Chowdeck taps GoLemon to supply dark stores in new instant delivery push

GoLemon, a Nigerian grocery delivery startup, has partnered with Chowdeck, the ubiquitous delivery startup with over 2 million customers, to supply groceries to Chowdeck’s dark stores and offer customers same-day grocery delivery through the Chowdeck app.

Chowdeck will continue to run its dark stores and end-to-end instant delivery, while GoLemon will maintain its own platform focused on next-day delivery and larger, planned shopping baskets.

The partnership comes four months after Chowdeck raised $9 million to run a network of 500 dark stores—warehouses not open to the public but used solely for Chowdeck to store produce—by the end of 2026, in its bid to cut delivery time. Chowdeck is outsourcing that layer to GoLemon, whose core business is sourcing, quality control, and large-basket grocery fulfilment rather than building a deeper grocery supply chain in-house.

“By working with GoLemon, we can now offer trusted grocery essentials to more customers instantly, while GoLemon continues to focus on the full-shop experience their customers rely on,” said Femi Aluko, Chowdeck’s CEO. 

Nigerian households typically combine large, planned grocery shopping with frequent urgent top-ups, according to data from both companies, and this partnership will serve this consumer behaviour.

“Customers don’t shop in just one mode,” said Yinka Adewuyi, CEO of GoLemon. “This partnership lets households move seamlessly between big, organised shops and urgent top-ups—without either company compromising what it already does well.”

The companies are also positioning the collaboration as a bet on the long-term growth of online grocery commerce in Nigeria. Today, less than 0.5% of grocery spend is digital, according to estimates by both companies—a figure that shows the nascent stage of digital grocery retail but also indicates room for rapid growth as consumer behaviour evolves.

By combining instant delivery with next-day fulfilment, both companies estimate that as many as three out of every four online grocery orders in Nigeria could flow through their combined platforms.

Chowdeck already delivers groceries to customers from nearby local markets, and this partnership will not affect that product, a company spokesperson said. “Chowdeck’s services will continue to operate as normal, with GoLemon feeding into Chowdeck’s inventory,” the company added. 

However, one challenge with local market sourcing is quality control. Chowdeck cannot always guarantee the quality of produce purchased from open markets, exposing it to refunds when customers receive subpar items. The partnership with GoLemon addresses that risk: GoLemon will take responsibility for quality assurance, ensuring that only vetted, high-quality produce is supplied to Chowdeck’s dark stores.

For Chowdeck, the arrangement reduces the operational complexity of managing fresh-grocery sourcing at scale, a category with tighter margins and higher spoilage risk than food delivery. For GoLemon, it provides access to instant-commerce demand without the capital and operating costs of running dark stores or same-day logistics.

The partnership is exclusive, as GoLemon will not supply other instant-delivery platforms, and Chowdeck will not source groceries from competing suppliers. Both companies say the level of operational coordination required, particularly around demand forecasting, replenishment cycles, and quality control, works best with a single, deeply integrated partner. Inventory risk inside Chowdeck’s dark stores will remain with Chowdeck, consistent with its existing operating model. 

Not an acquisition play

Chowdeck acquired Mira, a point of sale (POS) startup, in June 2025 to add Mira’s inventory management, payment processing, and inventory financing tools to Chowdeck’s delivery ecosystem. Despite Chowdeck showing an appetite for acquiring smaller startups in its vertical, Chowdeck and GoLemon said the partnership is not a step toward consolidation. Each will remain independent, with separate platforms, brands, and fulfilment models.

Instead, the deal reflects a maturing local commerce ecosystem where companies favour collaboration and acquisition over product expansion. As competition intensifies and margins tighten, Nigerian consumer startups are beginning to specialise, pairing infrastructure depth with distribution scale, rather than trying to own every layer at once.

For customers, the immediate impact is straightforward: GoLemon essentials are now available for instant delivery on Chowdeck, while larger, planned grocery orders remain on GoLemon’s own app. For the market, the partnership offers a glimpse of what the next phase of online grocery in Nigeria may look like.