Generally, Southeast Asia’s food delivery industry has experienced higher order volumes with people holed up in their homes for weeks now. Thailand, for example, has seen a hiring spree among delivery apps, while in Indonesia, ride-hailing firms Grab and Gojek have reported a surge in food orders. The Philippines is not too different.
Even though they’re permitted to stay open, small grocers like Ferch Reynoso are capitalising on the delivery surge. Reynoso, who sells vegan products and employs three people, said she shut her doors to walk-ins and shifted to social media selling when the lockdown began. Last week, she also set up an online store so she could offer digital payment options.
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“I thought it was safer for both my customers and employees if we minimised face-to-face transactions,” she said. From an average of US$295 a day sales prior to the lockdown, Reynoso is seeing US$690 sales a day. “I’m so glad we took this big leap.”
It makes her store operations more efficient as inventory can be seen in real-time, getting rid of the need to handle inquiries via chat. It also extends the store’s reach. However, Reynoso said it takes a while to book deliveries via platforms like Grab and Lalamove. She thinks that with their skeletal driver pools, the apps are finding it hard to meet the deluge of orders.
Restocking also poses a challenge. Reynoso said delivery of supplies to her store is usually delayed due to a general slowdown in the movement of goods in Luzon. That’s because manufacturers, logistics firms, as well as distributors and retailers are required to acquire government-issued quarantine passes which they must present at checkpoints.
Tough choices
Not everyone has the option to continue operating though. Nonessential businesses find themselves up against a wall as they’ve been ordered to padlock their doors during the quarantine period. Violators face penalty, jail time and even the possibility of losing their permits.
For the first time in almost a decade, Kim Salvino halted his small printing business, with a dark cloud of uncertainty about the future hanging over his head.
As the business—which supplies things like receipts, delivery forms and packaging materials—has no cash buffer, Salvino pays the company’s expenses, including the salaries of his 10-member staff, out of pocket. Salvino expects to incur US$10,000 month’s worth of losses, broken down into US$2,000 worth of expenses and an US$8,000 revenue loss.
“It’s absolutely a sacrifice on our part but we’re after the welfare of our employees, most of whom have been with us since the beginning,” he said.
What he’s most worried about is the fact that his company has been unable to service clients that qualify as essentials—like a food manufacturer and a cooking gas supplier—slowing down the operations of those clients, too. “Good thing we’ve had long relationships with them and they’ve been very understanding about the unusual situation right now. But until when can they wait?”