US-based food subscription startup MealPal made its Singapore debut in July last year, offering lunch and dinner options from a variety of restaurants and eateries at a fraction of the price.
At launch, MealPal said that it has over 250 F&B partners, including Teppei Syokudo, The Soup Spoon, Wafuken, Crave, YOLO, Wheat and hawkers from Amoy Street Food Centre, Maxwell Food Centre and Lau Pa Sat.
Today (Feb 17), it announced that it has expanded its hawker options to include stalls at Market Street Interim Food Centre, Tanjong Pagar Plaza Market and Timbre+, bringing a total of around 50 hawker stalls onboard the platform.
Following the UNESCO nomination of Singapore’s hawker culture last year, MealPal said that it wants locals to maintain the culture of visiting a hawker centre.
“We have the largest selection of hawkers and restaurants to choose from and (users) now have the flexibility to order (from) more hawkers or more restaurants as (they) wish,” said Paul Clifford, MealPal’s general manager of Singapore and Asia Pacific.
ClassPass For Food?
MealPal is also switching up its business model to adopt a flexi-credit plan, where meals will be available for a range of credit prices instead of one fixed price.
Essentially, it works just like ClassPass — subscribers can buy a pack of credits to reserve meals.
There are two different types of plans available: 75 credits for S$99/month, or 125 credits for $155/month.
Any unused meal credits can be rolled over to the following month so they don’t lose out on continued savings. This means that subscribers can have the flexibility to skip on certain meals if say, they have a team lunch or dinner meeting lined up.
Each meal will vary between 2 and 10 credits. For instance, 2 credits can get you fried kway teow, spinach seafood soup or duck rice.
Meanwhile, 10 credits can get you a roasted salmon steak with quinoa and roasted pumpkin from Kith Cafe.
According to MealPal, customers can “save up to 50% on each order”.
With the flexibility of credits, customers can mix up hawker and restaurant options. They can even use MealPal to get a whole month of hawker meals if they wish — this will maximise the plan by getting more meals out of it.
To put things in perspective, if a user who is on the S$99 plan always opt for a 2-credit meal, they can get 37 meals for the month.
How It Works
MealPal’s service is currently available across four business hubs in Singapore, namely Buona Vista, CBD, Novena and Orchard.
Subscribers simply have to select a menu from the available eateries online, and self-collect their order at the respective outlet.
It’s a quick take-and-go process — users can skip the queue, saving time for busy professionals.
When asked if they have any plans to introduce food delivery anytime soon, Paul said that they do not have any such plans in the pipeline at the moment.
“By continuing to consolidate the orders to restaurants to one signature dish per day, those labour cost savings and other cost efficiencies in the restaurant can be passed on to our customers so they get amazing food for much less than the normal retail prices,” he added.
Besides benefiting subscribers, MealPal also helps F&B merchants to boost sales by connecting them with new customers, and optimising operations while reducing costs.
According to Paul, Singapore is MealPal’s “fastest-growing market” thus far.
Since Singapore has seen great uptake since its launch, “broadening the range of restaurants that can work with MealPal with the new credit plans will only strengthen that growth,” he added.
Featured Image Credit: MealPal
