WITH the importance attached to food in the Foodpanda name, the food delivery platform is launching an advocacy program that fights hunger.
On June 15, Foodpanda launched its flagship advocacy program, Let’s Do Our Pau-rt! (LDOP). “We have food in our name. We definitely want fighting hunger to be one of those pillars,” Jerome Mangahas, Head of Communications and Public Affairs for Foodpanda told BusinessWorld at the sidelines of the Quezon City lunchtime launch of the program.
While an earlier advocacy program last year had been initially launched to promote sustainable activities (such as the company’s own, including having one-fourth of their delivery fleet on bikes), the advocacy expands its reach to the ShareTheMeal program (a food donation option within the app) and Pandashares (mobilized donations and natural emergency assistance to marginalized sectors).
The ShareTheMeal program is launched as a partnership with the United Nations World Food Programme through Foodpanda’s parent company, Delivery Hero SE. According to a statement, the food meal initiative has now donated over 10 million meals globally. In the Philippines, customers will be able to donate meals to farming family-beneficiaries in disaster-prone areas through the app after checking out their orders.
“We just really strongly feel that it’s our responsibility in all the communities we are in,” said Mr. Mangahas. Aside from the app feature, Foodpanda is also partnering with Scholars of Sustenance, a global food rescue foundation, to donate food items from its Pandamart grocery delivery service to communities in need.
EXPANDING REACHMr. Mangahas is also quick to note the assistance that Foodpanda gives to small businesses: “Many of our partner vendors belong to the MSME (micro, small, and medium enterprises) segment,” he said. “In terms of being onboarded as part of the Foodpanda platform, that already enables MSME’s to reach more customers that they would have had challenges reaching otherwise.”
He said that at present, Foodpanda is present in 150 cities across the nation, including in the Visayas and Mindanao. “We’ve really gone a long way in terms of expansion. It’s not so much expanding geographically because we’re already there. It’s more of expanding the services that we could offer,” he said. These include new features on the app such as a parcel delivery service (PandaGo), and an advanced order and pickup option.
“There are so many more that we can tap. We want to look into not just serving the end consumers, but also doing something that can benefit different people or entities in the supply chain.” — Joseph L. Garcia
