Omolola Olarerin skipped lunch on most days during her first full-time role as an administrative executive at a pharmaceutical technology startup. With a demanding schedule and food options located far from the office, hunger became something she and most of her coworkers managed privately.
That inconvenience left a question Olarerin could not stop thinking about: why was something so basic not addressed at work?
Day 1: When hunger feels personal
The first time Olarerin felt truly hungry at work was in 2019, deep inside Ikeja, the capital of Lagos, in an office with no canteen and no nearby food options. Fresh out of university, she woke up early, commuted long distances, and spent most of her workday hungry because she could not afford to order food online.
“I wasn’t making enough money to be ordering food online,” she recalls. “ And even if I had the money, online food delivery wasn’t really a widespread thing then the way it is now.”
She tried roadside food nearby once and fell ill for two days. The pattern repeated at her next jobs; either no canteen at all or canteen food that tasted the same every single day. Rice and beans. Rice and beans. Rice and beans.
One day, she asked herself a simple question: if large companies in other countries provide lunch for their staff, why didn’t anyone do that in Nigeria?
That question became Pocketfood, a food tech platform that aims to simplify food ordering and delivery for corporate offices.
From JotForm experiment to validation
Olarerin’s first solution was not designed for businesses. It was meant for individual staff members like herself.
“I asked people, ‘How much are you spending on food every day? What if I could deliver food to you Monday to Friday, consistently, without you having to think about it?’”
She created a JotForm, built a simple menu, partnered with a private chef, and launched what she called “Lunch Lady,” literally, a service that delivered lunch.
She shared the form with colleagues. They shared it with friends. She posted it on Twitter (now X). Within the first week, her colleagues were using it. Within a month, she had 15 orders, three times more than she had hoped for.
“I was working with delivery riders, doing everything manually,” she says. “But I knew in my heart I wanted to make this a real business.”
The problem was experience. Olarerin had already failed once before with a startup in university, a platform called JackUp that connected students who were handymen with other students who needed repairs. It couldn’t scale because she lacked the experience to run it. This time, she was not going to make the same mistake: “I knew I needed help. I needed mentors. I needed a team. I couldn’t do it alone.”
By early 2023, Olarerin was making between ₦300,000 ($207*) and ₦400,000 ($276*) monthly from JotForm subscriptions. But she knew she needed something stronger. She spoke to a cousin, who spoke to a friend, who loved the idea. That friend gave Pocketfood its first angel cheque: ₦10 million ($6900*).
“It was a lot of money. It was validation. “That was when I knew we were in business.”
With that funding, she hired her first staff, started building an app, and rebranded from Lunch Lady to Pocketfood. The vision was clear: make workplace food simple, healthy, and affordable. What she did not yet know was that the market she thought she was building for—individual employees—was about to disappear.
Day 500: When inflation almost killed the business
In 2023, Nigeria’s economy collapsed. Fuel subsidy removal. Skyrocketing inflation. Currency devaluation. Almost overnight, Pocketfood’s customers could no longer afford to eat out.
“A lot of our customers were japa-ing,” Olarerin says, using the Nigerian slang for emigration. “People who had been with us from Day 1—our highest-volume users—were leaving the country. The ones who stayed could no longer afford subscriptions. People were saying, ‘I’d rather eat at home.’”
The numbers told a brutal story. Subscriptions became infrequent. Revenue dropped. Olarerin was paying staff, renting office space, managing delivery bikes, and watching her runway disappear.
“I looked at our trajectory and knew that if we continued that way, we would have to shut down,” she recalls.
She had raised $100k in August 2023. By mid-2024, she was staring at the possibility of burning through it all with nothing to show. The B2C model of individual subscriptions was dying fast.
The pivot: B2B or bust
The lifeline came from a pattern Olarerin had noticed but hadn’t acted on. Some of her individual customers were grouping at their offices to split delivery fees. One person would order for five colleagues.
“I thought, what if we work on a larger scale? If we onboard one bank, that’s thousands of customers for us.” Olarerin was considering adopting a Business-to-Business (B2B) model.
It was a necessity. “B2B came as a sink-or-swim decision,” she says. “The B2C was dying. We needed a steadier income pool. One B2B client can give you as much as ₦30 million ($21,600) compared to the lifetime value of one user. It was a no-brainer.”
But B2B food tech is not just B2C at scale. It is a different business entirely. Companies don’t just want food delivered; they also want meal management infrastructure.
