[imagesource:bolt]

Bolt Food has confirmed they will shut down their on-demand delivery services in South Africa. The Bolt Food app will take their last order on December 8.

After an industry insider alluded to the move, the company confirmed this surprise announcement to MyBroadband.

“At this time, we have made the difficult decision to discontinue our food delivery operations in South Africa due to business reasons,” a Bolt spokesperson said. “The decision to exit this market is necessary to streamline our resources and maximise our overall efficiency as a company.”

Bolt Food has been operating in South Africa since 2012 after opening its first service in Cape Town that year. Bolt said it remained “fully committed” to its “other verticals in the country and would continue to focus on delivering good quality services to its customers”.

After its 2012 launch in Cape Town, the company offered services to nearly 800 restaurants, and soon after expanded its operation to Johannesburg in October 2021, where it offered deliveries from around 300 restaurants.

At the time Bolt Food country manager James Townsend-Rose was confident it would soon be launching services to other parts of the country too, with big plans to compete with Uber Eats and Mr D Food in South Africa.

Initially, Bolt wanted to roll out their service to all 23 cities and towns in which it was operating its ride-hailing service. But that’s over now.

Bolt Food’s pricing strategy included ‘undercutting Uber Eats and Mr D Food’. While acknowledging its competitors’ market share and popularity, Townsend-Rose stated that the platform “could provide the same type of brand promise as its ride-hailing did — better value”.

The average price of orders from five restaurants on Bolt Food was cheaper than the same items from its rivals.

It was also the cheapest service for three out of the five restaurants, and the second most affordable for one of the outstanding restaurants.

It initially paid all restaurant partners a fixed 15% entry-level commission fee, compared to the 30% maximum commission charged by Uber Eats and Mr D Food.

And so another one bites the dust.

[source:mybroadband]