Campaigns

foodpanda rallies employees to help hawkers go digital

panda volunteers have reached out to over 200 stalls in phase one of outreach

SINGAPORE (23 July 2021) – As part of its ongoing efforts to help hawkers digitalise, leading delivery platform foodpanda has organised an employee volunteer programme that connects employees with hawkers who require help with going digital. foodpanda is a member of SG Together Alliance for Action – Online Ordering for Hawkers.

In July, foodpanda employees, also known as pandas, reached out to over 200 hawkers across five hawker centres in Singapore to help hawkers understand how online food delivery works. The exercise also gave the pandas to catch up with existing foodpanda hawker vendors so they are updated on the latest programs and benefits available to them, including how to maximize their visibility on the app. 

50 panda volunteers visited hawkers in 724 Ang Mo Kio Food Centre, Ayer Rajar Food Centre, Bukit Timah Food Centre, Empress Market, and Yishun Park Hawker Centre by Timbre to share how the foodpanda platform can help hawker stalls sustain, and scale, their business. The volunteers gave out fliers in both English and Mandarin to explain the onboarding process to hawkers. The fliers include a summary of benefits for new hawkers who sign up, including 0% commission on delivery orders for one month for hawkers that sign up before 31st July, waiver of $100 onboarding fees, and free product photoshoot.

Our panda volunteers also provided videos on how to access performance reports from the foodpanda restaurant portal, and tips on how to increase orders on the app – via foodpanda’s merchant resource page, panda University.

In light of the current Phase 2 Heightened Alert, foodpanda will also continue its initiatives of supporting its hawkers through:

  • 0% commission off delivery orders for a month for hawkers operated by NEA (for hawkers who sign up before 31st July) or until 18th August (for hawkers who sign up on or after 1st August)
  • No signup fees (standard signup fee is $100 before GST) for all vendor partners who sign up before 18th Aug 
  • Free product photoshoot
  • Marketing support and post-activation partner service support
  • App & training materials available in dual languages
  • Access to insights on sales metrics, learning materials, marketing guides, and more via our merchant platform panda university 

The volunteer initiative is also an extension of foodpanda’s ongoing efforts to support merchant partners who are most affected by the pandemic, with initiatives like, providing merchant partners with additional marketing pushes, funding deals to drive orders. This programme, which will be rolled out in phases, is offered to all foodpanda employees to sign up on a voluntary basis. Subsequent phases will see panda volunteers visiting more hawker centres around the island, with plans to extend the voluntary sign-up initiative to interested corporate partners. 

Amirul Shah, commercial director at foodpanda Singapore says, “The hawker culture is a large part of Singapore’s food scene and we have to do everything that we can to help our hawkers survive this pandemic. Having these face-to-face interactions will help us to better understand, and help address, specific questions that hawkers may have when it comes to signing on with a food delivery platform. We are very encouraged heartened by the enthusiasm of our panda volunteers who are dedicating time and effort to help hawkers digitalize. We will continue to roll this out to more hawker centres in the coming months.”

The digital media kit for this media release can be accessed at this link

Recent News