Olarerin and her team spent months studying the manual process companies used to manage staff meals. Most relied on Excel spreadsheets and phone calls to coordinate lunch orders. Administrators would remind staff to pick meals by 9 a.m., manually call vendors to place orders, and then chase down payments at the end of the month. Vendors, often waiting up to 30 days to be paid, cut corners. Food quality declined, and chaos followed.
“We wanted to digitise that,” Olarerin says. “But first, we had to live it. For the first two months of B2B, we took manual orders ourselves. We wanted to understand exactly what companies were facing so we’d know where to solve it .”
What emerged was Pocketfood’s dashboard, a ‘digital cafeteria’ that automates vendor onboarding, meal ordering, budgeting, and logistics. Administrators can onboard staff, set meal allowances, schedule deliveries, and track spending in real time.
Vendors go through rigorous vetting, including taste tests, facility inspections, quarterly quality checks, and rating systems. Only quick-service restaurants that meet Pocketfood’s standards are onboarded onto the platform.
The result is that companies no longer manage food logistics manually. Staff select meals through the app. Vendors are paid on time. Everyone eats better. Even with the technology, Olarerin insists, B2B is fundamentally human: “What works for Company A doesn’t work for Company B. That’s why we have account managers. They work with clients to understand their needs and customise the experience.”
The acquisition: Balance Bowl and the Fitfarm bet
In 2023, while building out its B2B offering, Olarerin met Andrea Kamara Dunbar, the founder of Balance Bowl, a fitness-focused meal subscription service. A mentor introduced them.
“Talking to Andrea was like talking to myself,” Olarerin says. “Same goals. Same vision. Same mindset around personalised nutrition and helping Nigerians eat better.” That conversation led to Olarerin’s decision to acquire Balance Bowl.
Balance Bowl had what Pocketfood needed: nutrition data from more than 1,000 users, a menu for a community of fitness-focused individuals, and a customer base interested in health-conscious eating. Pocketfood had scale, funding, and a tech platform. In August the same year, Pockedfood announced it had acquired Balance Bowl for an undisclosed amount, “to offer an unparalleled range of meal plans, combining convenience and well-being for our subscribers.”
The acquisition made sense: Balance Bowl’s data helped Pocketfood build AI-driven meal recommendations based on body mass index (BMI), allergies, and dietary preferences.
“It was time and chance,” Olarerin says. “It looked like the right thing to do, and we did it.”
The logistics nightmare and how they escaped it
For a food delivery company, logistics is existential. In Nigeria, logistics is especially punishing.
In the early days, Pocketfood worked with third-party delivery riders. Prices fluctuated wildly. “They’d say, ‘Let’s do 50 orders at this price,’ and by Wednesday they’d come back and say, ‘No, it’s increased because of fuel.’”
Frustrated, Olarerin bought bikes and hired riders. That was worse: “Bikes broke down. Fuel ran out. Road officials were constantly harassing riders for documents. One week it’s one permit, next week it’s another. We were paying for something every other day.”
With the enforcement of the existing ban on commercial motorcycles in certain areas in Lagos, surviving logistics companies had to operate under restrictions. Pocketfood was hemorrhaging money on delivery fees that often exceeded the meal cost itself.
The solution was to stop using bikes and start using cars and vans, and partner with Uber, Bolt, and dedicated drivers for bulk deliveries. “We move in bulk now, not piecemeal,” Olarerin says. “It’s easier. It’s more reliable.”
But even that came at a cost. Delivery fees still ate into margins. Pocketfood had to get creative, introducing “Pocketfood Go”—a twice-a-week delivery model that capped delivery fees at ₦4,000 ($2.88) per customer, no matter the order size. Customers saved money, and Pocketfood could negotiate bulk rates with logistics partners. Everyone won.
Day 1000+: What’s next?
Pocketfood has now delivered over 500,000 meals, according to Olarerin. The company works with vendors like The Place, Lagos Buka, So Fresh, and Item 7. It has clients ranging from 20-person startups to 300-person enterprises. And it’s fundraising—targeting angel investors and partnerships with banks and HR tech companies.
“We’re building an ecosystem around employee wellness,” Olarerin says. “Not just food. Financial security. Mental health. Physical well-being. We want to partner with organisations that are already doing this and create a better work experience in Africa.”
For now, Pocketfood is focused on Nigeria. But Olarerin has her eyes on the continent. Kenya. Ghana. South Africa. Wherever the work culture is shifting, wherever employees are demanding better, Pocketfood wants to be there.
*Exchange rates as of 2023.
