In strategy, most traditions are supply-side. They focus on what you must own, build, or control, resources, capabilities, and the industry structure you compete within.

Demand-side strategy flips the lens. It starts with the buyer. The job they are trying to get done, the frictions that lead to nonconsumption, and the price they are willing to pay to make progress.

The Chowdeck story cannot be explained by the usual supply-side stories we tell. We will have to understand it from the demand side.

Demand finds the beachhead. Supply builds the fortress.

Scene 1: Understanding the Food Delivery Market

In one of my earlier essays, I argued that to understand a thing, you had to look at it from multiple perspectives. The market has four moving parts: restaurants, food types, riders, and customers. Platforms sit in the middle, but the real product is coordination in a very volatile environment.

Lens 1: Demand clusters, who is ordering, and what job they are hiring delivery for

Demand in Lagos is not one market. It is pockets with different jobs-to-be-done, different urgency, and different substitutes when you fail.

Table 1: Customer’s Job-To-Be-Done

The student versus young professional split matters. Students can walk into a café, buy a snack, or wait it out. They have more immediate substitutes. Young professionals often cannot. When delivery fails, they improvise with Indomie, bread, or skipping the meal, and that pain makes them care about reliability differently. This is why a platform can dominate one occasion and collapse in another. A lunch promise is not a late-night promise.

Lens 2: Restaurant tiers, the supply side is not equal

Supply is not one thing. Some restaurants need you. Some do not. Some will bend to your systems. Some will break them.

Table 2: Restaurant Type

Goliath starts where the supply is clean (R1). Nothing screams low platform dependence like the way Chicken Republic has terminated partnerships with these startups. David starts where supply is dependent on his platform (R3/R5).

Lens 3: Food travelability, because food is not equally deliverable

Even with perfect dispatch, some meals degrade faster than others. Travelability is how food behaves under travel stress.

Table 3: Travel-ability of food. How well it keeps when delivered.

Scene 2: Goliath’s Playbook

The giants came in rational. They came in with a supply-side playbook. Coverage. Brand anchors. Marketing spend. Subsidised volume. It is the instinct of a company that already has distribution muscle.

Jumia

If you are Jumia and you are early in the category, your first job is market education. So you start with the safest supply.

You anchor the catalogue with national QSRs and big brands that already have standard menus, brand names, packaging discipline, and predictable prep. You make the category legible. You tell people, order what you already trust, now delivered. And because you already have a marketplace with a broad consumer reach, you can blast the message at scale and manufacture early volume. That is rational.

Bolt Food

Bolt’s logic is also rational. Bolt already owns trips. It already owns urban movement. Food delivery becomes an adjacency, and the fastest wedge is premium density.

So you start where the order values are higher, where people can pay for convenience without negotiation, and where the restaurant supply is already concentrated. That is why Bolt Food’s initial Lagos rollout focused on Lagos Island corridors, Ikoyi, Victoria Island, and Lekki, with over 100 restaurants at launch, before expanding into the mainland.

Glovo

Glovo came in with a different hedge.

From day one, the company positioned itself as more than restaurant delivery. It leaned into quick commerce, not only meals. That matters because groceries and essentials create frequency, and can subsidise learning in food if needed. In Nigeria, their later Shoprite partnership is a clear signal of their posture.

Part B: David’s Playbook

Scene 3: Flank Attack

David does not have the money to subsidize three sides of the market. So he does the most rational thing.

He serves the type of customers that his seniors cannot serve. He partners with suppliers that are too local. He pays his bikers more than the competition to keep them. And he needs to make margins while doing this.

If David had the resources and size of Goliath, this strategy would look irrational. Under constraint, it becomes the only rational path.

They went to Yaba. Partnered up with local kitchens. The team would sometimes advance money for ingredients and help merchants organise supplies. Then they sold Eba and Amala, foods that do not travel well, but sit at the centre of how people actually eat.. Pizza is tiny by comparison.

This is non-consumption on four axes.

1. Suppliers (Supply-Side Non-Consumption). These were vendors that no one else could work with. They were outside the digital economy. You technically had to ‘invent’ them as digital suppliers before they could be valuable to you.

2. Food Types (Product Non-Consumption). I do not even buy takeaway Eba. I just buy soup and go home because Eba and soup travel so poorly. Nkwobi, Amala, and Ewedu - these are foods core to our culture, but they are ‘logistically difficult’. By delivering foods the giants avoided (Table 3, Tiers 3-4), Chowdeck built operational muscle where competition was weakest.”

