Well, we have an update for you. Yes, Bolt Food has announced its expansion into inner cities in Lagos enlarging its coverage in the state and delivering on its promise to continue providing easier access to daily essentials.

The leading mobility platform launched its food delivery vertical in Lagos in 2021 which provides customers with competitively affordable and efficient food delivery service while offering good working conditions to food couriers and profit to restaurant partners.

Bolt Food boasts over 1000 restaurants on its platform since its 2021 launch and its continuous expansion drive which attracts top restaurants across Lagos.

The initial launch in Lagos Island, Ikoyi, Victoria Island, and Lekki was followed by expansions in 2022 into Lagos Mainland – Yaba and Surulere, followed by expansion to Ilupeju, Gbagada, and Ikeja.

Now, customers can also place orders on Bolt Food in the Ajah, Sangotedo, Festac, Satellite Town, Egbeda, Ikotun, Ojodu, and Ogba areas of Lagos.

Speaking on the expansion, Bolt Food Manager, Sola Masha said, “Our goal is to connect every Nigerian to a service that provides effortless and affordable access to daily essentials. Since we launched Bolt Food in Lagos, we have received positive feedback from our users and partners alike. We think it is time to extend this service to everyone who wants to order food from their favourite restaurants and receive it quickly and safely at their homes or offices. This expansion is also part of our commitment to augment earning opportunities for Nigerians who are either couriers or restaurant partners that can  benefit from our loyal customer base.”

Users in the new areas can download the Bolt Food application on their smartphones to place an order.

BoltFood has an array of restaurants and available menu options to choose from. The application also provides customers with various price ranges and an estimated delivery time.

Payments can be made like the Bolt ride-hailing platform, and customers can specify the location for contactless delivery drop-offs upon order arrival.

Restaurants and couriers can sign up on the website food.bolt.eu. The expansion in Nigeria will help restaurants have a broader reach to customers, with Bolt acting as a reliable platform for affordable delivery and efficient service.

The seed round, which was co-led by Quona Capital and FinTech Collective, also saw participation from institutional investors including Far Out Ventures and Outside VC, angels Doneci Kone and Julian Shapiro, and follow-on investment from Norrsken Foundation, Lofty Inc Capital and Enza Capital. Following its previous raise of $1.1 million, the current round brings Orda’s total funds raised to $4.5 million.

Founded by Guy Futi, Fikayo Akinwale, Mark Edomwande, Kunle Ogungbamila, and Namir El-Khouri in 2020, Orda’s vision is to help small-sized African restaurants optimize their business and achieve sustainable growth.

Speaking on why they backed Orda, Samatha Wulfson of FinTech Collective said, “Digitizing the long tail of restaurants across the continent presents an opportunity to tap into Africa’s largest consumer spend category. Not only does Orda’s omnichannel solution produce immediate efficiency gains for restaurants, but a roadmap encompassing embedded payments and credit also creates a path to tap into the flow of funds throughout an enormous food and beverage industry.”

Building an operating system for small and medium-sized African restaurants

Since its first fundraising announcement in January, Orda has grown its customer base to more than 600 restaurants across Nigeria and Kenya and is now processing over 500% more weekly orders for its customers.

This growth, the company says, is due to an obsession with helping small and medium-sized restaurants run their businesses better.

Small independent restaurants are the soul of Africa’s food service industry, representing the largest segment of the $50 billion industry. However, these restaurants have had limited access to technology solutions tailored to their needs.

Speaking on Orda’s focus on small restaurants, Guy Futi, Orda’s CEO and co-founder said, “From day one, Orda has been focused on building solutions for small and medium-sized restaurants. These businesses operate with slim profit margins and the power of Orda’s software and financial solutions can catapult their business. Our goal is to provide end-to-end solutions that help them optimize their operations so they become more prosperous.”

Before Orda, managers at these small restaurants, who often double as cooks, spent as many as four hours a day doing manual reconciliation, inventory management, and other administrative tasks. Now, through its products, Orda is enabling many African restaurants to optimize their business operations and scale distribution. Its array of products and services includes kitchen display systems, order and inventory management, integrations with the leading food aggregators (e.g. Glovo, Bolt Food, Chowdeck, Jise, Wabi2b, etc), accounting software, microsites, mobile apps and—soon to come—lending.

Even better, when restaurants use these products, Orda provides them with advanced business analytics that informs them of customer behaviour, which in turn helps with inventory optimization and loss prevention.

Building solutions for African restaurants has required certain considerations specific to the region. For example, despite being a primarily cloud-based solution, Orda’s application works offline allowing restaurants to continue to log data even when internet access is unavailable — the data syncs with the cloud application when the restaurant is back online.

The cloud operating software has also been built to have maximum functionality even when there is spotty internet service.

Modupe Alimi, manager at Korede Spaghetti, a popular small restaurant with branches in Nigeria’s metropolises of Yaba and Surulere, commented on Orda improving the restaurant’s operational efficiency saying, “[Before], we couldn’t keep count [of inventory and orders] because we were not that organized. With Orda, we can now keep everything in an account. We know everything that goes out through [pick-up] orders and delivery. We don’t need to hire more employees than necessary and that has made us more profitable.”

