Two months ago I made Dabao Dash. It’s a community board matching freelance, independent delivery folks with hawkers & small-medium F&B shops affected by COVID-19. It was a product made for the lockdown. With our lockdown easing off tomorrow, it’s also time to relook at its future.

Dabao Dash had a nice headstart in growth and traffic when the gaps in matching delivery with hawkers were under-served in the early days of “Circuit Breaker” lockdown. But 2 months on, the traffic had plateau-ed off for sure. As at 1 Jun, there’s a total of 8.9k users, 16.7k page views, slightly over 200 submissions. One key factor that contributed to this was how Dabao Dash depended on the food Facebook groups for distribution initially. But when stricter group posting rules were imposed for most of the groups, I was not able to share Dabao Dash as much. Referral traffic definitely took a hit because of that.

Besides that, many new local food discovery apps had also sprung up, which offer delivery match-up as well. FoodLeh and Take.sg are some notable ones which I admire. They are non-profit projects as well, and automatically match hawkers with drivers. With Dabao Dash, hawkers still have to manually call up the contact list in the site to find delivery. The food apps are more seamless, and therefore attractive for hawkers.

Moreover, the interesting thing about Dabao Dash is how it works itself out of a job. Once hawkers know enough drivers to call regularly for delivery (by looking through the listing), they’re self-sustaining, not needing Dabao Dash anymore (or any other app)! That’s not necessarily a bad thing. I like that it can empower hawkers to be self-sufficient, not depending on any apps to arbitrage their business for them. Because apps can come and go, but relationships and familiarity built up from your own network of delivery drivers has much longer staying power.

So now Dabao Dash is in a bit of a transitional phase. An existential one, for sure. Has it outlived its purpose for Circuit Breaker? Or can it still play a role in helping hawkers succeed in this new, digital normal of a post-COVID Singapore? There’s a few things I’m experimenting with right now, which I could do with some help from the tech for good community (*hint hint):

• Automation. Manual ‘concierge’ matching of hawkers with drivers, when I see hawkers post on the site, or when they request for delivery on any of the Facebook groups. Are there more automated ways to do this (as it’s time consuming and easy to miss)? Perhaps developers can help me automate this.

• Distribution and marketing. I had been cold emailing F&Bs about tapping on Dabao Dash. But again, the challenge is that it’s time-consuming, and I’m running this solo. Are there ways to better market Dabao Dash? Find funds to buy targeted Facebook/Google ads? I think social media marketing and growth hacking folks could help me out here.

• Finding a new niche segment. There might be value in targeting a segment of F&Bs who might still benefit from Dabao Dash - those who wish to be independent, not relying on any middleman app (free/paid), and wanting to have their own delivery network. How do I find/reach them? Maybe F&B insiders with connections can provide advice or connections here.

• Pivoting Dabao Dash to something else that can offer value. I’m all ears for this, for anyone who has ideas. It’s a useful resource for sure, and a good directory of drivers available by region. How can Dabao Dash differentiate itself from the other food apps, find a different need to address, and stay relevant?

Normally I just let projects lapse into a natural decay and death when it starts to plateau, but because this product was raised from the fires of COVID, I feel like I owe it to the supporters and people affected by the pandemic to try a bit harder to keep it alive, refresh it to stay relevant. 

What will Dabao Dash 2.0 look like?