What exactly is hellofood.com Africa all about?
hellofood.com Africa is a web and mobile platform where people can order food from all the restaurants in their city. And we work majorly with all the most popular restaurants in each of the 14 cities that we currently operate in Africa. Our goal is simple; we introduce our Hellofoodies to the incredible choice of restaurants available in their city, while also making it incredibly fast and easy to place an order.
What inspired you to put up a company that renders such service?
As a customer, it is typically very difficult to order food for delivery in most African cities. It can also be very hard to find great restaurants and even harder to get a working phone number, almost impossible to know what’s on the menu and how much it costs. And then you often have to deal with frustrating customer service, they drop phone lines on you and the list just goes on.
So we saw a gap in the market for a service that revolutionises this whole process. The service enables someone with no knowledge of the city to find a great restaurant and place a delivery order within one minute. So now, even if you are stuck in the office at lunchtime, or you are looking for a healthy food to order for your family, that is where Hellofood.com comes in.
Why online business?
I decided to go online because I realised that there are more people online in Nigeria than there are people at all where I’m from, which is the UK. A large proportion access the internet from mobile devices, providing a huge opportunity for the business. Online is exploding in Nigeria and we are right at the forefront of this expansion.
How and when did you get started?
I moved from London to Nigeria in late 2012 to start Hellofood Africa and it has been a thrilling ride since then. We started in a cramped room in Lekki, Lagos and 18 months later, we have tens of thousands of customers in 10 African countries and heavyweights like MTN coming on board as investors.
We just went from there to signing restaurants, improving our mobile apps, making marketing partnerships and just getting out there. And although it took a lot of hard graft and confidence and slowly but surely we managed to convince restaurant chains and customers that we had a great product.
So how has the company grown since it was established in 2012?
hellofood.com Africa has grown on average by nearly 10 per cent per week since we started 20 months ago. We have tens of thousands of customers across Africa whose loyalty is significantly above average for this kind of business.
We’ve partnered with heavyweight brands like KFC, McDonalds, Samsung and MTN and brought out some awesome technology. I’m incredibly proud of what we’ve achieved so far in 14 cities and 10 countries and excited that there is still a huge amount of growth still to go.
What prompted the decision to have a branch in Nigeria?
Nigeria is the epicentre of the African tech scene. It is a huge, still relatively uncompetitive market with a skilled, driven workforce and a commercial, risk-loving mindset that welcomes new businesses and ideas.
On the food front, there is a huge variety of restaurants across all cuisines and price points. But they are however, difficult to find and even harder to order delivery from. So we saw a huge market with a clear need for our service.
How do you coordinate the branches across these countries?
We operate the business in 14 cities across 10 countries in Africa, soon to be 11. And each country is a distinct unit, with a MD and local team. So I’m excited about the fact that we have created over 80 jobs in Africa, we’ve taught our team new skills and some have even left to start their own companies. It’s great to be part of a new tech ecosystem on the continent.
Nigeria has since been its first and largest market, how was this achieved?
Nigerians are serious about food. We realised that in Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt where we operate, there is a great restaurant scene, but very bad ordering experience. So these are conditions where Hellofood.com add value to the majority of hungry customers who are looking for variety and convenience.
How was the reception initially, because it doesn’t seem like what the Nigerian market would have easily accepted initially?
In fact, the problem we’re solving is not a new one. In Nigeria especially, it has historically been very hard to find good food and even harder to order it and deal with typically bad customer service. Now of course the solution we’re offering is very new, very innovative, but that doesn’t change the fact that thousands of Nigerians have this problem of ordering food on a daily basis. So there was a fantastic response to our service. I’ve also found out that the easiest way to a Nigerian’s heart is through his or her stomach. Food conquers all in this country and we’re a one stop shop in that department.
Who are your customers?
Our customers are anyone who is hungry. We’ve designed the site and mobile apps to have something for everyone; professionals looking for a quick lunch delivered to their desk without any time wasted in traffic; families looking for a healthy dinner without any cooking or washing up required; expats who have no idea how to find good restaurants. And the list just goes on.
What type of food do you serve?
If it exists in Lagos, Abuja or Port Harcourt, we serve it. Nigerian food, Domino’s pizza, Chinese, Continental, we serve it all. We have over 350 restaurants on hellofood.com, covering all cuisines and price points.
You can order a Nigerian meal for N300 from Ghana High in Lagos; a Domino’s pizza at N1, 800, or even ask us to cater an event for your business or social occasion. We serve all meals.
What is the time schedule for service provision to customers? How fast does the food gets to the consumers?
Depending on the restaurant, customers can expect delivery in anything from 30 minutes plus. We don’t work with restaurants that deliver slowly or offer bad customer service. We know that customers don’t come back to restaurants that disappoint, so we’re incredibly demanding about who we work with and about making sure that our customers get better service than regular customers.
What are your goals for customers?
Hellofood.com customers are able to find a meal they like and order it within 1 minute. They can find the cuisine they like, whatever their budget, whichever area of their city they live in. They can expect to use their desktop and mobile devices to get food delivered within 40 minutes and have a flawless customer experience.
You are registered with a telecommunication company, MTN for the application. Can you talk a little bit about this partnership?
MTN is an investor in Hellofood, they own 33 per cent of the company. The ability to secure investment from major mobile players such as MTN is something we’re very proud of, something we see as a validation of our model as we approach the major milestone of 50 per cent mobile orders.
We have huge synergies with MTN, our business will be a mobile business first and foremost, and as m-commerce explodes in Nigeria, we have just released a brand new app on iOS, Android and Windows, so it has never been easier to order food from a mobile device.
How do people get and use the applications?
Our apps are the most downloaded apps in the food and beverage category in Africa and we’ve had hundreds of thousands of downloads.
How do you ensure that proper workflow is ensured between the sections to the point of delivery?
We’ve invested heavily in best-in-class technology. When it comes to taking orders from customers to conveying those orders to restaurants, and then managing the customer experience as they await their food, we have set up the very best in automated and human processes to make it happen. And we have fallbacks for absolutely everything.
In a market like Nigeria, you can’t expect to rely on internet connectivity, power supply, or viable roads and we have multiple backups for every conceivable scenario.
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