This app helps you find halal food, mosques in Benelux countries

24Halal mobile app. Photo credit: 24Halal

For Dutch Muslim Hicham Issaouti, it was always a struggle to find halal food or a mosque while on the road; his needs for halal food and spiritual sustenance were accompanied by frantic Googling or calls to friends and relatives. It was this constant frustration that gave birth to the idea for 24Halal.

24Halal is a smartphone app that helps users in the Benelux area (the economic union of Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg) to find halal food, mosques and businesses, including butchers, bakers and supermarkets. Starting with a list of 100 halal restaurants in 2015, the app has since resonated with its users, who include business owners and their halal clientele, due to the quality of its data.

“We wanted a user-friendly app for both android and IOS, offering quality data,” Hicham told My Salaam. “Other platforms with similar goals have a lot of data, but not all of it is reliable, [with] closed restaurants, changed phone numbers.”

Hicham Issaouti at a halal restaurant in Rotterdam. Photo credit: 24Halal

24Halal currently features 700 restaurants, 900 shops (including butchers and bakeries) and 736 mosques. It has about 60,000 downloads, with about 11,000 active users and an active social media community with over 25,000 followers on Facebook. Between 10 and 20 new businesses are added each week.

An added value of this app is that it helps mainstream businesses in the region reach out to a growing Muslim demographic, estimated to be nearly 1 million in the Netherlands alone, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics.

To add a new restaurant or service, a recommendation is submitted by a user, after which the 24Halal team contacts the owner of the business within 24 hours and requests them to verify or complete their information about the business. In the meantime, the legitimacy of the business is verified by checking whether the business is registered with the Chamber of Commerce. According to Hicham, businesses are approached on the basis of engagement via social media, search results, and interest shown by users, and promotion is done for a fee.

One of the main concerns about food businesses among Muslim consumers is their halal certification, but Hicham was quick to note: “We are not a halal authority.” The business owner must fill in the details, but the app has clear rules: “If you serve partial halal, we won’t list you. The menu has to be 100 percent halal, but we have another category for alcohol-free restaurants.” The app has had some criticism in its public reviews for allowing restaurants that serve alcohol, even with the filter option, but most of the feedback is very positive.

Women using the app. Photo credit: 24Halal

Shabeer Hussain, Director and Executive Chef at Chef India, an Indian restaurant in Amsterdam, used 24Halal’s services to reach out to Muslim customers. According to him, 24Halal’s promotional service resulted in a 30 per cent increase in their sales almost instantly.

About his decision to use 24Halal to reach out to a Muslim clientele, he remarked, “I think there are ‘gatekeepers’ for most demographics these days. If I want to attract tourists, then I have to do a deal with Trip Advisor. If I want local Dutch, I have to look at local groups. For expats who have the most disposable income, there are quite a few very expensive gatekeepers. With social media, it seems as if people are living in silos and not really mixing widely as my generation did; it’s a struggle for me to deal with it because marketing strategy has to constantly change.”

Another business with mainstream clientele that advertised to the Muslim segment through 24Halal is Dutch supermarket chain Jumbo. They wanted to advertise their expansive halal selections at stores situated in neighbourhoods with a large Muslim population.

Hicham says his long-term goal is to change the way businesses look at targeting the Muslim population directly. “Businesses are careful about targeting this section due to the current political situation, [but] the European halal food market is growing. Smart business means targeting this group before someone else does.”

(Reporting by Susan Muthalaly; Editing by Seban Scaria seban.scaria@thomsonreuters.com)

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