Chowdeck Cuts 68% of Contract Staff After Operational Improvements, Eyes Ghana Market

Chowdeck, a fast-growing food delivery startup, has announced that it is cutting 68% of its contract staff, letting go of 86 employees. This decision comes after the company made significant improvements to its operations, particularly in how it manages deliveries and restaurant partnerships. Despite the layoffs, Chowdeck is looking ahead with ambitious plans, including expanding into Ghana.

Over the past year, Chowdeck experienced rapid growth in its operations team, which expanded from just 20 people in January 2024 to 120 by January 2025. However, CEO Femi Aluko explained that this level of staffing was unsustainable given the company’s growth goals for 2025. Chowdeck aims to grow fivefold this year, and as part of its strategy, it has optimized many of its processes to rely less on manual labor.

“When we were growing very fast last year, we had to hire a lot of contract people to handle operations,” Aluko said. “In the last two months, we’ve optimized a lot of those processes, so we don’t need as many contract employees as before.” He emphasized that the decision to cut staff was not a sign of trouble but rather a result of operational improvements.

These improvements have already shown results. For instance, tasks that previously required 24 people can now be handled by just two. Additionally, average delivery times have dropped from 41 minutes to 33 minutes. The affected contract staff were informed during a meeting with Aluko and will receive severance packages, including three months’ salary and health insurance. Chowdeck also plans to assist these employees in finding new jobs. Notably, no full-time employees are impacted by this move.

While Chowdeck cuts 68% of staff on one hand, it is also celebrating major milestones and planning for further expansion. The company recently hit 10 million deliveries, with six million of those occurring in just the past nine months. It also raised $2.5 million in seed funding in 2024 to fuel its growth.

Chowdeck’s operational upgrades have positioned it for faster expansion into new markets. In January 2025 alone, the company launched services in Kaduna and Owerri. Now, Chowdeck eyes the Ghana market as its next big step. A beta launch is planned for next week in Accra, Ghana’s capital city. The company has already appointed a country manager and intends to keep its Ghanaian operations lean by leveraging its improved efficiency.

Aluko explained that Chowdeck’s expansion strategy focuses on launching in specific cities rather than spreading too thin across entire countries. “Even though we’re launching in Ghana, what the team knows right now is that we’re launching in Accra,” he said. “We’ve built a very beautiful product that’s hit PMF [Product-Market Fit] in specific cities and want to double down on expanding to those cities across Africa.”

The company’s ability to launch in new cities has also been streamlined thanks to its optimizations. What used to take three months can now be done in just one week. For example, Chowdeck’s recent launch in Owerri was completed over a single weekend.

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