5 Lessons in Food Delivery Management for Nigerian Restaurants
Learn 5 lessons on how to optimize your restaurant's deliveries for speed and profit without Chowdeck and Glovo.
Across Nigeria, the convenience of ordering a meal with a few taps on a phone has gone from a luxury to a baseline expectation. Companies like Chowdeck and Glovo have completely rewired customer behavior and raised the bar for what good delivery looks like.
For many restaurant owners, this presents a dilemma. Joining these platforms offers visibility but comes with hefty commissions that eat into already thin margins. Not joining them feels like being left behind.
But what if there was a third option? What if you could provide a Chowdeck-level experience for your customers, using your brand, and keeping your profits? The key is in strategic food delivery management.
Food Delivery Management Lessons from Chowdeck and Glovo
Here are 5 lessons from the success of the big players that any restaurant can apply today.
Lesson 1: Speed is Everything
When a customer is hungry, every minute counts. The big platforms win because they have mastered rapid dispatch.
The time between receiving an order and a rider leaving your restaurant is the most critical interval you control. A slow, manual process where a manager has to call a rider is a recipe for cold food and unhappy customers.
Effective food delivery management starts with automating your order management. A system that instantly assigns a new order to the nearest available rider cuts down dispatch time from minutes to seconds.
Lesson 2: Customers Crave Visibility
The "Where is my order?" call is the enemy of an efficient kitchen. Chowdeck and Glovo solved this with their live map/time countdown feature.
Customers are not just patient when they can see progress. They are part of the experience. Giving them a tracking link provides peace of mind and drastically reduces anxious inquiries.
Using a restaurant delivery software that provides real-time GPS tracking for your riders is essential. It allows you to automatically send customers a tracking link via SMS, giving them the same visibility they get from the big apps.
Lesson 3: Rider Efficiency
Sending one rider on one trip to a single location is highly inefficient. It's far more profitable to have that same rider deliver 3 or 4 orders to customers in the same neighbourhood.
The aggregators' business model relies on one rider completing multiple deliveries in a short amount of time. This is where smart food delivery management truly shines.
A platform with route optimization can automatically batch nearby orders, calculating the fastest multi-stop route for your rider. This means you can serve more customers with the same number of bikes, directly boosting your bottom line. It's a core principle of fleet management applied to the unique needs of a restaurant.
Lesson 4: Gather Data Actively
Without data, you're flying blind. You can't make smart decisions about staffing, kitchen prep times, or even where to open your next location. For example, seeing that you get a rush of orders every Friday at 6 PM from a specific estate allows you to prepare better and even position a rider in that area ahead of time.
The big platforms know this, which is why they monitor everything from your peak order times, your most popular delivery zones, and your average delivery times. They use this data to optimize their operations.
With a good restaurant delivery software, this can be easily solved.
Lesson 5: You Don’t Have to Do It All Yourself
Even restaurants with their riders sometimes face overwhelming demand. The smartest operators build flexible systems.
A hybrid model can be the most effective. Use your riders for your core delivery zone to control the experience and save on costs while using third-party couriers during peak rush hours.
The ultimate goal of food delivery management is control and flexibility. A platform like Dellioo allows you to manage both your in-house riders and connect to outside courier services from the same dashboard, giving you an "overflow valve" for busy periods. This approach is key to building a resilient startup logistics system.
Bring the Chowdeck Effect to Your Brand
You don't need to be a tech giant to offer a world-class delivery experience. The principles of speed, visibility, and efficiency are universal.
By leveraging the right restaurant delivery software, you can take back control of your customer relationships, protect your margins, and turn your delivery operation into a powerful competitive advantage.
Ready to build your own efficient food delivery system?
Schedule a free demo today.