Swoop’s 100% rider model exposes the fragile unit economics of Lagos food delivery

It has been two years since Bolt Food and Jumia Food left Lagos. Swoop, a food delivery startup, has entered the market with a promise to give its riders, who serve as the last mile between the startup and its customers, 100% of their income.

The 28-person company was founded by Aubrey Niederhoffer, a 19-year-old, and backed by $7.3 million in seed funding. It enters a market valued at $1.1 billion in 2025 that grew by 187% between 2021 and 2024, according to Paystack. Those numbers explain why new entrants and capital keep arriving and why the operating environment punishes both the profitable and the unprofitable, the foreign and the local alike.

In Lagos food delivery, the rider is the business. They are the workers who move between restaurants and customers, absorb the cost of fuel and depreciation, and live on what platforms leave them after taking their cut. Everything else — the app, the algorithm, the customer acquisition depends on whether those riders stay.

Swoop currently generates revenue from restaurant commissions and a 7% customer handling fee, both lower than Glovo’s 15% and Chowdeck’s 10%. Its driver model uses independent contractors, meaning they can pick up rides for Swoop while still working other jobs at other times. That asset-light structure means Swoop does not have to manage fleets, freeing it to focus on acquiring customers, but it also means rider loyalty is the only thing standing between the model and collapse.

That distinction matters because delivery fees have remained a major bottleneck for the market, felt by customers and riders alike. The major survivors have had to subsidise delivery costs just to keep customers. The extent of these subsidies often depends on the company’s funding. Glovo is the kingpin with over $1 billion in funding. Chowdeck has $17.4 million in total funding, and Swoop, the new entrant, also has strong financial backing and a spreadsheet detailing which models have worked and which have failed in the Lagos food market.

Keeping delivery fees affordable while motivating riders is a constant balancing act. Swoop’s model sidesteps this structure entirely, but the company has not disclosed whether independent contractors will determine their own delivery pricing or whether Swoop will. That gap in the model is where the unit economics get complicated.

Chowdeck has long been the dominant player in the Nigerian food delivery market. It typically retains approximately 6.6% to 20% of the customer’s delivery fee, ranging from ₦1,500 to ₦1,800, while Glovo riders receive a variable base fee plus 100% of tips. After the fuel subsidy removal, Chowdeck raised delivery fees by 50%. CEO Femi Aluko has consistently defended this, stating that the company will not subsidise prices due to bad unit economics. Chowdeck remains profitable, with a high take rate of 24–25%, earning ₦24-₦25 out of every ₦100 spent on the platform. This allows Chowdeck to pay its riders more, which often leads to the faster delivery times the app is known for. It now operates in 11 cities across Nigeria and Ghana, serving 1.5 million customers with a network of more than 20,000 riders.

The swoop proposition is new in a market where foreign players such as Glovo, Mano, and Foodelo are already operational. Nigeria was Glovo’s fastest-growing food delivery market in 2025 among its 17 markets. To achieve that, Glovo has invested over ₦37 billion ($27 million) into its Nigerian operations. It has yet to report profitability, and that figure indicates a high burn rate to capture market share.

FoodCourt’s trajectory is the closest parallel Swoop has in this market. It operated a hybrid driver model that allowed third-party riders to keep 100% of delivery fees. In May 2024, it laid off nearly 100 employees, according to Techcabal. What saved it was its full-stack cloud kitchen architecture, which eliminated entirely its dependence on third-party logistics. By early 2025, the startup was generating roughly $4.3 million in annual recurring revenue, up 80% from the previous year. The question Swoop has not answered is what its pivot looks like if the gig model does not hold.

Swoop claims food delivery is just a gateway into its ambition to become a super app — an ambition that a Condia report found has yet to produce a sustainable model in Africa. OPay, Gokada, and MAX.ng have all tried, but OPay is the only survivor, and it had to dump the delivery-led model entirely to get there.

The riders Swoop is courting today with a 100% fee promise are the same riders the market has always fought over. What Glovo’s burn rate and FoodCourt’s layoffs both show is that the promise is easy; the model that keeps it is not.

Last updated: April 26, 2026