A new front against the pandemic: the food delivery army

As the coronavirus pandemic continues to spread, people worldwide have had to adjust to a new normal, for at least the foreseeable future, which includes the way we consume food.

On 17 March, the Public Health Superintendent ordered the immediate closure of various outlets. This included restaurants, snack bars and kiosks, allowing them only to provide delivery or takeaway services.

For a long time, Malta had a limited pool when it came to food delivery, as the island relied on individual restaurants and chains resorting to their own internal services. However, in recent years’ platforms such as Time to Eat and Bolt Food MT have been game-changers in the food industry.

These food delivery platforms connect customers with a broad range of restaurants and chains, allowing them to order from full menus. This middleman service provides couriers for establishments, allowing them to offer delivery without having to physically set up the process themselves.

MaltaToday spoke to Time to Eat’s Chief Operations Officer, Jordan Bonello Gauci and Bolt MT COO Sebastian Ripard about how the platforms have had to grow and change during the pandemic.

“Time to Eat is normally very popular among employees at large businesses that use us every day. As a result of this, we’ve had a substantial drop in orders with people working from home and order in less often. On the other hand, a lot of restaurants are now pushing their orders through us which has helped limit the impact of this,” Bonello Gauci said.

Bonello Gauci explained that the company has been bombarded with requests to join establishments over the past month. “So far, approximately 150 restaurants have been in touch, which, although positive, has overwhelmed our staff and caused a backlog.”

Ripard said that Bolt Food MT had seen a lot of growth. “Instead of going out and moving around, people are now staying home and getting things delivered, and Bolt Food MT has been one of the platforms to benefit from this.”

However, he highlighted that the company as a whole had taken a hit, with its taxi service, the main source of revenue, reduced to 10% of its usual workload.

“Imagine that our hail service is a castle, and our food delivery service is a small wooden shack. All of a sudden the load has completely switched, so you have to turn your shack into a castle overnight and knock down your castle and redistribute all of those resources to where your shack is, which requires a huge effort. It was something we were planning on doing several years down the line, but have instead had to do in several weeks,” Ripard said.

In terms of that increased demand, Bonello Gauci said that Time to Eat had the opportunity to increase the number of delivery personnel in order to keep up with the increased demand. “We expect to double our fleet in the next month to increase efficiency and the service level our customers are exposed to.”

However, Bolt instead shifted over 100 cab drivers to couriers. “The idea is to push and build the food business to allow our cab drivers to have some work,” Ripard said.

Health above all

As of 13 March, all Bolt Food deliveries across Malta went contactless. Users who are in quarantine or do not wish to be in contact with other people can leave a note for the courier inside the app when placing their order asking them to leave the bag with food at the doorstep or a designated area of their choosing. “We were the first company in Europe to introduce such a system, and it’s something we’re very proud of. We feel that this has the biggest impact from a health precaution point of view,” Ripard said.

Bonello Gauci said that all of Time to Eat’s staff had been educated with regards to the WHO’s recommendations on precautions when it came to the coronavirus. “Moreover, our workers have face masks, disposable gloves and hand sanitiser on their person at all times throughout their shift. We have stopped allowing visitors to our offices and only hold meetings via email, phone or video call with our restaurant partners,” he said.

Looking to a future beyond the pandemic

Bonello Gauci said that Time to Eat as a company had learned a great deal in recent months, as did the whole world, on the importance of hygiene. “I’ve come to realise how truly vulnerable our restaurant partners are when such levels of disruption arise in society. We need to learn from this experience and ensure safeguards are put into place to protect them,” he said.

“Delivery is a good solution, but it is an expensive one for the restaurant, which is why we have been offering all new restaurants heavily discounted commission rates if they choose to do their own delivery by utilising the extra staff they have at their disposal.”

Ripard added that he was proud of both Bolt’s local and international team. “We feel like we are part of a business whose DNA is rooted in being agile and disruptive so it’s quite exciting being part of that when you are faced with so much change, because both our local team and Bolt as a brand thrive in that type of environment. It’s a big challenge, but it’s one we like to take on.”

From an environmental standpoint, Ripard highlighted how the fallout of the pandemic had opened their minds to the fact that certain meetings taking place in person could easily be shifted online, thus reducing the company’s carbon footprint.

“What I’ve learnt from the pandemic is that what world leaders, specifically green leaders have been trying to do for years, the coronavirus has done in weeks. I think it’s important going forward for us to re-evaluate as a society how we work, what can be done at home, what can be done online and what has to be done face to face.”