Good food shouldn’tcome with a queue
YesChef is a mobile-first ordering platform built for South Africa’s markets, festivals, and street-food stalls. Customers scan a QR code, order, and pay from their phone, and collect when it’s ready. No paper tickets, no card-machine shuffle, no shouted order numbers.
Why we built it
Markets and festivals are where some of the best food in the country gets made. They’re also where cash-only stalls, long queues, and missed orders still quietly cost traders sales and cost customers their patience.
The same tools the big chains take for granted, on the hardware traders already own: a phone.
We set out to give independent food traders ordering, payment, and kitchen tools that are fast to set up before a market opens, simple enough to run during a lunchtime rush, and fair on the people doing the cooking.
Fair on traders, fast for everyone
Built for the business
Everything runs on a phone in one hand, in the sun, in a crowd, on patchy festival Wi-Fi. No extra hardware to buy or lug around.
Vendors keep more
One flat per-order fee your customers cover instead of the heavy commissions other platforms charge, with payments settled through your preferred payment provider straight to the trader.
Customers skip the line
Order ahead, pay in a tap, and get a notification the moment it's ready to collect. The queue stops being part of the meal.
A small team, close to the food
We’re obsessed with one thing: getting great food out of the kitchen and into people’s hands, faster.
Vendor-first
We build alongside real stalls at real markets. If it doesn't help a trader sell more food with less hassle, it doesn't ship.
Ship and learn
Small releases, fast feedback, no ceremony. We'd rather get something useful into a vendor's hands this week than a perfect plan next quarter.
Proudly local
Built in South Africa, for South African food culture: markets, festivals, and the traders who make them worth visiting.
The people behind YesChef
Rob Heymann
Partner · Technical Lead
Rob leads the build. With a background spanning banking and human capital, he owns the YesChef platform end to end, from the customer ordering experience to the vendor console that runs the business behind it.
Matthew Reid
Partner · Data & Product
Matt brings the data and product lens. He's led cross-functional product teams, founded his own app startup, and works in analytics, so YesChef is built on numbers traders can actually act on.
Chef
DM Slider · Chatbot Extraordinaire
Chef is our hardest-working hire and the only one made of pure code. It works the WhatsApp line around the clock, taking orders at 2am and answering "is it ready yet?" for the hundredth time without a sigh. No sick days, no smoke breaks, all charm.
Two ways in
Hungry, or running a business?
Find food at a market near you, or get your own business taking orders in minutes.
