COVID-19: ESG rolls out Food Delivery Booster Package to support F&B businesses
SINGAPORE — Enterprise Singapore (ESG) has rolled out a Food Delivery Booster Package to support food and beverages (F&B) businesses to transform their business models and meet the needs of digitally-connected consumers.
In a media release on Saturday (4 April), ESG said that the package will help reduce the business costs of selling food on the three key food-delivery platforms – Deliveroo, foodpanda and GrabFood.
The booster package comes on the back on enhanced social distancing measures announced by the Singapore government on Friday, which include closure of schools and most workplaces.
In line with this, all F&B establishments can open only for take-away and/or delivery from 7 April to 4 May, with no dine-in services allowed. Under this measure, sales and profitability of F&B outlets would be impacted, due to the drop in dine-in sales and the associated costs of using online food delivery platforms.
Funding 5 percentage points of commission cost
To help F&B businesses lower business costs from their delivery and takeaway operations during this period, ESG will fund five percentage points of the commission cost charged by the three delivery platforms. There will be no cap on the qualifying food delivery transaction value.
For instance, if the current commission structure is 25 per cent of the total food delivery transaction value, then the commission cost that the F&B outlets must pay to the food delivery platforms will be reduced to 20 per cent.
The three food delivery platforms will offset the grant support received from ESG directly from their fees charged. This is to help ease the cash flow of the participating F&B businesses during the COVID-19 period.
To be eligible for the package, F&B businesses – such as hawker stalls, cafes, food caterers and restaurants – must sell food that was prepared on-premise for immediate consumption. This excludes outlets solely retailing pre-packaged products such as snacks and ice-cream.
“In the immediate term, the Food Delivery Booster Package will help manage the business costs of F&B businesses for food delivery orders so that they can stay open for business and adapt their operations accordingly,” said ESG deputy chief executive officer Ted Tan.
“This is also a good time for businesses to optimise their business models for online sales. ESG will be looking at other initiatives to help businesses build new capabilities to navigate the online space.”
GrabFood allows deferment of account activation fee
F&B businesses that are currently on board any of the three food delivery platforms are eligible for the package; no applications are required. Businesses not on board any of the three platforms currently can approach them to find out more.
GrabFood Singapore said in a media statement released on Saturday that it appreciate the support ESG is extending to F&B businesses in reducing their business costs to help them tide through the current uncertain times.
“Digitisation has become even more critical for businesses seeking alternative sales channels,” said Dilip Roussenaly, head of GrabFood Singapore.
“In the last few weeks, we have refined our merchant onboarding programme and ramped up our operations such that more F&B and daily essentials merchants can list themselves and start their new digital businesses on GrabFood and GrabMart platforms quickly.
“GrabFood will also allow our new merchants to defer payment of their account activation fee, which starts from $100 and offset it via food orders.”
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