There is a market for food delivery in Zimbabwe, you just have to find it

Nigel Gambanga Avatar
Food delivery Zimbabwe, dial a delivery Zim, Innscor, Simbisa

Recently, a member of our WhatsApp groups was sharing information about the special offer for free delivery being extended by Dial a Delivery Zimbabwe.

Dial a Delivery is a food delivery service offered by Innscor, the country’s largest fast food group. It’s been around for a while and has been providing paid deliveries on orders from Chicken Inn, Pizza Inn, Steers and Nandos.

This latest promotion which offers free delivery to suburbs around the Pomona area in Harare (where Dial a Delivery is based) looks, for the greater part like as a strategy for creating visibility in the market and advertising Dial a Delivery’s existence. All this ties in well with an economic environment that’s been a bit brutal with slow business requiring some sort of jump.

At the same time, it also stirs up conversation around the viability of food delivery services in Zimbabwe. Outside our borders, the concept has been explored, with varying success by startups like FoodPanda and Hellofood.

Zimbabwe already has a decently sized fast food consumer market that has been validated by the presence of various service providers in that field. Beyond Innscor’s huge presence, there are other concerns like Packers International’s Chicken Slice and franchises like KFC that recently made Zimbabwe their home.

So providing a certain level of convenience to the consumers being catered for by all these providers through a delivery service is pretty viable, especially now that the market is a lot more tailored to solutions like this, what with the rise of e-payments and with the proliferation of smart devices and mobile applications.

A look at a local food delivery service Restaurant Runners offers some testimony of this. It has been operating since 2013, offering food deliveries from about 12 different restaurants in Harare. The service normally works with a minimum order price of $15, along with varying delivery charges based on where you are. For some restaurant orders, they can even deliver liquor.

The Restaraunt Runners website isn’t active right now though they have been using their Facebook page to get the necessary information out there. As for payments, they have a cash on delivery policy just like Dial a Delivery.

These two examples, which are in just one city, show that when it comes to food delivery if you can find the right market, and figure out how to offer that market a solution, people will pay you. If you add on the right technology (and cost efficient tools like scooters) that could be e-payments, social media or an online platform or app, you could even expand the scope of your service.

image credit: Dial a Delivery Zimbabwe

One response

  1. Pat Butete

    Im not sure who this is aimed at tbh! The fast food emporium owners or the wannabe pizza (sic) delivery man?

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