This kind of impact is what led Quona Capital to invest in Orda, according to Kofoworola Agbaje, Senior Investment Associate at the VC firm. “When a restaurant owner moves from pen and paper to a fully automated digital platform, it’s incredibly empowering,” said Agbaje. “Suddenly they have insights available to them that can improve their productivity and margins, enabling them to grow their businesses. A solution like Orda can have an outsized impact on small and medium-sized restaurants and the livelihoods of those who operate them, and we at Quona are delighted to support Orda in this important work.”

Orda’s founders have also attributed the startup’s growth over the last 12 months to the excellent team it has put together, a trend it hopes to continue in the coming months. Within the last year, it has brought in Afua Ahwoi (ex-Chief of Staff at Cleo) as Head of Operations and Strategy, and Modesola Osasomi, (ex-assistant VP – Propositions Manager at Barclays Bank) to head growth.

Product-market fit and fundraising for expansion

Following the progress in the last 12 months, Orda believes it has hit product-market fit, evidenced by the rapid rate of adoption, rising referrals, and increasing ease of onboarding new restaurants. ”We have a huge backlog of restaurants to onboard and we’re confident of reaching 1,000 active restaurants within the next three months. Our vendors love our solution and we do a good job of listening to feedback and incorporating that into the new features we roll out. We do our very best to always center the restaurant’s experience at the heart of our operations,” said Afua Ahwoi, Head of Operations at Orda.

With the recently completed fundraise, Orda has vertical expansion in sight, as it looks to improve its payments, credit and lending solutions, helping customers unlock even more value from their businesses.

“Focusing solely on restaurants has given us deeper insights into how they are run and what their financial behavior is. We believe we can accurately predict when a restaurant needs a cash injection or a small loan and are looking to work with partners who can provide those services,” said Futi.

They include language, religion, value systems, social organization, customs, and traditions, among others.  But one important element which identifies a people and connects generations to generations is often omitted – food!

Food is the linchpin of society, and it embodies the rich history and culture of a people. It not only creates a connection amongst individuals in ways other elements of culture cannot, but it supersedes its role and stands to define culture itself sometimes.

How better connected can one be with their ancestors than eating the same food they did, using the same recipes, and making the same mistakes in the kitchen? Many memories pass by of hours spent of children watching their parents prepare food whilst sharing their own experiences with their parents.

For many people, watching what they eat and how they eat provides a lot more information about who they are than any survey or interview can. There is this strong belief that traditional foods taste so much better when eaten with hand than with cutleries. How can one explain that without knowledge of the culture?

More than that, though, food binds Nigerians together in more ways than can be imagined. People share many laughs and sorrows around the tabletops than they do anywhere else.

Stop taking food, especially local delicacies, for granted and appreciate the stories it tells of traditional and culturally rich people.

The Bolt Food app is rich with top food vendors making tasty and yummy delicacies. To help Nigerians ‘chop better’, Bolt Food is offering a simple way for you to reconnect with culture through food. Between the 30^th of September and the 01^st of October, Bolt Food is offering a 40% discount on two orders.

Use the code NAIJAFLAVOUR this weekend on the Bolt Food app and indulge in the delicacies you can.

To stay informed of all our exciting deals, follow us on IG @boltfoodng and FB @BoltFoodNigeria.

Launched in 2021, Bolt Food provides customers with competitively affordable and efficient food delivery service, while offering good working conditions to food couriers and profit to restaurant partners.

At its initial launch, customers could only place food orders from over 100 restaurants in Lagos Island, Ikoyi, Victoria Island, and Lekki.

With the expansion, customers can now access restaurants and food service in the Yaba and Surulere areas of Lagos.

Bolt is looking to add new restaurants to the app daily while also recently expanding to Ilupeju, Gbagada, Ikeja and other parts of Lagos Mainland.

With over 30 million customers worldwide, Bolt has built its ride-hailing and food service platforms efficiently to offer the best services, positioning the company as a leader in Nigeria’s mobility sector.

The company extended its expertise to food delivery to advance the sector with innovation and technology.

Speaking on the launch, Bolt Food Manager, Sola Masha, said, “When we launched Bolt Food in 2021, we wanted to help Nigerians order food from their favourite restaurants and receive it quickly and safely at their home or office. This expansion is an extension of our commitment to providing easier access to essentials such as food to Nigerians. We are looking to expand quickly and ensure that our partner restaurants benefit from our loyal customer base. This is also a way for us to augment the earning opportunities for Nigerians by ensuring that it is worthwhile for couriers on the platform.”

To place an order, users can download the Bolt Food application on their smartphone, with an array of different restaurants and available menu options to choose from.

The application also provides customers with various price ranges and an estimated delivery time. Payments can be paid like the Bolt ride-hailing platform, and customers can specify the location for contactless delivery drop-offs upon order arrival.

Bolt Food was first launched in Estonia in August 2019. The service is also available in South Africa, Ghana and Kenya.

Restaurants and couriers can sign up on the website food.bolt.eu. The expansion of Bolt Food in Nigeria will help restaurants have a broader reach to customers, with Bolt acting as a reliable platform for affordable delivery and efficient service.