Highlights — TLDR

1. Innovative Culinary Offering: Eva’s Original introduces unique Hungarian chimney cakes and cones to Canada, evolving from a food truck to multiple physical and pop-up locations.

2. Menu Flexibility with Deliverect: Deliverect’s system enables Eva’s Original to update their menu frequently, offering specialty items with ease and efficiency.

3. Efficient Delivery Integration: Integration with delivery platforms like Uber Eats and SkipTheDishes through Deliverect improves order accuracy and reduces manual entry.

4. Expansion into Virtual Brands: The launch of Big Poppa’s, a vegan burger and ice cream brand, showcases the effective use of virtual kitchens for cost-effective expansion.

5. Enhanced Customer Experience: Improved delivery times and accurate menu information through Deliverect’s platform leads to better customer satisfaction and increased ratings.

How Deliverect is helping Eva’s Original delight customers with its indulgent Chimney Cones

Bringing a Hungarian family treat to Canada.

Eva’s Original is known across Ontario for unique Hungarian freshly-baked chimney cakes and cones. The story of this family-owned dessert shop goes back to 1956 when Eva, born and raised in Hungary, came to Canada with her family. After growing up on Eva’s delicious concoctions, her grandson Justin and his wife Kristin wanted to honor Eva’s roots by introducing one of his grandmother’s favorite Hungarian treats to Canada: the chimney cake.

“We started with a food truck in 2015,” says Kristin Butler, co-founder and CEO of Eva’s Original. “At first, we served only traditional Hungarian chimney cakes, but in our second year, we decided to shape the pastry into a cone and started filling them with ice cream. It turned out to be hugely popular!”

“Our chimney cones were in high demand even in winter, but Toronto winters can get cold. Working from a food truck all year just wasn’t feasible. So, in 2017, we opened our first location on Bloor Street, our flagship store today. Over the years, the business kept on growing. Today, we havethree physical locations, two pop-up stores we open yearly, and two food trucks.”

"The ability to update our menu ourselves is literally like a dream come true. Deliverect puts business owners like us back in control!" - Kristin Butler, co-founder & CEO of Eva's Original and Big Poppa's

Introducing vegan burgers

“The base dough that we use for our chimneys is completely vegan, and the fillings can also be made vegan,” Kristin says. “We have a lot of vegan customers, and my husband Justin wanted to create a second brand that could operate behind Eva’s Original Chimneys. That’s why 2019 we launched Big Poppa’s, a vegan burger and ice cream brand for delivery only. The two brands work so well together!

“Having a virtual brand like Big Poppa’s works well for us because we need less staff and don’t need to invest in customer seating or beautiful decor. We only need our kitchen, enabling us to cut our overhead costs significantly. It’s so successful that we are working on an additional ghost brand. We’ll be offering vegan tacos soon - we’re finalizing our recipes and menus as we speak!”

Delivery: taking back control with Deliverect

Eva’s Original is available on Uber Eats and SkipTheDishes, and Big Poppa’s is also on DoorDash and Ritual. According to Kristin, the biggest challenge of working with all the different delivery apps comes when they need to update their menus and other information.

“We change our menu very frequently,” she explains. “Sometimes, we want to offer a specialty item for a limited time. Often, this is decided only a week before. When we weren’t yet working with Deliverect, we needed to go through the delivery apps to update our menu with the new menu item and photo. The different delivery services had to approve our menu changes, but this could take a very long time – sometimes even three weeks! Changing even one little word on our menu took a lot of effort, time, and going back and forth.”

“That’s why with Deliverect, the ability to update our menu ourselves is literally like a dream come true. Especially with Uber Eats, because it allows us to make menu changes and publish them from our Deliverect account. Deliverect puts business owners like us back in control!”

"We have even improved our ratings because we can now accept orders automatically. This means we can’t miss them, and they can’t sit there waiting, all of which shortens our delivery times." - Kristin Butler, Co-founder & CEO

Increased performance across the board

“Another reason we love Deliverect is that it integrates with our POS provider,” Kristin continues. “Before the integration, an order would come through, and we would manually punch it into our POS system. When you’re busy, that’s challenging, and we don’t always get it right. We used four printers, one for each delivery partner. And you couldn’t even print in the kitchen and the front of the house simultaneously.”

“It’s unbelievable how different things are now. When a customer orders through one of the platforms, the order prints immediately. The chef can take the ticket and staple it to the takeout bag while the order goes into our kitchen display system.”

“When you remove an extra step in the order process, you remove room for error. Deliverect helped us increase efficiency, save time, and increase order accuracy. We have even improved our ratings because we can now accept orders automatically. This means we can’t miss them, and they can’t sit there waiting, which shortens our delivery times. And because we can control our menu, the customer now always gets correct info, further improving our customer experience.”

Changing consumer behavior

Eva’s Original has seen the delivery marketplace grow over the years.

“Since COVID-19, we have seen an increase in delivery of around 20%,” Kristin recalls, “People are now ordering who maybe would’ve never ordered takeout or delivery before. They’re enjoying it, too, so I think many will continue to order online, even if only sporadically. I feel that COVID-19 has changed consumer behavior.”

“With delivery being such a huge part of our business, we’re happy to have Deliverect watching out for us. And you can take that literally! On more than one occasion, Daniel, our point of contact at Deliverect, had told us something was happening in our backend before we noticed it ourselves. That means he proactively checked our business and kept an eye out. That’s next-level customer service!”