NAIROBI, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- Chanya Mwanyota is delighted to witness her online food business thrive despite the disruptions triggered by COVID-19 pandemic in Kenya.
The savvy entrepreneur owns nine restaurants only available in the digital platforms of logistics service providers such as Uber, Safe Boda and Glovo as well as Kenya's largest e-retailer, Jumia, all run under her company Soul Food Limited.
Mwanyota started the business in 2018 targeting mainly customers working from the offices around Nairobi's upmarket Kilimani suburb where her kitchen for preparing the meals is based.
She has transitioned from Swahili cuisine to offering a variety of African, European and Asian delicacies including Chinese food.
At the same time, COVID-19 has changed the working patterns with employees shifting their offices to homes.
Mwanyota is currently receiving orders not from workers in the offices but families and those working from home.
"If for instance, you have Uber on your phone, all you have to do is go to Uber Eats and search Swahili food. My restaurant will pop up and one is able to place an order," Mwanyota said.
She has Thai Plus virtual restaurant from where one can order Chinese delicacies; Foodiebaba with a menu of Indian cuisine and Naija Plate, for lovers of Nigerian food.
Mwanyota set up Grandma Ruks to meet the needs of native food lovers, Soul Food for those who prefer fast food and Shawarma for takers of Swahili ready-to-eat or drinks.
She resigned from her financial compliance job to start the business which has provided sustainable income to seven employees.
Unlike other businesses that suffered from the economic fallout caused by the spread of COVID-19, Mwanyota's has remained steady thanks to change of customer preference that favored her business model.
"Our business is located in a strategic area. It is in a residential area with offices nearby," said Mwanyota.
"So before COVID-19, our clientele were in the office but now people are working from home and they are ordering from us to break that monotony of home food," she added.
Technology has aided the growth of her business as digital tools such as Google Analytics allow Mwanyota to evaluate the performance of each restaurant and decide whether to fold it or maintain it.
"I have closed before virtual restaurants that were not profitable and replaced them with others," said Mwanyota. Virtual running of the business has also cut down her operation costs.
"I run my business in a more cost-effective way as I am able to serve all the restaurants from just one kitchen as opposed to having different kitchens for each restaurant," said Mwanyota.
Her business is however disadvantaged by its inaccessibility to customers beyond the three-kilometer radius from her Kilimani location.
Mwanyota said the digital service providers onto which her virtual restaurants are embedded only provide for the three-kilometer business operating area.
"My restaurants cannot be found like Uber Eats if you are far off the three-kilometer radius," said Mwanyota.
"But my intention is to establish pick-up points in areas where there is a good base of customers such that the customers can call directly and make orders to be delivered through the pick-up points," she added.
At the moment, a customer places an order and Mwanyota has 25 minutes to prepare the food which is then picked by a driver or rider from the selected service provider.
On a good day, she sells 100 plates for between 300 shillings (about 3 U.S. dollars) and 700 shillings depending on the ingredients.
Tom Nyamache, a professor of economics at Turkana University College in northern Kenya, said that technology is a key driver of business growth in a highly competitive economic space.
"Look at how China has leveraged on technology to grow its economy. Kenya can equally beat unemployment with proper adoption of tech-solutions to businesses like virtual enterprises where fewer resources are needed to run the operations," said Nyamache. Enditem
