Online food delivery platforms have seen explosive growth in Taiwan this year, helped by business opportunities related to the COVID-19 pandemic, company executives said at a digital commerce conference in Taipei yesterday.
When the threat of COVID-19 kept people from going out to eat, more people experimented with ordering food deliveries online, Foodpanda Taiwan Co Ltd (富胖達) operations director Nick Yu (余岳勳) said.
Foodpanda started operations in Taiwan in 2012.
Photo: CNA
“We experienced 5,000 percent growth in the past 24 months,” Yu said. “That’s more than the previous six years combined.”
In 2016, only 2 percent of food orders were delivered in Taiwan, but that increased to 10 percent four years later, Yu said, adding that the market is far from saturated.
“If you look at China, about 20 percent of the food and beverage market is via delivery,” Yu said. “Taiwan still has a long way to go.”
Yu credits the strategy of localization as key to Foodpanda’s success in Taiwan.
“Sixty-seven percent of our partner businesses are local heroes — independent restaurants and even night market stalls,” Yu said. “Partnering with Foodpanda is the easiest way to gain a platform.”
Becoming a Foodpanda driver also became a good way for those furloughed in the wake of the pandemic to get work quickly.
“You can join us anytime as a delivery driver — and work whenever and however much you want,” Yu said.
Foodpanda aims to get deliveries to its customers in 30 minutes, part of a trend that Yu calls “quick commerce” or “q commerce.”
“If delivery is within an hour, you don’t need to stock up,” Yu said. “Pandamart will be a ‘shadow shop’ with 300 items that can be delivered in 30 minutes.”
An example of a “shadow kitchen,” Just Kitchen CEO Jason Chen (陳星豪) said that his business quickly took off this year.
“We only started this year and have seen rapid growth since the beginning,” Chen said. “Since July, we have had a positive cash flow.”
The penetration rate for food delivery in Taiwan was only 35 percent in March, but up to 70 percent by July, Chen said.
“It’s an explosively growing industry, but the pandemic pushed it over the top,” he added.
Just Kitchen’s innovation was to take the existing cloud kitchen concept and turn it into a hub-and-spoke system, with semi-finished food being distributed from one central kitchen along five spokes to all of Taipei, Chen added.
“That way, instead of competing with restaurants in our vicinity, we put the food right where people need it,” Chen said.
JustKitchen uses big data technology to track and analyze information related to customer orders, habits, likes and dislikes, he said.
“The data decides everything, from where we put our spokes to how much chicken we have in stock,” Chen said, adding that supplies in the kitchen are meticulously tracked for food safety and to cut waste.
Chen said that he chose to start Just Kitchen in Taiwan because of a mature local food and beverage market, low overheads and operating costs, and a high population density.
“Taiwan is the kingdom of food lovers,” Chen said. “It’s a good place to prove our model and then take it everywhere else.”
Yu and Chen spoke yesterday at the Discover Advanced Trends in E-economy Summit, a forum on trends in digital commerce organized by the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (外貿協會).
COMPETITION: AMD, Intel and Qualcomm are unveiling new laptop and desktop parts in Las Vegas, arguing their technologies provide the best performance for AI workloads Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD), the second-biggest maker of computer processors, said its chips are to be used by Dell Technologies Inc for the first time in PCs sold to businesses. The chipmaker unveiled new processors it says would make AMD-based PCs the best at running artificial intelligence (AI) software. Dell has decided to use the chips in some of its computers aimed at business customers, AMD executives said at CES in Las Vegas on Monday. Dell’s embrace of AMD for corporate PCs — it already uses the chipmaker for consumer devices — is another blow for Intel Corp as the company
ADVANCED: Previously, Taiwanese chip companies were restricted from building overseas fabs with technology less than two generations behind domestic factories Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp, would no longer be restricted from investing in next-generation 2-nanometer chip production in the US, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. However, the ministry added that the world’s biggest contract chipmaker would not be making any reckless decisions, given the weight of its up to US$30 billion investment. To safeguard Taiwan’s chip technology advantages, the government has barred local chipmakers from making chips using more advanced technologies at their overseas factories, in China particularly. Chipmakers were previously only allowed to produce chips using less advanced technologies, specifically
MediaTek Inc (聯發科) yesterday said it is teaming up with Nvidia Corp to develop a new chip for artificial intelligence (AI) supercomputers that uses architecture licensed from Arm Holdings PLC. The new product is targeting AI researchers, data scientists and students rather than the mass PC market, the company said. The announcement comes as MediaTek makes efforts to add AI capabilities to its Dimensity chips for smartphones and tablets, Genio family for the Internet of Things devices, Pentonic series of smart TVs, Kompanio line of Arm-based Chromebooks, along with the Dimensity auto platform for vehicles. MeidaTek, the world’s largest chip designer for smartphones
TECH PULL: Electronics heavyweights also attracted strong buying ahead of the CES, analysts said. Meanwhile, Asian markets were mixed amid Trump’s incoming presidency Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) shares yesterday closed at a new high in the wake of a rally among tech stocks on Wall Street on Friday, moving the TAIEX sharply higher by more than 600 points. TSMC, the most heavily weighted stock in the TAIEX, rose 4.65 percent to close at a new high of NT$1,125, boosting its market value to NT$29.17 trillion (US$888 billion) and contributing about 400 points to the TAIEX’s rise. The TAIEX ended up 639.41 points, or 2.79 percent, at 23,547.71. Turnover totaled NT$406.478 billion, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed. The surge in TSMC follows a positive performance
RSS