Food delivery personnel in Singapore bore the brunt of lost time and income as a result of the April 21 last-minute mad dash for bubble tea at night that generated many failed orders.

Long queues and plenty of tempers flaring aside, order cancellations appeared to have been the norm that night due to a surge in demand.

This occurred moments after it was suddenly announced that bubble tea shops, along with many other non-essential and non-critical retailers had to close temporarily as Covid-19 circuit breaker measures tightened.

Food delivery personnel lose time and money

At least one GrabFood delivery personnel has since taken to Facebook to articulate what went down, and how those in the business of picking up and sending food to customers were worse off.

He wrote about his delivery experience in Yishun that night, and how he and many others like him were left stranded for at least two hours.

What was the problem?

Food delivery personnel, in essence, could not cancel orders as they would have to bear the costs, and could not reach their operators to inform them about the long queues and waiting time on the ground.

And it appeared that the lack of real circuit breakers in the demand and supply chain of the food delivery operations was the main cause, ironically.

In summary, this was what the food delivery personnel faced:

• The surge in orders saw two bubble tea staff in one outlet in Yishun made to prepare and serve 400 orders in two hours.

• More than 100 food delivery personnel descended upon one outlet to wait to pick up the drinks.

• The bubble tea staff were unable to get hold of food delivery companies to inform them that stock was running low and they cannot all be fulfilled, and orders had to cease.

• Customers who placed orders were simultaneously sending messages to food delivery personnel begging them not to cancel as this was the last night bubble tea might be available for a while.

• Food delivery personnel also did not want to risk cancelling on orders as well, as they would bear the costs, which then saw many of them having no choice but resort to waiting to pick up the orders.

• Some food delivery personnel waited for up to two hours and about 80 of them eventually left empty-handed, wasting both their time and money stuck at one venue.

Grab responds

In response to queries by Mothership, Grab said it will be making "offline adjustments" to the cancellation rating of the delivery personnel affected that night.

Grab said:

"Our platform, as well as merchant-partners impacted by the extended circuit breaker measures, saw a sudden surge in orders on the evening of 21st April. We are working closely with our merchant-partners to explore ways in mitigating the effects of similar situations in the future.

We would also like to take this opportunity to assure our delivery partners that we will make offline adjustments to their cancellation rating affected by bubble tea orders on 21st April evening. They will receive an update from GrabFood soon.

We understand this has been a challenging situation for all our users and we are doing our best to support them.“

You can read the full Facebook post here: