SUMMARY
- The online food delivery services has been growing in the past few years, allowing customers access to a variety of foods.
- The platforms used to be the domain of established fast food outlets, local restaurants, cafes and big hotels.
- But with Covid-19 erupting last year, some restaurants have jumped onto the online bandwagon.
Margaret Mutindi has been running her restaurant, Tibbs located on Amboseli Road on the outskirts of Nairobi on digital marketplaces since 2019.
She first signed onto Glovo, and later Bolt Food, Jumia and Uber Eats.
She says her presence on the online platforms has helped her increase orders for her traditional foods and sustain her enterprise even in the face of tough times posed by restrictive measures imposed countrywide in a bid to curb the spread of coronavirus.
“When Covid-19 hit we were told to close and do takeaways only. If I didn’t have the apps then I would have told my employees to go home. But with the apps, my sales went up higher than expected,” Ms Mutindi says.
The restaurant currently has nine employees less than the 15 before the pandemic. But it could have been worse were it not for the digital sales.
“I think the apps were godsend. If I was not online, I would have closed. Even now you can see we don’t have walk-in customers but we are receiving orders and the riders are here,” she tells Digital Business.
Tibbs offers traditional foods such as omena, matumbo, ugali, mukimo, chapati, pilau and yams.
Before Covid-19, the restaurants was catering for offices in Lavington, Kilimani and Mountain View, but orders moved to residential suites in the same areas last year when people shifted to working from home.
‘’For now we are serving both homes and offices in these areas. I even get orders from Athi River (Machakos County),” she says.
The 37-year-old says she was invited to join the platform by the app operators.
“They chose me I think because my customers were talking about my mukimo (mashed potatoes). But it has really been helpful. The dine-ins are not as many as they used to be before pandemic. We are at 40 percent but we can go to 80 percent on weekend because of the bar,” she adds.
Order delivery charges for riders are as low as Sh50, a cost included in the price of food and packaging.
“Sometimes we offer free rides to customers to push sales especially on days when orders are not good or when sales have declined,” she says.
Akinyi Musa took her business, Tunic Restaurant in Kileleshwa Estate, first to Glovo three years ago, offering foods such as fish, ugali, green vegetables, pilau, biryani, matoke and brown ugali. She has now joined the other three platforms.
‘’Since I joined I can’t complain. It has been good for business. I have seen a lot of customers and my sales were not that bad even last year,” she adds.
Most of her orders are from Langata, Ngara, Kilimani, Westlands and Lavington.
The physical business relocated from an area few metres away from the current premises.
Currently the enterprise has a small physical space that accommodates just five customers. But the small space is no hindrance as the business focuses on takeaway services.
The previous space was however bigger to support a large number of dine-in customers.
“This small space only allows us to focus mostly only takeaways,’’ she says.
“These apps are doing us well because sometime they do promotions which increases volumes. We also do our marketing.’’
The online food delivery services has been growing in the past few years, allowing customers access to a variety of foods.
The platforms used to be the domain of established fast food outlets, local restaurants, cafes and big hotels. But with Covid-19 erupting last year, some restaurants have jumped onto the online bandwagon.
Change in customer preference has also helped push apps operators to include the informal restaurants, with Glovo running an option dubbed Kibanda Express on the app.
The informal outlets mostly serve home-made foods at affordable prices ranging from Sh150 to Sh250. Given the relatively lower prices, these food joints are giving fast food restaurants a run for their money.
“Yes, people say they enjoy fast foods sometimes. But I am not sure whether they could afford to spend Sh350 every day for lunch,” said Stephen Ruhohi, head of growth marketing Kenya and Uganda, Glovo.
“We followed people’s movements. During lunchtime, you see people prefer the homemade foods. We found there was a gap where people were looking for affordability and willing to spend about Sh150.”
He added: “Before Covid, it was predictable that a lot of orders were coming from office which shifted to where people live. But the orders are going back to offices,” he says.
The online platforms have conditions that food sellers have to meet to join the platform.
“We require those that can make adjustment on items on offer on a day. We are also finding a balance between a store that has cleanliness, housekeeping style and certificates, a permanent place where you can have predictable menu or where customers know some type of foods will never miss,” says Mr Ruhoh, who admits that they face a number of challenges.
“Such food kiosks are family-owned businesses. We are trying to ensure consistency and a variety of foods. But trying to standardise the business that is offline is not as straight forward because it is not a one-solution-fit-all vibandas.”
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