Highlights — TLDR

1. Pioneering Artisan Pizza in Kenya: Mambo Italia, established in 2011, introduced artisan pizza to Kenya, featuring unique and high-quality ingredients, with innovative offerings like "Swahili Beach" and "ThaiFrican" pizzas.

2. Diverse Culinary Offerings: Beyond pizza, Mambo Italia specializes in pasta, antipasto, and particularly gelato, offering a range of funky flavors that have become local favorites.

3. Adapting to the Growing Delivery Market: Recognizing the global trend towards delivery, Mambo Italia has expanded its sales channels, which now account for 20-25% of their orders, using both in-house and external delivery services like Uber Eats, Glovo, and Jumia.

4. Multi-Brand Management through Deliverect: The integration with Deliverect has been crucial in managing multiple brands and locations, including their cloud kitchens like Mbwa Kali, Ciao! Mambo, Gelato Street, and the upcoming Butterfly, making menu updates and operational management more efficient.

5. Ghost Kitchen Expansion Strategy: Embracing the concept of ghost kitchens, Mambo Italia has efficiently segmented its brand to cater to specific customer preferences, such as desserts or hot dogs, facilitating future expansion and diversity in offerings.

Up and close with Mambo Italia, early adopter of Deliverect in Africa

While Deliverect’s roots lie in Ghent, Belgium, the delivery software solution is available for food businesses around the world. One of our customers, Mambo Italia, is based in Nairobi, Kenya - and as an early adopter of the tool, the restaurant is a true pioneer in its region.

Founded in 2011, Mambo Italia was the first to offer artisan pizza in Kenya. Using high-quality ingredients, both locally sourced and imported, the restaurant specializes in pizzas that are one of a kind. On the menu you’ll find quirky names like the “Swahili Beach”, a pizza with coconut curry sauce and seafood, and the “ThaiFrican”, which combines chicken, mango and peanut sauce. The Mambo Italia also serves pasta, antipasto and gelato - another specialty and a local favorite thanks to the funky flavors on offer.

Investing in delivery

“Our 3 individually unique locations in Nairobi offer a relaxed casual dining environment,” says Nish Shah, Managing Director of Mambo Italia. “Whether you drop by for a quick espresso, a business lunch, an aperitif or a family dinner, you’ve come to the right place. But what’s happening globally is also being mirrored in Nairobi: delivery now takes up increasingly larger bites of the revenue pie. It accounts for 20 to 25% of our orders - and this sales channel is still growing.”

With more food types being made available for delivery, the competition’s getting stronger, as well, according to Nish. “In order to meet the customer’s demands and keep on top of our competitors, we’ve been investing in our delivery operation. We have an in-house delivery service that runs alongside Uber Eats, Glovo and Jumia. Customers can order from all 3 branches, as well as from 4 cloud kitchens that prepare and sell very specific brands and types of food. There’s Mbwa Kali, our hot dog brand, Ciao! Mambo, our pizza and calzone brand, and Gelato Street. We’re opening a fourth virtual kitchen - Butterfly - soon.” 

Solving growing pains with Deliverect

“Maintaining multiple brands wouldn’t be possible without Deliverect - it would be too time consuming,” Nish continues. “Before the integration, updating menus and items was hard, as it was a manual process spread over various apps, websites, platforms, etc. Deliverect really helped to streamline the flow and reduce the headaches of working with delivery apps, since there now is a single point of control where you can update content, set availability and opening hours,... We couldn’t have launched multiple locations and dark kitchens without Deliverect!”

Deliverect’s key feature, in Mambo Italia’s opinion, would be not having to log into 24 browser windows when updating content for its 3 locations and 4 virtual restaurants all at once. “Whenever I update our online offer, I can always count on the Deliverect support team, which is fast and responsive,” says Nish. “The delivery industry is in many ways still in its infancy, so we’ll take any optimization tools we can get. That’s how we’ll make the difference - next to our amazing food, of course!”

Riding the ghost kitchen train

Mambo Italia is always looking to make future expansion plans. One way to quickly scale up, is with ghost kitchens - also called cloud kitchens, dark kitchens or virtual restaurants. Segmenting your brand is a great way to cater to specific needs. In Mambo’s case, hungry customers who are mainly looking for dessert, will quickly find Gelato Street, gelato & ice cream brand, while hot dog lovers can easily go to the Mbwa Kali shop, where they can even build their own hot dog. And who knows what else the future will bring for Mambo Italia - setting up multiple brands is quick & easy with Deliverect, so there’s a range of possibilities waiting to be explored!