2 Singapore undergrads develop free platform so hawkers can list their food during circuit breaker

[UPDATED, April 27, 2020]

When the announcement about circuit breaker was made, many F&B businesses had to rush to adapt to the new normal where they could only cater to takeaways and deliveries.

During this time, much hubbub has risen over the alleged high fees that food delivery service providers are collecting, but several ground-up initiatives have also sprouted to help hawkers and restaurants promote their offerings and take online or delivery orders.

24-year-old university students and local food lovers, Lim Yi Fan and Ng Chee Peng, were encouraged to see these community efforts and decided to play their part in helping local F&B businesses with their site, FoodLeh?.

"We were inspired by the Hawkers United - Dabao 2020 Facebook page," says Lim. "It is a great initiative and we felt that we could take it a notch by adding other features."

[embed]https://www.facebook.com/foodlehsg/photos/a.108939284127179/108938850793889/?type=3&theater[/embed]

Drawing from their previous experience with chatbot and other web application development, they got to work immediately once inspiration struck. After five days, with contributions from other online developers, FoodLeh? was born.

Described on their Facebook post as a "Carousell for food", users are first prompted to select self-collect or delivery. After entering their postal code, a list of available food options near them will be generated. This is one of the upgrades from the Facebook page, where you would otherwise have to scroll through countless entries if you were looking for options near you, the duo has implemented on their site.

Other features of FoodLeh? include a comprehensive structured template for stall owners to list their information to help users make orders, as well as a "clap" function to provide a "virtual form of encouragement to businesses".

"Our intention is to encourage hawkers when they see people enjoying their delicious food and 'virtual-clap' for them," says Ng. To prevent misuse, each person is limited to five claps a day, and they hope the claps will also let users share their "good food lobangs" with others.

As the site is intended to be community-driven, F&B business owners are supposed to load their store information themselves by selecting the "Create" tab. They will then be asked to fill in a simple but detailed form and upload any images they may have. They can also preview what their listing looks like.

"Our goal was to let hawkers create a listing in five minutes with needing to create an account," says Lim. Hence, they put themselves in the shoes of the customers to decide what was essential information and what was good to have. "We really hope that technological know-how will not be a barrier to access for our web app," chimes Ng.

With this site, Lim and Ng hope to encourage F&B owners to arrange for delivery options now that they have a way to reach out to potential customers with their offerings.

The pair had initially populated the site with listings taken from The Smart Local, but have since taken down those listings and posted an apology on the site. “We have apologised wholeheartedly to them and decided to start anew and contact hawkers ourselves, as well as receive crowdsourced information.”

The long term plan is for the site to be self-running, under the supervision of moderators, and for FoodLeh? to be a local platform that is completely free to list and free to use in hopes of fostering a trust-based community.

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What about potential troublemakers who might go in to cause havoc on the site? While the duo hopes that other contributors will help negate the bad ones, they are already looking into ways to flag out problematic listings. But for now, they will be relying on moderators.

FoodLeh? is not a one-time effort by the pair. Lim and Ng are committed to maintaining the site beyond the circuit breaker and they plan to add new features that the community requests for.

The outpouring of support they have received to continue running FoodLeh? has been a huge encouragement. Other developers have offered to contribute to the code and some people have offered to sponsor the server maintenance costs. "We're really heartened by this, which motivates us to continue driving FoodLeh? forward."

FoodLeh? currently has 48 listings and counting, and they are reaching out to more hawkers and restaurant owners. If you know of any hawkers, do share about FoodLeh? to them. 

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This article was edited to include Foodleh?’s apology for taking listings from The Smart Local (TSL) when they initially launched.

kailun@asiaone.com