Estonian transportation startup Bolt has launched food delivery service Bolt Food in Kyiv, offering to deliver meals from over 150 restaurants, including big fast food chains like KFC and niche restaurants.
For now, the service covers only downtown Kyiv, but Bolt’s country manager in Ukraine Taras Potichniy told the Kyiv Post the company’s couriers will start delivering to other districts of the capital in a few days or weeks.
Now, Bolt offers three services in Ukraine: on demand taxi, electric scooters and food delivery. But while its taxi service works in seven Ukrainian cities — including Dnipro, Zaporizhia, Kharkiv, and Lviv — food delivery and rental of scooters are limited to the country’s capital.
Ukraine is the fifteenth country in which Bolt has launched its food delivery service. According to Potichniy, the step had been in the company’s plans for a long time.
Taking orders via a separate mobile app, Bold Food, the delivery from the new service is currently free of charge. Later on, Bolt will introduce a fee, but Potichniy claims it will be 10-15% lower than of its main competitors — Spanish startup Glovo and Ukrainian company Raketa.
The minimum possible order must cost at least Hr 100 ($3.5). The average time of delivery is 20-40 minutes, reads the company’s statement released on Oct. 29.
Because of the coronavirus pandemic, the delivery is contactless and the company accepts only online payments through the company’s app.
“We’ve made sure our couriers avoid coming in contact with restaurant staff and service users,” Bolt Food head in Ukraine Igor Shramko said in the statement. “That’s why one can make an order only by choosing a specific place where the food should be left.”
Earlier in June, U.S. transportation startup Uber withdrew its food delivery service Uber Eats from the Ukrainian market — the service hadn’t been bringing in sufficient revenue and failed to generate enough users. Along with the Ukrainian market, the company quit the Czech Republic, Egypt, Honduras, Romania, Saudi Arabia and Uruguay.
Entering the market, Bolt Food isn’t afraid that it will face the same destiny.
“The exit of (Uber Eats) isn’t a marker of the market. It is a marker of the format, activity and business model they chose,” Potichniy said. “We see a great potential in the Ukrainian market. We see a great potential in the delivery market.”
