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backIf you work with data, you know that it can surprise you and pull you in many directions. In 2025, it pulled us to West Africa’s largest market, then to the outskirts of Maiduguri, then behind the pumps that keep Nigeria moving, and into community bars during December. This time, it pulled us into Nigeria’s foodservice industry and one of Nigeria’s most recognisable quick-service restaurant chains.
In the months it’s taken us to sift through this data (We’ve been following the data since 10:49 AM on March 2), you’d expect it to lead us only to a restaurant in Lagos or a legacy sit-down restaurant in Abuja. And in many ways, it did, but somewhere along the way, it kept bringing us back to something much simpler.
You.
You’ve moved your appetite later
People used to eat dinner when the sun told them to, but not anymore. Our data show a clear shift from 2021 to 2025 towards more midday spending, even as late-night food spending has been climbing. Somewhere between the pace of everyday life, the rise of hybrid work patterns and in some cities, traffic, dinner stopped belonging to one particular hour. More and more, Nigerians are eating when they can, not when they’re supposed to.
Your appetite has a calendar
Turns out your friend who dropped the call to “grab something quickly” probably wasn’t lying. Payment activity across the industry follows a similar rhythm each year: strong in Q1, quiet in Q2, recovering in Q3, and surging in Q4. April is consistently the quietest month for food payments, with activity nearly half that of December. Whether that’s rent, fasting, or simply recovering from Detty December, we’ll leave you to decide.
December owns you
If April is when you’re being careful, December is when all bets are off. Card payments for food record their biggest month-on-month increase between November and December. Whatever restraint existed in April has usually disappeared by Christmas. We checked. It happens to almost everyone.
There are two of you every day
If you’ve read this far, you might still insist you don’t really have a routine. Our data disagrees. Across the foodservice industry, transactions peak twice every day: once between 1 p.m. and 2 p.m., and again around 7 p.m., when transaction volumes can reach 15 times those in the early morning. You might think you’re making spontaneous decisions, but your appetite appears to have a schedule of its own.
There’s one exception
While almost every other part of the industry peaks around lunchtime, online food delivery follows a rhythm of its own. Orders continue climbing into the evening and remain strong well past 10 p.m. So if you’re the kind of person who orders in instead of dining out, you’re the closest thing our data has to a rebel.
So… are you predictable?
I’ll let you settle that argument yourself. Visit casestudies.moniepoint.com.
Till next time,
Keep your dreams alive.
