Deliveroo Singapore: Restaurants had to rethink menus amidst delivery boom

Find out more about the platform’s insights at the upcoming QSR Media Asia Conference & Awards.

For the third consecutive year, Deliveroo Singapore is joining the QSR Media Asia Conference & Awards, represented this time by their interim general manager Sarah Tan.

Tan holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of Melbourne. She has lived and worked in Melbourne, London and Singapore, giving her an international perspective as well as a first-hand understanding of fast-growing markets in Asia. Sarah relocated from the UK to Singapore to be closer to her family, who are based in Australia and Malaysia.

Prior to joining Deliveroo, Sarah specialised in consumer and retail strategy, first as a consultant with Parthenon-EY and more recently with PepsiCo.

Read Tan's take on the delivery boom in the Q&A below:

QSR Media: From your vantage point - how has the pandemic changed the restaurant industry?
Tan: This has been a challenging time for restaurants and for the whole food delivery sector. Over the past few months, we’ve seen the F&B industry being pushed to adapt quickly in response to the growing health and safety concerns as well as various government measures put in place to flatten the curve.

Some key changes we’ve observed include:

• Enhanced health and safety procedures: Restaurants had to ensure they operate delivery-only and takeaway outlets safely, addressing factors such as minimal physical contact and food safety practices.
• Higher adoption of food delivery and other online platforms: While food delivery has been on the uptrend in the past few years, we saw a spike in restaurants embracing delivery and takeaway, many for the first time, to diversify their revenue streams and generate additional revenue when dine-in was halted during Singapore’s circuit breaker period.
• Menu engineering for delivery and takeaway: Many restaurants also had to rethink their menus, making adjustments to attract customers and maximise the value of each order as well as ensure that the food could “travel well”.
• Increased digitisation: With restaurants reopening in Phase Two, more have also made changes to their operations as they start welcoming diners such as digitising processes like ordering and payment that traditionally require physical contact.

COVID-19 has forced the F&B industry to relook at operations and embrace food delivery and other technology, and we expect many to continue adopting these changes - especially the ones that benefit their business - even after the pandemic. 

For many restaurants, while dine-in remains the core of their business, the pandemic has shown that it is not enough to rely on dine-in alone and that it is just as important to diversify their revenue streams and invest in delivery and takeaways. We are glad that Deliveroo has become their reliable partners during this journey

What emerging trends are you seeing at this stage? How are businesses and consumers behaving?
Food delivery has become an indispensable part of F&B businesses, with consumer demand for such services surging over the past couple of years, even before Covid-19. 

During the pandemic, we’ve seen an even further shift in consumer behaviour, with more people using food delivery as well as rediscovering the joys of cooking at home and dining together with their families, and we expect these trends to continue.

Looking at what consumers have been ordering over these past months, Chinese is still our most popular cuisine type for Deliveroo Singapore, pre and during COVID-19. Coffee and breakfast offerings have picked up >50% especially when bubble tea outlets stopped operating during the circuit breaker period, and burger and fast food offerings have also picked up >50%.

We are also seeing an increase in restaurants looking to grow their business through delivery and takeaway. For those who feel that Deliveroo is the right partner to work with, we have committed additional resources internally to quickly onboard partners and help them transition from dine-in to delivery and takeaway outlets.

Some of the initiatives we’ve introduced include:

• Refocusing all marketing initiatives to profile local restaurants and highlight delivery as 'open for business' to encourage consumers to support their local restaurants.
• Introducing mandatory ‘contact-free delivery’ so that restaurants can give confidence to consumers that delivery is conducted safely.
• Enabling restaurants to expand their reach through marketplace, where customers can order from restaurants on Deliveroo but restaurants use their own riders to deliver.
• Launching a new capability development pack valued at more than S$1,500 per outlet, in partnership with Enterprise Singapore, to help both new and existing restaurants pivot to delivery-only and takeaway. As part of this pack, we will waive up to S$360 of our usual onboarding fee and provide free product photography to market their menus. Partners will also benefit from a range of value-added services covering capability building through webinars and one-on-one consultations, marketing support in the form of credits to run in-app marketing and discounts, and data and insight sharing to improve restaurants’ delivery performance and business models.

Deliveroo is the only platform as well, for example, to publish detailed guidance on how partners can run delivery-only and takeaway outlets safely, covering issues such as how to minimise contact, packaging and hygiene best practice. We have also developed bespoke online marketing tools for partners to let customers know they are operating delivery services.

Additionally, we have introduced a new weekly payment service to boost cash for our restaurants and hawkers. Since April, partners will be able to receive money made from deliveries in a week, instantly improving the cash flow of thousands of restaurants and hawkers across Singapore. This new payment process will give them faster access to their delivery revenue, helping them cover their costs, whether it’s paying staff wages or electricity bills.

As Singapore continues to do its part to stop the spread of COVID-19 together, we’re pleased to be providing a service which enables customers to continue to enjoy restaurant meals in the comfort of their home.

How do you imagine a post-COVID environment would look?
It is too soon to know exactly what Deliveroo, other food delivery services, or the F&B industry as a whole will look like post-COVID-19, as the pandemic is far from being over. As social distancing measures ease up, consumers will undoubtedly be excited to go out to their favourite restaurants again with friends and family, but there’ll always be a time and place for food delivery alongside dine-in.

Food delivery used to be limited to fast-food restaurants and pizza parlours, and it was nearly impossible to get great quality food delivered. With the launch of food delivery platforms like Deliveroo in Singapore, we’ve transformed the way people think about takeaway by offering fast, reliable delivery from the best local restaurants to everyone’s homes or offices.

What we’re focused on at Deliveroo, which is a three-sided marketplace, is our expertise in offering all our stakeholders - customers, restaurant partners and riders - the best possible experience. We are dedicated to providing the widest choice and selection at the best prices, and delivering an amazing food delivery experience for people, whenever and wherever they want it, whether it’s morning, noon or night.

We are also committed to providing the best support and tools to our restaurant partners to grow, and flexible work to our 9,000 self-employed riders in Singapore.

Want to know where there future of delivery is headed? Register here to join the QSR Media Asia Conference & Awards: A Virtual Event to find out!