So I made a thing again, for COVID-19. It’s called Dabao Dash. And it’s another listing site. Another! But no shame about it, if it helps serve a gap in Singapore right now.
The concept is simple. It’s similar to Mask Match - matching healthcare workers needing masks with people who want to help and have masks to give. Dabao Dash is a community board matching freelance, independent delivery folks with hawkers & small-medium F&B shops affected by COVID-19.
“Dabao” in Dabao Dash is a spin on the word for “food takeaway” that is common lingo in Singapore. And after seeing how many food hawkers and independent restaurants struggle due to COVID-19—many even closing down for good—I wanted to help out in any way I can.
Being part of emergent and overnight crazy popular Facebook groups like Hawker United and Singapore Restaurant Rescue also made me realised that even while there’s now platforms for hawkers and small independent F&B shops to showcase their offerings, the food delivery driver shortage is still a big problem for getting all that good food to people’s doorsteps. I want to help. So I created this community board of offers and needs to match up delivery drivers with hawkers.
One big elephant in the room might be: “Why not just onboard the big food delivery apps like Grab/Foodpanda/Deliveroo?” That’s exactly what they do - match delivery riders with food sellers. Why start this on our own? The issue is that being on their platform cuts significantly into the already small margins of these micro-F&B owners. Many hence chose not to onboard to these apps, while others never had the time, or are simply not tech savvy enough to do so. Hopefully, just filling out an online form to post on a community board is easy enough!
The best thing about the process is that I built the site in a day using Sheet2Site, a website builder that allows you to make sites using Googlesheets as a backend database and content management system. Andrey, the founder, is now offering free plans for any coronavirus-related causes, so I caught on to the opportunity with relish. He recently made a Corona template of offers-and-requests board, so it was the perfect fit for the food delivery driver match up problem I mentioned previously.
So much good coming up from so much altruistic energy this month.