On March 4, 2026, some customers of FoodCourt, a Y Combinator-backed Nigerian cloud kitchen, noticed they could no longer place orders on the app. When they opened it looking to get a meal, they found the same line where the menu used to be: orders cannot be processed at this time.
Unknown to customers, the cloud kitchen had stopped delivering orders because the people who cooked the food, supplied it, delivered it, and ran its branch in Lekki, an affluent commercial and residential area of Lagos, had not been paid in months and went on strike, according to documents and internal messages seen by TechCabal.
The app was switched off by the startup’s leadership so that customers’ orders would stop coming in, according to internal messages seen by TechCabal. Beyond staff salaries, the company also owed money to vendors.
By April 19, the last FoodCourt branch had temporarily shut down after the second Lagos location paused operations, while the startup’s finance department raced to settle outstanding payments in anticipation of new funding by the end of April.
Originally published by TechCabal.