Source: Deliveroo Singapore

A major new study commissioned by award-winning food delivery platform Deliveroo reveals the critical role that delivery services like Deliveroo had on the Singapore restaurant sector at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic earlier this year.

As Singapore continues to face safe distancing measures on the hospitality sector during Phase Two, the report underlines why services such as Deliveroo will continue to play a vital role in maintaining trading activity, protecting jobs, and preventing potential closures.

Deliveroo, an essential platform in keeping businesses afloat during the pandemic

With the Singapore hospitality sector accounting for two per cent of gross value added and 0.26 million employees, the new report by Capital Economics, ‘The Value of Delivery Services’, found that the ability to provide delivery services from platforms such as Deliveroo protected approximately 110,000 jobs in Deliveroo Singapore’s partner restaurants from being lost or furloughed between April and June.

The survey, which surveyed Deliveroo’s restaurant partners, also found that delivery services supported a turnover of S$2 billion for partner restaurants during this period.

In addition, since the beginning of Singapore’s circuit breaker in April, approximately 2,000 restaurants partnered with Deliveroo Singapore for the first time to offer delivery services, bringing the total number of restaurants on the platform to 7,000.

Delivery services like Deliveroo have become a key player for job stability

Globally, delivery services like Deliveroo have become almost as important as government job retention schemes, and more important than tax breaks and loan schemes in keeping restaurants afloat during the lockdown.

The survey suggests that on average, 10 per cent of workers in Deliveroo Singapore’s partner restaurants temporarily stopped working with help from the Government’s Jobs Support Scheme (JSS).

In comparison, on average 45 per cent of employees in the restaurants surveyed continued to work because of delivery services, close to the 60 per cent that continued to work because of government schemes.

The Capital Economics report states, “Delivery services have helped to keep parts of the hospitality sector operating in a challenging environment and the cost to the Government would have been even higher without them. They have helped to keep more people at work in the hospitality sector which has been one of the hardest hit sectors from lockdown restrictions and changes in peoples’ behaviour.”

The report calculates that Deliveroo has in 2019/20 supported 7,300 jobs in the Singapore restaurant sector, a 46 per cent YoY increase on last year. Of these jobs, 5,000 are in chain restaurants and 2,000 are in independent restaurants. This is on top of the 9,000 self-employed riders who contract with Deliveroo, underlining the company’s contribution to creating work in Singapore.

“Deliveroo Singapore has been proud to bolster the local restaurant sector, one of the worst affected by the pandemic, while supporting thousands of jobs during this difficult period,” said Sarah Tan, General Manager of Deliveroo Singapore.

“Delivery enables restaurants to deliver amazing food straight to customers’ doors that they wouldn’t be able to reach otherwise. At Deliveroo Singapore we constantly strive to improve and build on our customer offerings, for example, launching our new on-demand grocery delivery service, which saw us partner with Marks & Spencer and a selection of specialty grocery brands to provide Singaporeans with increased convenience and access to thousands of grocery products. We will continue working closely with all our partners to deliver what customers need when and where they want it.”

Globally, Deliveroo supports 90,000 jobs in restaurant sectors in the markets in which it operates and generated over $4 billion in revenue for those sectors.

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