‘Food Is Very Sensitive, Any Mistake Could Be Detrimental’
To bridge the gap between event hosts and caterers, serial entrepreneur and COO of Faiken Dawn Limited, Jennifer Onose Eromosele has unveiled a revolutionary catering service app ‘Olokpo’, an indigenous Yoruba name for caterers.
During the launch of the app which is targeted at seamlessly connecting event caterers and clients in Lagos, Jennifer who is also the COO of Olokpo App said ideology behind the invention of Olokpo emanated on the realisation that the food industry especially the catering services in Nigeria lack coordination and hereby not easily accessible. “We wanted to create a solution to solve the problem within the food industry. We started by checking what competition is already doing and we found out that there are a lot of apps that do food delivery and none was bridging the gap between the caterers and the clients.
“Further research revealed that there are a lot of people saying they have capacity to cater for events and requesting a referral. On the other hand, there are people who need to host events and require good caterers. So to solve these problems on both ends especially the lack of access to varieties of caterers to choose from, we came up with the solution to build an Olokpo app where we can have catering partners such as restaurant owners, hotel owners, and others, who do outdoor catering of different capacities regardless of location.”
Jennifer however said that the Olopko app, which is currently at its campaign stage, is on Google play store and app store for caterers to download and register. “The app will surmount the persistent challenge of finding skilled caterers within vicinity, as it is designed to connect users with caterers nearest to them, using a map-based interface. This app will avail caterers to have a lot of job requests within the location where they reside. The Olopko app would operate in Nigeria, Kenya, and Ghana for now.”
On the measures put in place to ensure that only caterers with capacity key into the project, she said, “when these caterers register on the app, there will be a verification section where we would screen the caterers by placing them on different levels within their capacity. Also the app offers you the choice to have varieties of caterers by way of pointer within your vicinity, and you can meet with them for food preview events and select. However, if there is an issue, Olopko app allows you to rate and report caterers who have catered for your event. If there is an issue, we have our backend team to investigate. Once the caterer is guilty, we will take the caterer off the app because food is very sensitive and any mistake could be detrimental. We will also compensate the client. This is why the caterers who will be on the app have to undergo several stages of verification, which include facial recognition, email address, full names, phone number that is linked to BVN and location, among others.”
She continued: “Verification is key for all caterers on the platform because we need trusted people who will deliver on promise. But in the case of breach of contract, a dispute resolution platform has been created and managed by our legal team, to address any dispute that may arise from payment and delivery.”