3. Customers (Demand-Side Non-Consumption). The giants looked at the average income in Akoka and looked away. But the students were not unwilling to buy. They were just non-consumers of expensive, corporate fast food. By offering them local vendors, local portions, and a price point that made sense, Chowdeck did not steal customers from KFC. It created customers out of thin air.

4. Riders. Make riding attractive to folks who would never have driven a delivery bike.

From my rough calculations, Jumia Food made a loss of $2.2 per order in FY 2022. And $0.7 per order in FY2023. The giants rented customers. Chowdeck earned customers. Subsidized demand hides the truth about product-market fit.

Scene 4: Selling Trust

I have compared prices on my app. Glovo comes out cheaper almost every time. Cheaper food. Cheaper on logistics. Cheaper on Prime.

Chowdeck was the first to raise prices in 2023 when the petrol subsidy was removed in Nigeria. And they raised it by over 50%. Their CEO revealed that Chowdeck made a decision not to compete on price.

Why do people still choose the more expensive option? Why Chowdeck?

Because in Lagos, speed is not the product. Reliability is. And reliability is made of two things: low variance, and decent recovery when things break.

Sentiment is one proxy for that.

Anselem Kadiri’s review-based sentiment analysis (300 Google Play reviews each for Chowdeck and Glovo) shows Chowdeck ahead on overall satisfaction, but also shows the industry is suffering from the same trust killers: wrong orders, payment issues, delays, and weak support. (3)

Here is the clean comparative snapshot from his write-up.

Source: Kadiri, 2025.

Chowdeck still messes up, but support shows up, and that changes how failure feels.

And for Glovo? 33 complaints on customer service. Worse on every sentiment, including delivery.

Now the paradox.

TechCabal ran a real-world speed test ordering the same meals from the same restaurants at the same time, and Glovo beat Chowdeck in both the morning and evening tests. The same piece points to a key reason: order batching.

A spot test can show who is faster on a Tuesday. Customers do not live inside the average. They live inside the worst 10% of outcomes. Average delivery time is a weak signal. Tail failures define perception.

In a market where every platform is imperfect, the winner is not the one with zero failures. It’s the one whose failures don’t feel like abandonment.

So Chowdeck’s edge is not “fastest on average.” It is cheap enough, fast enough, things break less often, and when they break, “customer service” shows up.

That is what people pay for.

Scene 5. They did not act their age.

The ‘Dean of Valuation,’ Aswath Damodaran, argues that ‘More value is destroyed by companies not acting their age than by any other single factor.’ In emerging markets, this takes a specific form - the imported playbook.

When a global startup enters a new category or an untested country, it becomes early-stage again. The old brand travels. The old cap table travels. But the thing that matters does not travel, proven fit inside the new constraint system. New customers. New unit economics. New supply realities. New failure modes.

So the laws of the early stage apply again, whether we respect them or not.

That is the first mistake the giants make. They enter acting like late-stage companies because that is what they are back home or in their core category. But in this new market, they are still searching. And in search mode, burn is not an investment. If you spend too much, too early, you don’t buy learning, you buy illusion.

This is where Goliath becomes fragile. The giant’s biggest problem is path dependence. The initial investments then harden a flawed strategy into structure. Headcount. Partnerships. Vendor contracts. A sales org trained on the wrong promise. A product roadmap built for the wrong buyers.

Then reality shows up and invalidates the model. A pivot now costs reputation internally and cash externally. So the giant keeps going because stopping would force the truth.

David is different for one reason. He cannot afford illusion.

He starts small because he lacks the luxury of being wrong at scale. So he is forced to respect early-stage physics. He tests in tight loops. He stays close to the ground. He learns the terrain, the people, the edges, the true frictions.

And he targets what the giants ignore. Non-consumption. The people who are not consuming at all because existing solutions are too expensive, too unreliable, too slow, too complex, or simply not designed for them. But David still does not scale until he validates both demand and supply. Only after both loops hold does scaling make sense. Before that, scaling is just multiplying an error.

And this is the dangerous part. David’s advantage is not eternal. It is conditional. If Chowdeck scales by spreading coverage too early, batching too aggressively, underpaying riders, or expanding into new categories before the loop holds, it will recreate the same tail failures it once exploited.

