Lately, everyone’s been jumping on the Silicon Lagoon, Yabacon Valley, and – more recently – the Yaba-Right train. These tropes all have one thing in common; they are often used to denote the idea that Lagos (well, Yaba) is the biggest, most noteworthy tech cluster in Nigeria.

Not so, says Adedayo Koleowo, an entrepreneur based in Abuja. He started an online food discovery service called ChowHub in 2015, and now has around 49 restaurants signed up for discovery via his platform. The business model appears simple to me; cultivate a large audience for your brand, then have restaurants pay to gain access to that audience.

chowhub landing page

I visited the site, and I’m definitely impressed by what I’ve seen so far. On the landing page, you can search for a particular dish, location or a specific restaurant, and on the results page, the restaurants get ranked by relevance (and by some weighted score, presumably to denote quality).

chow hub results page new

I searched for “fish” in this example

Asides from the restaurant discovery page, they also run a blog where they post reviews of restaurants across Abuja, and any promotional information. If it gains traction, I expect that they’ll expand their reach to Lagos, and PH and eventually the rest of Nigeria.

blog

Dayo’s also said that an ordering/booking feature is in the pipeline, though since February 9 they’ve been receiving orders via Twitter and Whatsapp.

Psst. Hey. For the record, I think Silicon Lagoon was a terrible name. (._. )

Osarumen Osamuyi Author

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