Data Reveals How the Latest Level 4 Lockdown Has Affected South Africa’s Takeaway Behaviour

Data Reveals How the Latest Level 4 Lockdown Has Affected South Africa’s Takeaway Behaviour

After a long string of challenging events in quick succession, South Africans were counting down the days from some good news when President Ramaphosa revisited the adjusted level 4 restrictions on 25 July 2021. 


For those in the hospitality industry, the initial limitation to restaurants to only provide takeouts was a significant blow, and even now with easing of that restriction to 50 people or 50% capacity, the restaurant sector is feeling the impact.


So what impact did that have on takeaway deliveries for the period of June and July 2021? MotionAds - the innovative OOH advertising company that provides space on delivery bikes for ads and branding - shares some insights with us.


Based on hundreds of drivers across South Africa, MotionAds revealed some insights into our own takeaway and food delivery habits that were - in some cases - quite surprising. “While most OOH advertising channels are intrinsically difficult to track digitally,” says Jon Berkowitz, co-founder of MotionAds, “we’ve been able to harness our GPS monitoring data into really meaningful reporting by Delve Systems.”


The findings? Perhaps predictably, the quietest day for food deliveries in June was on Monday 28th June, the day after President Ramaphosa addressed the nation. However, with a sigh of relief orders came rolling in again afterwards.

However, other interesting statistics also emerged

  • We ordered a lot of breakfast! A quarter of meals ordered in June through food delivery apps were to help us start the day, and oddly enough, particularly on Thursday mornings.
  • Delivery bike drivers cover close to 100kms per day on deliveries, make an average of 14 deliveries a day, and spend nearly 40% of their day driving.
  • We love “eating out at home” the most on Saturdays.
  • When it comes to lunch, we prefer to order takeaways on a Tuesday above every other day.


“Essentially, this reporting functionality helps marketing decision-makers and business owners track how much visibility their campaigns get,” says Jon, “but we were very interested to see some of the trends that emerged.”


It's kind of like Facebook ads reporting, but for delivery bikes! The next interesting statistic will be to see how businesses looking to harness the food delivery bike channel will take advantage of these insights.