By Umie Norsyazwanie Mohd Nor
KUCHING: The Covid-19 pandemic and implementation of the movement control order (MCO) have forced many café and restaurant operators to turn to e-hailing services.
The trend continued to grow when the government, at one point, prohibited them from providing dine-in services due to a drastic increase in the number of positive Covid-19 cases.
Lynette Tsen,36, owner of Lovu Tea & Bento, a Japanese Fusion Café, said aside from Grab Food, also utilised Food Panda, Lyfe and DeBazaar.
Tsen said she officially opened her café for business on Jan 13 last year.
“We were barely two months into our operation when suddenly Covid-19 started to rear its ugly head, followed by a state wide lockdown where all business were directed to temporarily close,” she said.
Tsen was shocked when she first heard the news.
“Although we were allowed to resume business later, we were prohibited from allowing customers to dine-in.
“I immediately talked to my team and managing partner on how to overcome the situation we were in.
“Our immediate solution was to resort to the e-hailing services,” she added.
According to Tsen, of the four e-hailing service providers she used, Grab Food was most dominant because most of her customers opted for it.
She said since then, her business started to pick up again and now even though eateries were allowed to provide dine-ins, many still opted for the e-hailing service.
