Background information

Foodpanda is one of the leading food suppliers in Bulgaria operating through an online platform. The platform offers the customer the opportunity to order meals from a long list of restaurant and get it at a desired address – home, office or other.

COVID-19 pandemic triggered expanding of the company’s services, by adding a new category “Shops” to the already known category “Restaurants” in the platform. In this way, the platform started offering a wide range of products beyond the cooked meals that consumers can get to their door - groceries, cosmetics and cleaning products, office consumables, pet food, accessories, and many more. Numerous new business partnerships have been established in order to make this possible.

The decision of the government to close all restaurants (twice since mid. March 2020 until the end of the year) as part of the pandemic measures, allowing them to continue working with deliveries only, made Foodpanda an instrument for them to survive and keep – partially or fully, their personnel.

Content of measure

Currently, the services of Foodpanda are available in more than 40 cities in Bulgaria and the company is constantly working towards expanding its network. A mobile application makes ordering from all mobile devices easy and quick.

The food platform has been split into two sections – the original one for ordering cooked meals from restaurants and one more section with partnering stores and chains.

The company follows a special protocol for working in the context of the pandemic, taking all necessary precautions recommended by the WHO and the national institutions. The platform offers a method of payment by debit or credit card. Deliveries are made mainly contactless, meaning that the order is paid online and the food/goods are left at the door of the customer without physical contact.

The deliverers of the company are subject to daily body temperature measurement. The equipment is subject to disinfection on a daily basis. Deliverers are obliged to wear face masks and gloves while taking and delivering the order.

The company launched the next generation of e-commerce model – the q-commerce, allowing rapid deliveries (within less than an hour) within the city.

Use of measure

Nearly 700 employees towards the end of the year 2020.

More than 400 business partners - restaurants and stores, towards the end of the year 2020.

Contents

• Health and safety
• Other topics

Target groups

Workers	Businesses	Citizens
Does not apply to workers	SMEs	Does not apply to citizens

Actors and funding

Actors	Funding
Company / Companies	Companies

Social partners

Social partners' role in designing the measure and form of involvement:

	Trade unions	Employers' organisations
Role	No involvement as case not in social partner domain	No involvement as case not in social partner domain
Form	Not applicable	Not applicable

Social partners' role in the implementation, monitoring and assessment phase:

• No involvement
• Main level of involvement: Company level

Involvement

No involvement.

Views and reactions

No involvement.

Sectors and occupations

This case is not occupation-specific.

Sources

• 14 April 2020: Article in Logistica.bg: We introduced new functionality and split the platform (www.logistika.bg)
• 15 April 2020: Article in 24 hours Plovdiv online media: Foodpanda expands its delivery services (www.24plovdiv.bg)
• 12 June 2020: Article in Bloomberg TV Bulgaria: Foodpanda - a successful example of growth during a pandemic (www.bloombergtv.bg)
• 20 July 2020: Forbes article: How fast are fast deliveries (forbesbulgaria.com)
• 22 August 2021: Foodpanda изчезва, Glovo ще доставя храна от ресторанта (www.marica.bg)
• 21 September 2021: Kaufland България стартира партньорство с Glovo (zanas.kaufland.bg)