Industry overview
What is shaping food & beverage
Food and beverage brands compete on taste, price, health perceptions and shelf presence. Small changes in pack, recipe or price can shift share quickly.
- Health and natural claims influence choice
- Quick commerce and modern trade change shopping habits
- Taste remains the deciding factor at repeat
Client background
A food delivery platform, working in South Africa. Client identity is withheld to protect confidentiality.
- Organisation
- A food delivery platform
- Sector
- Food & beverage
- Team engaged
- Market Research
- Services
- Business panel, Quantitative research, Qualitative research
Client challenge
Restaurants were leaving the food delivery platform, and partner managers heard complaints about commissions, payouts and support. The platform needed to know which issues mattered most before changing its commercial terms.
Research objectives
- Deliver on the brief: understanding restaurant partners on a food delivery platform.
- Understand the views, needs and behaviour of restaurants.
- Measure how widespread each pattern is, and explain the reasons behind it.
- Give the client evidence it can act on within 7 weeks.
Target audience
The work focused on 600 restaurants.
- restaurants600
Audiences we typically reach in food & beverage
Shoppers and consumersHouseholdsRetailers and kirana ownersQuick-commerce usersFood-service buyers
Geographic coverage
Coverage: South Africa. Market: South Africa.
- South Africa
Research methodology
A mixed-method design: structured research measured how widespread each pattern was, and qualitative conversations explained why.
- 1Brief
- 2Restaurant owner survey
- 3In-depth interviews
- 4Insight
We surveyed restaurant owners and managers about order volumes, commissions, payouts, marketing tools and support, in English, Afrikaans and isiZulu, and interviewed owners who had recently left the platform. Results were analysed by restaurant size and cuisine, since independent restaurants and chains had different needs.
Business panelQuantitative researchQualitative research
Sampling strategy
- restaurants
- 600
- Business respondents were screened on role, company size and involvement in the decision before being invited.
- Online respondents were drawn from verified panel members who matched the screening criteria, with quotas on key profile attributes.
- Qualitative participants were recruited purposively to cover the full range of experiences that mattered, rather than for statistical representation.
Data collection
- interviews
- 30
- The online survey was mobile-friendly and offered in respondents' languages.
- Interviews and discussions were led by experienced moderators using a guide agreed with the client.
Data quality & validation
- Digital fingerprinting and duplicate checks
- Attention, speed and straight-lining checks
- Review of open-ended answers
- Recordings and transcripts for every session
- Re-screening of qualitative recruits
- Logic and range checks on the final data
- Work carried out under our ISO 20252 quality procedures
Data analysis
- Cross-tabulation by key groups and locations
- Significance testing on the differences that mattered
- Thematic coding of interviews and discussions
- Journey and decision mapping
Key findings
- Slow payouts and poor resolution of order disputes mattered more than commission rates.
Partners judged the platform on reliability as much as on cost.
Recommendations
- Build on the core insight: partners judged the platform on reliability as much as on cost.
- Focus effort where the evidence was strongest: slow payouts and poor resolution of order disputes mattered more than commission rates.
- Re-measure after the changes to confirm the effect.
Business impact
- The platform introduced weekly payouts and a dedicated partner support team, and partner churn fell.
- The platform also introduced a partner dashboard showing orders, ratings and payouts in real time.
What changed in the business as a result of the work. Impact is described qualitatively.
Deliverables & next steps
- Insight report and management presentation
- Cleaned data file and data tables
- Interview summaries and key verbatims
- Repeat the measure after changes are in place to track progress.
- A natural follow-on question: how healthy is the brand?
Client identity is withheld to protect confidentiality.