The idea of delivering cooked meals to the customer’s doorstep isn’t really a new phenomenon. The demand for food delivered to the customer’s doorsteps is mostly a city phenomenon- where the majority of denizens work and do not have the time to cook their meals.

The food delivery industry in Africa has witnessed impressive growth since 2015. But the growth has been exponential since the 2020 covid lockdown. To cater to this growing demand for food delivery, we have witnessed the entry of some major players in the e-commerce and logistics industry into the food delivery industry. These players include Jumia food, Uber eats, Bolt food, Glovo, and others.

In this week’s app review, we will be looking at two of the most popular food delivery apps, Glovo and Jumia food app. Our review is based on a number of criteria: the appeal of the design, ease of use, customer care response, pricing and the speed of delivery.

We will compare and contrast both apps based on the above-stated criteria and based on our experience of using both and let you, the reader, decide which of the apps you think is the better.

Design appeal

Here, we will be looking at the design appeal and the beauty of the apps.

Glovo app:

The design of the Glovo app is quite beautiful, the yellow and green design is a nice contrast, resulting in a visually pleasing, well-designed app anyone will gladly use.

The play of colours is quite impressive and shows that a lot of thought and expertise went into designing the app and making it something users can fall in love with. A smooth user experience was clearly taken into consideration in its design and that’s quite commendable. 

Jumia food App:

The Jumia app is designed in Orange and white which is the Jumia brand colour but also bears a striking resemblance to the VLC media app. The app design for lack of a better word is quite bland. one does not get the feeling that much thought was put into designing this app, it feels like they found the barest minimum and just decided to go with it.

Beyond the utilitarian purposes of an app, we believe making it attractive can also be a huge advantage and in this regard, the Jumia food app does the barest minimum in our opinion.

Getting started and onboarding:

Here we would be looking at how easy it is to start the ordering experience using both apps.

Jumia food app:

The Jumia app is quite easy to use. You can just go on to make an order for your meal of choice once you’ve downloaded the app without properly creating an account.

This isn’t a bad strategy except that it’s quite disappointing that you now have to deal with the hassle of creating an account when you should be completing your food order. We think the right process should be to create an account first, then order food. That way they can deal with whatever may come up in the registration process first before proceeding to order. 

In the course of carrying out the research for this app review, a member of our team after downloading the app and ordering food got stuck on registering their number as the app didn’t send the verification code to both numbers provided several times which we found very disappointing. 

Glovo app:

It has an easy to use, straight process like you would expect. You will download the app, and create an account which is really a seamless and straightforward process.

After you set up your account, you are expected to grant location permission then you proceed to order. That’s it, for the app review, we didn’t have any challenges getting past this. Which is commendable.

Making an order

Here, we look at how easy it is to make an order via these apps as well as the number of options users have to order from on both.

Jumia app:

Making an order via this app is a nice experience as you have lots of offers to choose from. There are even suggestions on the cheapest offers of the day which saves you the stress of scrolling endlessly to find what suits you.

The suggestions feature is really helpful and makes ordering via the app really easy. There are also offers on ice cream and smoothie options which is really impressive. For this category, we score the app really high.

Glovo app: 

It’s also easy to make an order via this app, with lots of categories and restaurants to choose from. The different category makes it easy for the user to go to the category they would like to buy from, the categories of snacks, local food, and meals restaurants whittle down your search.

Pricing

Here we compare the pricing between both apps. 

Jumia app:

Considering the prices of the meals are not decided by the app but by the vendors, the prices depend largely on the meals ordered and the price range of meals from that particular restaurant.

However, we observed that the delivery price on Jumia is N450.

Although some users can be rewarded with free delivery on some occasions the flat rate seems to be the stated amount which considering the restaurant the meal is ordered from is in the same vicinity,  the price is quite high.

Some meals however come with a discount but not all. 

Glovo app:

The standard delivery fee on this app is N250 which we believe is fair.

Although, this seems to depend on the restaurant you order from, as discounts on meals are also available which can help users on a budget to select something they can easily afford. The pricing of the meals is decided by the vendors.

Speed of delivery:

Here we consider if both apps keep their promise of timeliness of delivery

Jumia app:

For the purpose of this review, we ordered a meal from the app and delivery was confirmed at about 2:45 pm, the ETA for the meals was between 55-75 minutes. But, the meal arrived at about 4:30 pm which was almost two hours after the delivery was made.

This isn’t what was promised. It is quite disappointing as the estimated time of arrival was long and they still didn’t keep to it.

In this aspect, the app doesn’t deliver and performs abysmally.

Glovo app:

When a member of our team made an order from a nearby restaurant, it took an hour to deliver the piece of chicken. This is too long and quite poor performance.

The question is: Why use a food delivery app and wait so long if you can just do it yourself in far less time?

Customer care

Here, we will be considering how they relate with their customers. 

Glovo app:

The app is clearly very customer-centric and we observed that the customer is kept in the loop at every step of the way from the moment they make an order. The customer is informed when the order is accepted, the vendor is preparing the order, when the dispatch rider picks up the order and when it is en route.

This is quite impressive as it keeps the rider informed of the progress of the order. And, they can know how to prepare to receive their order.

Jumia app:

The app really cares about customer satisfaction, customers are given a timeline of everything and even have a channel through which they can make complaints about whatever challenge may occur in the course of the delivery.

We also realised that they investigate customer care rep issues reported by customers and report back as well as issue an apology if necessary. This is important because keeping customers in the loop helps them know that you are concerned about satisfying them and not just taking their money.