Acting your age is not a one-time strategy. It is a discipline you must keep renewing. The real test is whether David can grow up without becoming the next Goliath.

I am here to remind us so we do not forget.

References

Christensen, C. M., Ojomo, E., & Dillon, K. (2019). The prosperity paradox: How innovation can lift nations out of poverty. Harper Business.

Chukwu, N. (2025, 2 June). What is Lagos’ fastest food delivery app? I tested Chowdeck, Glovo, and FoodCourt to find out. TechCabal. https://techcabal.com/2025/06/02/the-fastest-food-delivery-app-in-lagos/

Kadiri, A. (n.d.). Nigeria food delivery apps: Sentiment analysis of Glovo, Chowdeck & FoodCourt. Medium. Accessed 28 January 2026. https://medium.com/@anselemkadiri/nigeria-food-delivery-apps-sentiment-analysis-of-glovo-chowdeck-foodcourt-9911ab68af3b

Oladunmade, M. (2023, 3 November). How YC-backed Chowdeck hit ₦1 billion in monthly order value. TechCabal. Accessed 28 January 2026. https://techcabal.com/2023/11/03/chowdeck-1billion/

Sometimes, startups act like we have nothing to learn from business history. And every once in a while, gravity reminds us that we do.

My master’s thesis was on the impact of price wars on markets.

A price war is not a promotion campaign gone slightly too far. It is a breakdown in the rules of the game. I have watched them play out across industries and across countries. Each one, unsurprisingly, resolved into one of five patterns.

1. Mutual destruction: Incumbents crater margins, then quietly pay for it by cutting the other things customers notice, reliability, quality, and support. Customers feel cheated, and substitution becomes easy. Everyone bleeds, and the category becomes cheap.

2. War-chest victory: The richest player “wins” the war of attrition, but inherits a broken category. There is a reset of anchor prices, and customers expect low prices. You win the war, then inherit the ruins. If meaningful competition remains, you risk becoming a cheap brand. If you truly lock in demand, you can later recoup through pricing power.

3. Refusal advantage: The player who refuses the subsidy war can use the chaos to reposition around dependable value. While others burn cash to buy volume, they build a reputation, consistency, trust, and premium perception. They do not just survive, they become the obvious alternative when the market sobers up.

4. Truce (tacit coordination): The war ends because everyone gets tired. Prices drift back up through discipline or capacity constraints.

5. Rule change: The war ends because the rules change. Regulation, platform governance, or market structure shifts that make subsidies unsustainable.

We’ll look at two examples.

The UK Newspaper Price Wars

Act I: The Caste System

Before 1993, the British newspaper market was not just an industry. It was a social hierarchy with price tags.

At the top sat the “Quality” broadsheets: The Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, and The Independent. Serious, expensive, and purchased by the establishment. They competed on prestige, not price.

In the awkward middle sat the Daily Mail. It was too serious for the tabloid crowd, too brash for the elite.

At the bottom sat the “Red Tops,” The Sun, and The Mirror. Cheap, loud, and built for volume.

Act II: The Race to the Bottom

Murdoch’s Times was struggling. It had prestige but was losing the circulation race. So he chose the nuclear option. He severed the link between cost and value.

The Times dropped its price from 45p to 30p on the 6th of September 1993. The Daily Telegraph, the market leader, matched the prices on 23 June 1994. The Times retaliated with a further cut to 20p (weekdays) a day later. Competition shifted from journalism to endurance. The Independent did not have a war chest. It tried to hold the high ground, even raising its price. It entered a long decline that eventually ended in a sale for £1 sixteen years later.

Act III: The Mid-Market Miracle

Under Paul Dacre, the Mail executed a strategy of disciplined aggression. It did not cut prices to follow the broadsheets into the trenches. It did not cheapen the product. And because it was not funding a loss-making ego contest, it invested in better coverage and better print.

Then the inversion happened.

The tier 1 broadsheets, trapped on razor-thin margins, started cutting costs. They thinned out foreign coverage, printed smaller magazines, and started covering sensational angles. Meanwhile, the Daily Mail began to look and feel like the premium product. Confident. Thick. Glossy. Culturally fluent. Not elite, but dominant.

The Outcome: A New King

By the time fatigue set in and prices began to climb again, the landscape had been permanently terraformed. The top tier had eroded its own prestige just in time for the internet to arrive and complete the devaluation.

