmedabad

Pune

While we did not intentionally copy any data, it is important to realize that in our business managing large amounts of listings and user generated content there are many potential process glitches that could lead to small amounts of unwanted data creeping into our website.

Because of this incident we have been talking to people at Zomato directly and they have shown an equal interest towards quickly moving this forward. Both of us acknowledge that large scale data acquisition and verification can lead to an occasional problem or two. We have also agreed to introspect hard on our internal processes and practices. Finally, both of us have reached the consensus that we need to put this behind us and move forward with our respective businesses.

So, for the record, the hatchet is now buried and everything is OK between Zomato and Burrp.

We were taken by surprise today through a post that we saw on pluggd.in led by a blog post by our friends up north. To put it bluntly, it accuses burrp! of copying data from their website.

Well, first of all – why would we copy half the phone number? The number in question – (011) 49422222 by itself doesn’t go anywhere. Go ahead – dial the number. Try it.

You’ll need an extension number also to connect to the business. The request to add the business in question came via an email and we added it verbatim in good faith. If we would’ve taken it from their website, why would we leave out the extension number? This makes no sense.

Secondly - consider the numbers – burrp! has over 150,000 businesses – way many more than Zomato who claim to have 18,000 businesses. We have been at it since 2006 way before Zomato/Foodiebay was even born and the sun was just as hot. Not only the count of listings are higher – but the depth of information and data points in a listing are a lot higher. Check out some examples: Grillopolis, Shiro etc.

Frankly, we were a little disappointed on seeing their post. An issue with one odd listing could have easily been resolved over email. We make it a point to verify every listing added on burrp!, but an occasional one does slip by. Last such instance was quickly acted upon by our team and we had honored the feedback given to us by Zomato.

We believe in competing fairly and hard. If we had to go around taking cheap shots, this is what we would say:

• It’s they who have been on a copying spree. When FoodieBay started out they only had menus. Over the months they’ve added every feature available on burrp! – user & expert reviews, photos, maps, user lists, local events, business owner responses.
• Of late, the inspiration from burrp! is showing signs of turning into desperation.
  • They’ve hired a few of our employees from sales and content, presumably, to get a peek into how burrp! functions internally.
  • They’re putting fake ratings on un-reviewed business and submitting it to Google in violation of Google’s policy. These listings with fake ratings show up on Google alongside listings with genuine user ratings from sites like TripAdvisor, burrp!, etc., thereby confusing users.

We’re willing to take a bet on how soon they will also copy other features available on burrp! like – Send 2 Phone, Food award certificates, Movie listings, Video reviews, TV Guide,  and even the New Year’s party guide.

The attempt today was a stunt to generate sympathy by using a cheap tactic by a competitor probably running out of ideas to grow.

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