Is battle of mobile takeaway apps hotting up?

 

I published a post in January this year, where I compared Mr Delivery and Appetite takeaway food online solutions. My key finding was that Mr Delivery, arguably the pioneer of takeaway food delivery market in South Africa, did not have a mobile app.

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RELATED POST: Mr Delivery does not have mobile takeaway app

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This post is a follow-up, given the summer holiday season when restaurant food sector gets an uplift in sales.

But first…

 

E-commerce in South Africa 

ITWeb published an article in late October titled “SA e-commerce growth unabated“. What caught my attention was quoted SA e-commerce growth since 2006:

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SA E-commerce in 2006 (R’ Mil)

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Expected SA E-commerce in 2014 (R’ Mil)

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Min. SA E-commerce Growth in Last 9 Years (%)

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Clearly, South Africa’s e-commerce has been experiencing robust growth in the last 9 years. This left me wondering if the recorded e-commerce growth made its way into the takeaway food sector in 2014. After failing to find published growth stats on this sector of the restaurant market, my measurement of possible growth is number of mobile takeaway apps.

 

Mobile takeaway apps in South Africa – as 21 December 2014

Using 6 related search phrases that appear in the search windows of the images in the slideshow below, I ran a geo-search of mobile takeaway apps in the App Store. The following apps that relevant for the South African market appeared in the first 10 results for at least one of the 6 search phrases:

Notice number of results for each of the 6 search phrases in the search window? “Food Delivery Apps” has the highest number of apps of the 6 search phrases. Debonaires appears in the first 10 apps for all the 6 search phrases; while Bon Appetite appears in three; and Delivery Extreme and Food Finder appear in the results of only one search phrase. On further analysis, Mr Delivery still does not have a mobile app (yet?).

NOTE: I could not find the apps above in the first 20 for each of the same search phrases in the Android Store. 

The growth of South Africa’s e-commerce does not seem to have caught fire in the takeaway food market, judging by the number of available apps in this sector.

 

About Delivery Extreme app

Delivery Extreme is a direct competitor of Mr Delivery. A Delivery Extreme mobile takeaway app was launched after my January post on Mr Delivery. I downloaded and used the this app to order calamary starter from Ocean Basket 2 nights ago.

#eNiversity: Testing #DeliveryXtreme app tonite. A blog post will follow tomorrow :)

— eNitiate (@The_eNitiaters) December 19, 2014

Bon Appetite app was used for comparative analysis. Here are 3 key findings worth sharing:

1. Both apps do not have social login as an option for registrations and logins. As research has shown, single sign-on enhances traffic and longer visit duration opportunities.
2. Registration on the Delivery Extreme app is cumbersome, as mobile, home and business contact numbers are all mandatory. Is Delivery Extreme excluding non-employed netizens, such as scholars and students, who may want to use this their service using the app? Surely a mobile contact number alone is more than sufficient?
3. Most disturbing was my discovery that actual cost of delivered calamary order was 35% more than cost of completed order on the mobile app – price of the starter was R10 more, while the delivery fee was R11 more!

 

 

 

The discrepancy in cost is enough to discourage use of Delivery Extreme as a service, let alone their app. I can only hope this issue is sorted out before its too late. I shall be waiting in anticipation for their response, as I intend to share this post with them. 

 

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