Murdoch won the battle to keep The Times alive, but he turned that top tier into a cheap category, clearing the path for the Daily Mail to inherit the premium tier.

The Mail captured the aspirational class that the broadsheets abandoned in their race to the bottom. It became more than a newspaper. It became a political force that prime ministers learned to fear.

That is what price wars do. They do not just change prices. They change the hierarchy of power.

B. The Nigerian Food Delivery Price Wars, David versus Three Goliaths

Act I - The Caste System

Jumia Food entered early, in 2013, with the halo of Africa’s first unicorn. But first-mover advantage is not protection. It is simply an earlier start to learning hard lessons.

By 2020, the pandemic shifted consumer behavior, and food delivery moved from novelty to routine for many urban customers.

In mid-September 2021, Glovo launched in Nigeria, backed by Delivery Hero’s balance sheet. It came prepared, expanded into groceries and quick commerce.

A few weeks later, in October 2021, Bolt Food entered, drawing on the resources and operational muscle of a global ride-hailing company. These were the three giants.

That same month, Chowdeck was founded in Lagos. It did not have the pockets for a war.

There were three big boys and one small kid who did not stand a chance.

Then Nigeria’s macroeconomic reality turned hostile. Between 2020 and 2023, the economy absorbed shocks that punished any model built on permanent discounting.

GDP contracted in 2020 after COVID and the oil crash. Inflation climbed. The naira weakened. Food inflation surged above 20 percent.

By 2022, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine spiked wheat and energy prices globally. Inflation rose further and food inflation worsened.

Act II: Quality Decay

2023 was the year of reckoning.

In Q1 2023, I was away on a business trip, enjoying the subsidies from the food delivery price wars. After a long day, I ordered jollof rice and chicken from Chicken Republic through Jumia Food. The delivery time promised was 45 minutes. It arrived almost three hours later.

The rider showed up as a passenger on a commercial tricycle. No insulated carrier. He had a regular school backpack. He barely spoke English. I paid and went upstairs to my room. And when I opened the pack, the chicken had clearly been half-eaten. Teeth marks, unmistakable. We both know it was not eaten by a staff member of Chicken Republic.

I took pictures, recorded a video, escalated to customer service, and asked for a refund. No one responded.

We were in the quality decline phase of the price war.

Two weeks later, back in Lagos, I signed up on Chowdeck.

Act III: Tinubu Shock-nomics

The decay had already started. Tinubu’s reforms simply removed the last cushion and forced every player’s hand.

On May 29, 2023, President Bola Tinubu announced the end of petrol subsidies. Fuel prices jumped, transport costs surged, and delivery economics tightened overnight.

In June 2023, the Central Bank unified exchange rates, and the naira weakened sharply. Every imported input cost more, and every operational inefficiency hurt more.

By August 2023, Chicken Republic announced a partnership with Glovo and ended its partnerships with Jumia Food and Bolt Food. The signal was clear. The market was tilting toward reliability and reach, not endless promotions.

By December 2023, two giants fell close together. Bolt Food shut down in Nigeria. Jumia Food announced it would exit multiple African markets, including Nigeria, by year’s end.

Jumia’s CEO described the market as driven by deep-pocketed, aggressive discounting, which is often a signal that the fight was not winnable on those terms.

Act IV: King David

The irony is sharp.

Bolt retreated from Nigeria but remained in Ghana. Jumia, the pioneer, walked away from food delivery. Glovo, which exited Ghana later, chose to stay in Nigeria. And in the background, Chowdeck survived and kept building. It had focused on unit economics. It paid riders well. It delivered what it promised.

By April 2024, Chowdeck raised $2.5 million in seed funding. In May 2025, Chowdeck expanded into Ghana. And by August 2025, it raised a $9 million Series A.

Jumia was early, but early did not save it. Bolt was global and well-funded, but Nigeria punished permanent subsidy models. Glovo exited Ghana but stayed in Nigeria. Chowdeck refused the subsidy war, then won anyway.

Just like the UK newspaper price wars. The fighter with the greater willingness to burn money won the price war. But they won a degraded market and a cheap brand. The deeper winner was the one who refused the wrong fight.

Chowdeck, like the Daily Mail, won because David does not beat Goliath by fighting on Goliath’s terms.

History rhymes most times.

But every now and then, it repeats in uncanny ways.