The Internet and Mobile taking over the delivery space

Food

For the longest time, restaurants held takeaways as an afterthought. Well, not anymore. The food catering business has gone past the takeout era and has evolved so much that delivery has become the hot trend in Kenya.

The great digital revolution, burgeoning e-commerce and the convenience of mobile money which allows buyers to pay for their deliveries right off their phones, has spurred a whole new industry that is today the food delivery market.

And Kenyans, enticed by the convenience of ordering online from their favorite local restaurants and having the meal delivered to their doorstep and being able to either pay in cash or via mobile money have bought into the idea in their droves.

This is illustrated by the many e-commerce companies that have come up for this space that was traditionally held by the restaurants’ own delivery services.

Pizza Inn, Chicken Inn and Galito’s, combined, have the in-house Dial-a-Delivery service system that delivers within a five-kilometre radius.

Other food outlets too that have entered the Kenyan market in the digital age like KFC, Dominos’, Pizza hut have had the delivery service as a rider for their service.

Then in 2013, Hellofood an online delivery start-up, now Jumia Food, identified a niche partnered with EatOut which was already Kenya’s largest online restaurant guide and reservations engine to offer online food ordering to EatOut users for the first time.

Today the ecosystem has developed to incorporate likely more than a dozen such companies with interests in the food delivery market.

In just the last couple of years Glovo, Yum deliveries, Grubbys, Take-eat-easy, the good food company, deliveroos, Go-beba, Mama Meals on Wheels, are some of the online apps that have come up to cater to this lifestyle.

Not to be left behind, Uber, the online ride-hailing, ride-sharing app also diversified its Kenyan business into the food delivery marketplace too in 2018 with its Uber Eats.

While Bolt Technology, another cab-hailing app is also making similar plans having announced in August that it was in the final stages of conceiving the food delivery business with an app called BOLT FOOD.

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