Nigerian cloud kitchen startup FoodCourt is focused on making good food more accessible, through the curation of localised virtual restaurant brands.
Launched in September 2021, the Lagos-based FoodCourt aims to give users the best possible user journey from their ordering experience to the moment they taste the food.
“Consumer behaviour is changing in Africa, and despite the rise of food delivery aggregator apps like Jumia Foods and Glovo, there is still a massive amount of inefficiency in the food delivery space. We realised that all customers really wanted was good food and a seamless ordering experience,” Henry Nneji, FoodCourt’s co-founder and CEO told Disrupt Africa.
FoodCourt believes it is the first cloud kitchen company in Africa to take a full-stack approach, where it cross-utilises all its resources for production and leverages its own ordering technology. This, it says, allows it to give its users a great experience while staying significantly more profitable than the traditional models.
Bootstrapped initially, the startup participated in Y Combinator’s S22 Batch shortly after its launch, and since then has seen significant uptake. Around 65 per cent of its monthly active users order at least twice a month, and some as much as 30 times in a single month.
“We are currently operating in some parts of Lagos, and looking to expand soon,” Nneji said. “Our business model gives us the unique flexibility to localise and launch in virtually any market around the world, however, we have a keen interest in Africa.”
FoodCourt monetises via direct sales from its virtual restaurant brands.