Going up against the likes of Jumia and well-funded local startups like Metro Africa Express (MAX) may not seem like a great idea, but OrderYourFoods is confident it can take a slice of Nigeria’s food delivery space for itself.
Officially launched in February of last year after signing up 30 restaurants during a beta period, the Abuja-based OrderYourFoods aggregates restaurants and enables users to order food and have it delivered to their home or office.
Founder Mufaz Abdulmumin told Disrupt Africa the company was striving to make the process of ordering food online easy for its target market. Ordering with OrderYourFoods takes three steps: selecting location, choosing restaurant and items, and selecting payment method.
“We haven’t just made the process easier from the customers’ end, we have also made it easy for the restaurant partners we work with,” he said.
“We have provided GPRS printers for most restaurants while providing them with the options of owning a dashboard to manage their restaurants for those who are more tech-oriented.”
Though there is certainly ample competition in the market, Abdulmumin believes customers have been lacking simple ways of ordering food and there is room for a number of startups in the space.
“With the increasing usage of smartphones and tablets, and the current rate of internet penetration in the country, people like to order food for the sake of convenience to avoid the hassles of travelling to restaurant, experiencing traffic jams on route and even joining long waiting lines in the restaurant,” he said.
OrderYourFoods has been self-funded thus far, but nonetheless has seen strong uptake. It has almost 5,000 users, and has processed over 9,000 successful orders to date.
“We believe this is the result of sheer hard work from the team in making OrderYourFoods seamless and available while providing the optimum customer service experience,” said Abdulmumin.
He said OrderYourFoods saw itself as an innovative company, and would continuously be adding new features to ensure a great experience for customers. The startup recently launched an order tracking feature that allows users to track riders in real-time.
In spite of the competition, Abdulmumin said OrderYourFoods was progressing well, and had been surprised by the initial uptake.
“We achieved a milestone of 700 users after our first social media adverts. This made us confident that we have successfully validated a problem within the market as adoption was positive and growing,” he said.
“It was a smooth ride on inception. This made us start to think about developing a mobile app to make it more convenient, as we started having loyal customers and advocates.”
Though it is currently operating only in Abuja, OrderYourFoods plans to expand to Lagos soon, where it believes it will gain a bigger market share.
We are also looking to expand beyond Nigeria into Africa. This is part of our future plan to achieve our vision,” Abdulmumin said.
OrderYourFoods makes money from charging a small fee to customers as well as a percentage charge to restaurants. Delivery fees are also charged, while the platform also allows users to make reservations at restaurants and allows for advertising.
“Since inception we have made over US$2,000 monthly on average, from service fees and delivery fees. We have also made US$1,400 in total from selling advertising space on the platform,” Abdulmumin said.
