Vendease: Restaurant Supplies & Procurement in Africa - YC Backed

Food Procurement Challenges for Restaurants in Nigeria and Africa

Managing food procurement can be a significantly complex undertaking for small and medium-sized restaurants operating in Nigeria and across much of Africa. Businesses frequently encounter difficulties in maintaining financial stability, potentially leading to either cash flow shortages or substantial accumulated savings.

A common obstacle is the lack of direct access to farms for favorable deals, often due to insufficient staffing resources dedicated to establishing and maintaining these relationships.

Furthermore, restaurants often lack the collective purchasing power necessary to secure advantageous pricing directly from agricultural producers.

Vendease: A Marketplace Solution

Nigerian startup Vendease addresses these challenges by creating a marketplace that facilitates direct purchasing between restaurants and both farms and food manufacturers.

The Founding Story

The company was established by Tunde Kara, Olumide Fayankin, Gatumi Aliyu, and Wale Oyepeju. The founders, friends for over five years, observed the closure of beloved restaurants in cities like Lagos and Accra.

Upon inquiry, restaurant owners cited the unreliable and costly nature of food procurement as a primary reason for their struggles.

An incident involving a hotel manager’s complaints about inconsistent produce supply further solidified the founders’ idea.

Traditional procurement methods, involving market visits or third-party vendors, proved unreliable, resulting in financial losses due to price fluctuations and substandard produce.

“We questioned whether this was a problem we could solve at scale and generate revenue while doing so,” Kara explained to TechCrunch.

Founders’ Backgrounds

At the time, Kara served as CEO and Fayankin as COO at Pan-African media consulting firm RED Media.

Aliyu held the position of chief product officer (CPO) at 54gene, a Lagos and San Francisco-based, YC-backed startup.

Oyepeju, the CTO, was engaged in various technology projects for corporate clients.

Prior to Vendease, the team had attempted an adtech startup for ride-hailing companies, which ultimately did not succeed.

Following two and a half months of development, they officially launched the company in January 2020, supported by an undisclosed pre-seed funding round.

Vendease’s Value Proposition

The platform is described as providing a transparent process for hotels and restaurants to obtain high-quality products at competitive prices.

Kara likens Vendease to “the Amazon Prime for restaurants in Africa.”

Customers can order a wide range of products, from bread and grains to meat and vegetables, through the website.

Orders are promptly processed and delivered to farms or food manufacturers, with delivery typically completed within 24 hours.

“We prioritize rapid fulfillment, mirroring Amazon Prime’s delivery speed,” he stated.

Vendease currently achieves on-time and complete deliveries in 80% of all orders, demonstrating its operational efficiency.

Impact and Growth

Kara reports that many of the 100 businesses utilizing Vendease have expanded their procurement from a single product type to 80% of their total catalog within two months.

Supporting the Supply Chain

Vendease also focuses on supporting vendors and farmers within the supply chain.

Traditionally, these suppliers faced payment delays of two to three months due to restaurants’ lengthy bookkeeping processes.

This often led to inflated prices to compensate for potential losses, increasing costs for restaurants and hotels.

Vendease is now reducing payment waiting times to just a few days.

Founders’ Personal Experiences

Kara and Fayankin have firsthand experience with the challenges within the agricultural supply chain.

Kara, having grown up on a farm, understands the difficulties of delayed payments.

“These experiences drive my current work. We often struggled to sell our products and ended up consuming them due to a lack of buyers. Even when we found buyers, payments were often delayed by six months. This problem persists today.”

Fayankin’s upbringing in a hotel and restaurant business provided valuable insight into procurement activities and the issues of unreliable and expensive food supplies.

Evolving Solutions

While their initial careers led them towards media and energy, they have returned to address these longstanding problems.

They discovered that customers lacked the ability to track orders and verify product quality alongside existing supply and cost concerns.

Vendease now offers solutions for digitizing, tracking, and automating procurement and inventory management.

The platform also provides logistics, warehousing, quality control, and financing options, allowing restaurants to purchase goods with deferred payment terms.

Future Vision

Within the next five years, the company aims to become “the operating system for food supplies in Africa.”

Kara mentioned plans for expansion into other African cities, details of which remain undisclosed.

As they approach Demo Day, the team intends to secure additional funding, following in the footsteps of Egypt’s Breadfast as one of the few restaurant-focused companies from Africa funded by the accelerator.

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