Simon Bourgeois has a whole lotta love for local businesses and thinks you should too. The Dalhousie grad and co-founder and president of Gata Hub aims to connect locally owned organizations to their customers through a high-quality mobile experience. Founded in 2013, the app seeks to encourage a shift from consuming on a corporate level to a local one, while receiving the same quality of experience tech-savvy consumers expect. And it's just arrived in Halifax.
"Many smaller businesses don't have the time or money to invest in the services major businesses can provide," says Bourgeois. "Gata's state-of-the-art technology aims to level the mobile playing field, so they'll no longer be a reason why consumers will choose big businesses."
The app offers lifestyle services like transportation, cleaning and delivery, and aims to be your local hub for help. Though operating out of Toronto and working with local taxi companies in over 150 cities, Bourgeois has been eyeing Halifax for quite some time.
"Me knowing the city understood there's a strong connection with the local community, there's a pre-existing connection and that goal aligns with ours," he says. "Halifax has such a great food scene, but the absence of any high-quality delivery services compelled me to want to work with restaurants."
Gata Hub has launched a premier food ordering service including over 50 restaurants in Halifax and Dartmouth that will deliver diverse and delicious decadents at your fingertips. The app allows customers to order, pay ahead of time and track their food's process. You can get your banh mi VIP-style, skipping the line during the busy lunch rush, or get brunch delivered on the days you can't muster up your Sunday best.
"The functionality is quite big," Bourgeois says. "You no longer have to make your decision based on what restaurant is busy or isn't, and this can connect you to great places you maybe haven't tried.
"I'm excited to see local businesses benefit from this and hopefully consumers as well," says Bourgeois. "Ideally down the road we can look back and say we played a part in really connecting the community in a way that wasn't done prior."
