Depending on how stressed out the lockdown has made you going out to find food is probably inducing some level of anxiety every time you put your foot out the door.

None of us really want to be out and about for any longer than we have to. Now you won’t have to, thanks to the Tiendeo app.

Tiendeo: What you need to know

Tiendeo is an app that’s hoping to help minimise that stress by giving us an idea of what the lines are like at our local stores.

The lockdown has done a lot to highlight the fact that the e-commerce economy still has a lot of growing up to do.

A gap in the market

The number of online transactions is definitely increasing each year, but South Africans, on the whole, are still spending the majority of their money while standing inside brick and mortar stores.

Ironically Takealot – the biggest player in South African e-commerce – has mostly been sidelined during the lockdown due to restrictions on the sale of non-essential items.

As a result, Takealot has scrambled to try and increase the number of essential items it provides. As for the major food retailers, the lockdown has made it clear just how low the adoption of their online delivery option was prior to the lockdown.

Capacity at certain supermarkets was so poor that if you’d tried to place orders on any of their sites on the day before the lockdown started, the first available delivery date would have been a minimum of two weeks later.

How does the Tiendeo it work?

Tiendeo is trying to bring some of the benefits of technology to physical shopping. The app developers are hoping to help you plan your next trip to the stores with real-time information about what to buy and what the queues are like.

Outside of lockdown, knowing which shops to avoid because of queues is a nice thing to know; but during the lockdown, it could help you avoid getting infected. Alex Hobbs, International Strategic Director for Tiendeo, explains:

In addition to the Is there a queue feature, the app also features updated information for stores so that you can check up on stores trading hours and even the latest sales catalogues.

You can access the platform on www.tiendeo.co.za or download the app from your phones app store.