Micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) are among those hit hardest by the COVID-19 pandemic and its corresponding large-scale social restrictions, which have resulted in a dramatic decline of leisure activities outside the home.
According to Cooperatives and Small and Medium Enterprises Minister Teten Madsuki, around 236,980 MSME players have been impacted by the pandemic, including food and beverage merchants, as people have stopped eating outside in large groups.
To revive Indonesia’s culinary MSMEs, Teten said that the government must continue its close collaboration with digital platforms such as Gojek and its food-delivery arm GoFood. He also pointed out several measures that small businesses must take to recover and thrive.
“The hygiene and health safety aspects of the foods they sell, along with programs that boost consumer demand, have become key to small and medium food merchants to sustain their businesses,” he explained.
“The government is also currently devising several schemes for the economic recovery of the MSMEs, including those in the culinary sector. We recognize that besides strengthening hygiene and health safety aspects, it is important that these merchants modify the food items they offer to cater to shifting public demands; they also need to digitize their businesses.”
A comprehensive ecosystem to support small businesses
Indonesia’s super-app Gojek has been supporting hundreds of thousands of small business owners since the pandemic started, thanks to a suite of comprehensive business solutions that go beyond technology: “This pandemic has taught us a lot of precious lessons. Since its inception, GoFood has always committed itself to helping local culinary MSMEs scale up their businesses, by providing a holistic ecosystem that extends beyond technology,” Gojek Group chief food officer Catherine Hindra Sutjahyo said.
The comprehensive ecosystem by Gojek and GoFood has enabled MSMEs to be more agile and adapt to the current challenging operating climate. These innovations have also enabled business owners to capture new growth opportunities and thrive:
Furthermore, more than 48,000 of Gojek’s culinary merchants across Indonesia assemble themselves in the Komunitas Partner GoFood (GoFood Partners Community), where GoFood and the merchant members have been actively exchanging culinary business knowledge and supporting each other through challenges. The community is better known among members by its Indonesian acronym “Kompag”, a twist on the Indonesian word kompak, which means united in support of one another.
Boosting demand for small businesses
Since the pandemic started, GoFood has been helping small businesses to pivot their sales strategies by launching promotional campaigns that increase transactions; applying more stringent health and hygiene food safety measures; and devising new innovations that intensify merchants’ online presence.
To boost demand, GoFood has rolled out several initiatives to directly procure meals from small businesses, such as the “Family Dining Package” that gives free meals to 213,000 Gojek driver-partners, as provided by 10,000 GoFood small business partners.
Gojek has also supplied 176,000 food packages cooked by small business partners to healthcare workers in 15 hospitals across Indonesia.
Gojek has also increased exposure toward culinary MSMEs by promoting small businesses in the application’s in-app shuffle cards, thereby boosting their visibility among users via their smartphones. During GoFood’s “National Culinary Day” (Harkulnas) promotional period in May 2020 for example, participating small businesses saw a 12 percent increase in sales.
Recently, Gojek also introduced its latest promotional campaign called Promo Sambil Berbuat Baik or “PSBB” (Sharing Kindness Promo), a twist on the local social restrictions policy bearing the same acronym.
Turning changing habits into new opportunities
Gojek also encourages its food merchants to modify the types of items they offer in order to cater to increased demands for more at-home meals, such as family-size packages and allowing merchants to sell “ready-to-cook” meals, in addition to regular “ready-to-eat” meals.
With consumers becoming more health-conscious, GoFood has intensified its support for small businesses in applying health protocols, allowing them to continue maintaining consumer trust. Safety and food hygiene standards in line with Food and Drug Monitoring Agency (BPOM) guidelines are regularly explained by GoFood to merchants via their special merchant management app, GoBiz.
Contactless delivery continues to be implemented to minimize direct contact. Delivery drivers are mandated to wear masks, and regularly scheduled by Gojek to visit the “Gojek Safety Posts” and to get their body temperature checked and vehicles disinfected.
Various merchants have testified to the benefits that Gojek’s programs have brought them.
One of them is Dodi Sandra, who operates the Pempek Pistel Kiarin culinary MSME, offering pempek (fish cakes), a traditional food of Palembang, South Sumatra, while operating his business in Bandung, West Java.
“GoFood has helped us tremendously during the pandemic. We are grateful that people are still ordering our foods. The number of orders that come our way has even increased day by day since people started staying at home. After the government applied the large-scale social restrictions, people could no longer eat out anymore – almost all of the orders coming from home were made through the GoFood application,” Dodi said.
By maintaining close partnerships with the government and its merchants and customers to help its food merchants accelerate their business pivot efforts, GoFood and the local culinary MSMEs will see a revival and even thrive through the tough times brought by the coronavirus pandemic.
Gojek has also helped these culinary merchant-partners bring down their operational costs during the pandemic with its innovations, namely its cloud kitchen that allows the culinary MSMEs to collectively prepare their food, while also providing these merchants special GoFresh vouchers so that they can get their food ingredients at more affordable prices in the marketplace.
Recently, Gojek reaffirmed its commitment to further supporting MSMEs throughout the pandemic during a virtual press conference themed “Recipes for MSMEs to revive with GoFood”, which was held in cooperation with the Cooperatives and Small and Medium Enterprises Ministry.
Since the early days of the COVID-19 crisis, GoFood has tirelessly been helping its culinary merchant-partners to maintain sustainable income amid challenging times by keeping demand afloat. GoFood has also actively sought public support to help its food merchants sell their food and beverage items.
As a homegrown tech giant, Gojek spearheads comprehensive efforts – going beyond technological aid – to bolster these merchants’ operations, covering all aspects of the supply chain, from the upstream straight to the downstream, from business management automation to delivery matters.
The comprehensive business solution is a continuation of GoFood’s various efforts in supporting the MSMEs since the early days of the pandemic.
Catherine mentioned Gojek’s soft-skills training for entrepreneurs, in which Gojek-appointed facilitators taught these merchants networking skills, allowing them to connect with their fellow business players so that they could, for example, develop themselves further by learning business strategies straight from the horse’s mouth.
“Furthermore, we also keep on collecting information on the shifting demands among consumers in the culinary sector to help these merchants adapt to food categories that are currently in demand among the public right now,” she explained.
