With the movement control order declaring that all business premises except for essential services will have to be closed for this 2-week period, some SMEs will be hit hard.
In Malaysia, we have about 900,000 registered SMEs, of which almost 20% are F&B businesses.
Based on data from StoreHub, half of their clients are cafes and restaurants.
With a lack of dine-in customers, their clients will stand to lose billions of ringgit in revenue throughout this partial lockdown.
For some, this could be enough to put them out of business, so they’ll have to turn to food deliveries to keep their business running.
After learning that food delivery services will still be able to operate as usual during this period, StoreHub took matters into their own hands.
An hour after Muhyiddin’s address on March 16, the team at StoreHub got busy in coming up with a solution of their own to help not only their clients, but other F&B businesses too.
Enabling F&B Businesses To Run Their Own Food Delivery
On March 17, they revealed it.
Called Beep Delivery, this solution is a feature within StoreHub’s ecosystem that will enable Malaysians to order food from their favourite cafes and restaurants during these 2 weeks.
They’re partnering with logistics providers like Lalamove, GoGet and ZeptoExpress to get your orders on the road and to you.
This solution pretty much enables F&B businesses to run food delivery services on their own.
When businesses sign up for Beep Delivery, they’ll be provided with their own website link that they can send to customers.
Their customers will then be able to use the link to:
- Choose between self-pickup and delivery
- Browse the menu and order
- Key in their delivery address and details
- Pay via credit card, online banking, or e-wallets
The last thing they will have to do is simply receive their food.
Can My Business Use Beep Delivery?
Cafes, restaurants, kiosks and even food trucks can use Beep Delivery.
On their website, StoreHub states that they will only take 2% from each transaction as opposed to the 30% some other delivery platforms could charge you.
You don’t have to already be a user of StoreHub’s POS system to use Beep Delivery, but do note that you will need an iPad.
Therefore, merchants already using Storeub will be able to roll out their food deliveries more easily since they can go live with Beep Delivery immediately.
Beep Delivery is also StoreHub POS integrated, so business owners can get a full view of their inventory and in-store/online sales.
These sales reports could help you make better business decisions during this time, and once your store reopens to the public for regular dine-ins, you can use this integrated POS to manage both your online and offline orders.
If you’re unsure whether this is the solution for your business, StoreHub can give you a free demo of their Beep Delivery x StoreHub POS first.
For that, you can register here.
Plans Moving Forward
Vulcan Post spoke to Xin-Ci, StoreHub’s Head of Marketing to learn a bit more about Beep Delivery as well.
She told us that enabling food delivery was not a plan StoreHub dreamt up overnight.
“We’ve had customers requesting this feature already, and it was a feature that we knew would add to the completeness of our platform.”
Apparently, they were already planning to release this feature this year, but the COVID-19 pandemic that swept across Southeast Asia and the recent movement control order simply accelerated its release.
So far, about 15% of their Malaysian F&B customers have already signed up after StoreHub sent out a single SMS to its customer base yesterday, and they’re expecting to onboard more ASAP.
“For us, while we know this type of drastic move is needed to curtail the spread (of COVID-19), it’s going to hurt our customers and their livelihoods,” Xin-Ci said.
“Social distancing is necessary for now, and we want to do whatever we can to slow the spread while helping our customers sustain their livelihoods,” she concluded.
- You can read more about StoreHub here.
Featured Image Credit: StoreHub