Online ordering apps in Kenya: how to take orders yourself

People typing this are asking one of two things. Either which app should I install to sell my food, or how do I take orders online in Kenya without handing the customer to somebody else.

Both answers are below, in that order, and the second one is the part most articles skip.

Which online ordering apps in Kenya actually matter

The market has already thinned once. Jumia closed its food delivery arm in Kenya and six other countries at the end of December 2023, saying the business had not achieved profitability since its inception and made up about 11% of the group's gross merchandise value for the nine months to September 2023.

Before that closure, a market study by the Competition Authority of Kenya put consumer preference for food delivery apps at Glovo 33%, Jumia 23%, Uber Eats 21%, Bolt Food 16% and Yum Deliveries 2%, with Glovo also ahead on groceries at 46%.

Two lessons sit in those numbers. Demand for ordering food on a phone is real and settled. And the platforms carrying that demand are businesses of their own, which open, close and change terms for reasons that have nothing to do with your kitchen.

What an app gives you and what it keeps

An app gives you three genuine things: people who were not looking for you, a rider network you did not build, and a payment flow you do not run.

It keeps three things too. It keeps the commission on every order. It keeps the customer's phone number, so you cannot invite them back yourself. And it keeps the ranking, so how often you appear is a decision somebody else makes each morning.

None of that is dishonest. It is the deal. Online food delivery platforms goes through the trade in detail. The mistake is treating that deal as the only way to sell food on a phone.

The other way: your own ordering page

A restaurant can take orders online without an app store, without a developer, and without giving up the customer. What it needs is a link.

The link opens your menu. The customer picks, types a name and a number, drops a pin for the address, and confirms. The order arrives with you. You deliver it. You settle at the door the way you already do.

That is the whole shape, and it is old. What changed is that a small kitchen can now have it in a day rather than paying for a build. A takeaway ordering system covers what such a page has to handle before it is worth using.

What your own page must get right

It must open fast on a mid-range phone. If it does not, nothing else matters.

It must price correctly at the moment of ordering. A customer who sees one price and is charged another does not come back.

It must tell the kitchen instantly. A page that sends an email nobody reads is worse than a phone call.

It must reach the rider with an address he can follow. House numbers are not how most deliveries in Nairobi are found.

It must remember who ordered. Otherwise you have swapped one stranger for another.

We built the order flow around the group chat because that is where kitchens already live. Nobody in a small restaurant is going to watch a dashboard during a rush. They will look at their phone, because they were already looking at their phone. — Tanzeel ur Rehman, co-founder of Get Menu

How Get Menu handles each of those

The link is yours. Your restaurant gets an address on getmenu.ae from the first day, with 12 page layouts and a photo style toggle so a menu of ten dishes and a menu of ninety both look right.

The kitchen hears about it in seconds. Three WhatsApp messages go out in about 2 seconds: a confirmation to the customer the moment they order, a ticket to your managers group, and a dispatch to the riders group.

The rider gets a pin, not an address. The GPS pin the customer dropped at checkout travels with the dispatch, and the rider opens a link that works without any account or app.

Delivery charges follow the building. You set a delivery fee per building and a threshold above which delivery is free, so a tower ten minutes away is not priced like one across the road.

The price is recalculated at checkout. Every line is priced again from your live menu before the order is accepted, and a double tap cannot place the same order twice.

Stock counts fall as orders come in. Sold out flips itself at zero with nobody watching, and cancelling an order puts the stock back.

A QR code menu for the tables. A code for every table, generated for you, and a designer so the printed code carries your colours instead of looking like a parking ticket. The table is the address, so nothing else has to be typed.

The customer list is yours. Names and numbers stay in your account, you can export them to a spreadsheet whenever you want, and loyalty stamps build a reason for a second order rather than a first.

Offers you switch on one at a time. Coupons with caps, exclusions and expiry dates, upsells that suggest the right pairing, and bundles at a fixed price.

Invoices your accountant will accept. VAT invoices carrying your tax registration number, downloadable as a PDF, in one unbroken sequence.

Get Menu charges a flat monthly price and takes 0% of your sales, so the tenth order of the day costs the same as the first.

What it does not do

There are no online payments, so the money is collected when the food arrives. That also means there are no card details in the system at all.

We do not send you customers. An app does that and we do not pretend to. Your page is found by people who already know your name, or who scanned a code on your table, your bag or your poster.

There is no pre-order and no collection order type, and there is no scheduled ordering, so an order placed now is an order for now.

We do not run riders. The dispatch link reaches whoever you already use.

Running both, which is what most kitchens should do

Stay on the apps for reach. Put your own link on every receipt, every bag, every table code and every social profile.

Then watch one ratio each month: orders on your page against orders on the apps. Every point that moves across is margin you keep and a phone number you own.

Start with your regulars, because they are the ones already looking for you by name. The trial runs 15 days without card details, which is enough time to see whether they will follow the link.

Frequently asked questions

Which online ordering apps operate in Kenya?

Glovo, Uber Eats and Bolt Food are the widely used ones after Jumia closed its food arm at the end of 2023. The Competition Authority of Kenya's study put Glovo first for food delivery at 33%.

Can I take online orders without joining an app?

Yes. You need a page that shows your menu, takes a name, a number and a location pin, and passes the order to your kitchen and rider. That is what an ordering system does, and it does not require an app store.

Can customers pay online?

No. They pay when the food reaches them, which is why no card details are stored anywhere in the system.

Do customers need to install anything to order from my page?

No. It is an ordinary web page from a link or a QR code menu. The loyalty card goes into the Google Wallet already on their phone, and Apple Wallet is built and waiting on a certificate.

How fast can a small kitchen be taking orders?

Most are live the same day. If your menu already sits in a spreadsheet you can upload the whole thing instead of typing each item, then correct photos and prices afterwards.