By Chee Jo-Ey
THE Movement Control Order (MCO) announced in March has compelled businesses to pivot their strategies to suit new demands, some more than others.
Businesses that need to be physically present to operate like restaurants and cafes will now have to find ways to be viable by strengthening their delivery services.
It has been three weeks since the imposition of the MCO and some restaurateurs are quickly adapting their services to cope with the impact of the lockdown.
myBurgerLab founder Chin Ren Yi said: “Due to the MCO that has led to the rise in delivery demands, we have to come up with new ways to suit these immediate needs now. So, we partner deliverers like Lalamove, Goget and Mr Speedy to execute more orders.
“Customers will order through myBurgerLab’s website and we will arrange everything after with our deliverers, which is a lot of work, but it’s crunch time. We are developing our website right now and this is expected to be rolled out in one week’s time.”
During peak hours, Chin realised that GrabFood can no longer fulfil all orders due to lack of manpower and shrank the radius of delivery. “GrabFood has a lot of merchants and it will evenly spread out its manpower. When that happens, residents in Taman Tun will not be able to order from our Seapark branch when usually it’s not a problem,” he explained.
myBurgerLab also has its own take-away service where customers can order ahead of time and then swing by once it’s ready.
“We see an increase in people cooking at home so we also started our own take-home pack where we sell customers all the ingredients required to make our burgers and they can cook it themselves at home. This way, they can have our burgers any time they want, even at 11pm,” Chin explained.
When asked how the MCO has impacted its business, Chin said: “There’s zero revenue drop but we don’t profit as much now. Most restaurants are structured to serve 80% dine in and 20% delivery customers. Now we have to rely fully on delivery businesses. Couple that with the sharing of profit with GrabFood and it can be quite challenging to rake in the same profits.“
Persatuan Pengusaha Muslim Malaysia (PRESMA) president Datuk Jawahar Ali Taib Khan said: “What I’ve observed is more restaurants are applying to offer FoodPanda and GrabFood services now due to the MCO. We’re also appealing to GrabFood and FoodPanda to charge us lower. Now we are charged around 30%, so perhaps they can charge us lower by half at 15%. Many restaurants are also contemplating to have their own delivery service that will stay beyond MCO.”
According to Jawahar, the MCO has understandably affected businesses with a revenue drop of up to 80%. But he noted that at least they can still run their businesses through online delivery services. For efficiency, he advises customers to make a call first for the orders before picking up their food so that the businesses can prepare and customers don’t have to crowd the premises.
“We try to maintain social distancing and prioritise protecting our employees with sanitisation measures like wearing gloves and masks 24/7,” added Jawahar. – April 10, 2020
