A front door for local food entrepreneurs.
Potlly started from a simple observation: some of the best Nigerian and West African food in the GTA comes from local food entrepreneurs with no website, no listing and no way to be found beyond a WhatsApp group.
Local food entrepreneurs and small kitchens are everywhere in the Nigerian and West African community here. They cook to order, in portions people can afford, and they are usually a short drive from the person who wants the food. What they do not have is a way to be discovered by anyone who is not already in the group chat.
The delivery apps did not solve this. Their economics are built for restaurants with margin to give away, and a local food entrepreneur selling a plate of jollof cannot hand over a third of it to a platform. So local food entrepreneurs stayed on WhatsApp, and customers stayed unable to find them.
Potlly is the smallest thing that fixes that. A food entrepreneur gets a real profile, a real menu and a real price list. A customer gets to search by dish, by kitchen or by area, see what is actually near them, and then order straight from the food entrepreneur. No account to browse, no commission, no markup — an e-Transfer or cash to the kitchen.
We are deliberately not a delivery company. Potlly carries your order to the kitchen and shows you where it is, but it does not hold your money, add fees or take a cut. The kitchen cooks, delivers and is paid directly — which is exactly how ordering from a neighbour has always worked.
Four rules we do not bend.
The food entrepreneur sets the price
Potlly adds no commission and no service fee. What a kitchen charges is what a customer pays, and the kitchen keeps all of it.
Browsing should never need an account
Being asked to sign up before you can see what food exists near you is the fastest way to lose someone who is hungry. So we do not ask.
Keep it between you and the kitchen
Ordering from a local food entrepreneur should feel personal. Potlly gives you a simple way to order and follow along, and the kitchen stays in charge of the food, the price and the handover.
Say only what is true
No invented user counts, no borrowed logos, no badges we did not earn. If a number is not real, it does not go on the page.
Building a local food business?
Let the people already living around you know you exist.