While Mr Jack Ong was lining up to buy chwee kueh, the hawker told him that business had been bad during the circuit breaker period.
When asked why he did not use a delivery service, the hawker replied that the commission charged by delivery platforms was too high and adopting the technology was a challenge.
The project director and 11 others thus put their heads together – as well as a five-figure sum of money – and set up BySGForSG, a non-profit food delivery platform for hawkers and small food and beverage businesses.
There are no onboarding fees and vendors are charged a 5% commission, which is then donated fully to YMCA Singapore’s Wok The Talk initiative that provides meals and groceries to the vulnerable.
Participating hawkers provide their stall name and a stall-front photograph for BySGForSG to be uploaded onto its website.
Once their account is created, stall owners can add the items and prices themselves. Pictures of the dishes are optional.
For less tech-savvy hawkers who are not comfortable creating listings on their own, BySGForSG will put up a listing for the hawker centre.
The team will add food items for the stalls, manage orders and churn out daily sales reports for the hawkers. This means the hawkers run their stalls as per normal.
BySGForSG’s three or four volunteers per shift buy food from the stalls ordered by customers on the online platform and take it to the central post at the hawker centre to await delivery pick-up.
The platform officially launched last Thursday but had started reaching out to vendors on 11 May. More than 50 are now on board.
Read more here.
Source: The Straits Times, 1 June 2020