"Where is my cake?" A Saturday in Lagos, told twice

Say you bake cakes in Yaba.

It stopped being a hobby a while ago. The oven is on by six, your phone buzzes with orders all day, and on Saturdays there is barely room on the table for the boxes. People find you on Instagram, fall for a photo, and send a message: Can you do a two-tier for my mum's birthday? Lekki. Saturday, 3pm.

You say yes. Of course you say yes.

The cake is the easy part

By noon on Saturday the cake is done, and it is lovely. Now the real work starts.

You call the rider you used last week. He doesn't pick up. You call another one, who says he's close, then names a price well above what you told the customer delivery would cost. You agree anyway, because it's already 12:40. He says he's coming. Twenty minutes later, he is still coming.

When he finally arrives, you hand over the box, say a small prayer, and watch him ride off into Lagos.

Then the calls begin.

At 1:30 the customer asks if the cake has left. At 2:15 she asks where it is. You call the rider. "I dey Third Mainland, I dey come." At 2:50 she calls again. The guests are arriving, and you have no honest answer for her, because you don't know where your cake is. All you have is his word.

The cake arrives at 3:25. It's fine, thank God. Her afternoon wasn't, and neither was yours. You spent an hour and a half as a switchboard. You paid the rider in cash and have nothing written down to show for it. Tomorrow, you'll do it all again.

If any of that felt familiar, this is for you.

Now play it again

Same Saturday. Same cake. This time your orders come in through a website, and behind that website sits Relay.

At noon you mark the order as ready. Your backend requests a fresh quote with the pickup, destination, vehicle and minimum-rating preferences for this delivery. It then creates the task with the same inputs and that quote ID before the quote expires. Relay uses the locked quote amount for the task.

Relay filters nearby riders and offers an eligible rider the job. You haven't made a single call. Packaging and handling still need your attention.

The cake is ready. Your app hands the delivery request to Relay and keeps a record of its progress.

Your website uses Relay's location and stage events to show her the delivery's progress. When her friends ask whether the cake is coming, she can check the page instead of calling you for an update.

The task records the payment and delivery stages. Rider earnings stay pending through the dispute window; bank withdrawals are separate. At the end of the month you have a record to check against your orders.

The cake goes to the same address either way. What changes is the afternoon you both get to have.

So what is Relay?

Relay is the delivery API behind apps and websites that need to move orders across a city. Your backend creates the task, your app uses tracking events to show progress, and Relay records the delivery and settlement stages.

We're starting in Lagos and Abuja.

When to reach for Relay

You'll know it's time when:

• someone on your team spends part of every day calling riders
• customers ask "where is my order?" more often than they say thank you
• you've paid for a delivery and been left with nothing but a phone number
• you're building an app or website for food, medicine, groceries, errands, or anything else that has to reach a doorstep

If you run a business, mention Relay to whoever builds your website or app, or write to us at [e-mail] and we'll talk it through with you. If you're the one who builds things, the next post on this page shows you how to send your first delivery with a few lines of code.

Either way, start at sendrelay.com.ng.

The cake deserves to arrive calmly. So do you.

Next: What would you build if delivery were the easy part?

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Illustrations by Relay. Photos from Unsplash: Lagos by ib daye, Idumota by Opeyemi Adisa, Abuja by Muhammad-Taha Ibrahim.