Food: RAISING FOOD DELIVERY STANDARDS

In conjunction with World Food Safety Day last June 7, Grab Philippines announced new initiatives to raise the bar for safety, hygiene, and quality standards in the food delivery industry. Through Grab Philippines’ partnership with the Food Safety and Hygiene Academy of the Philippines (FoodSHAP), and additional measures to help ensure cleanliness, safety, and quality throughout the entire food delivery life cycle. These efforts ladder up to Grab’s broader GrabProtDSect program where Grab Philippines continues to raise the bar for food safety and quality — giving consumers greater peace of mind that their food orders are prepared following strict safety and quality standards.

With more consumers relying on food delivery services for their everyday meals, their expectations on food delivery platforms have grown, placing a huge premium on safety and quality. As the industry leader in food delivery, Grab Philippines is taking the lead in effecting positive change. This partnership with FoodSHAP and new measures will further strengthen consumer trust in the Grab platform and in our partners, contributing to improved sales, and better livelihoods.

Grab Philippines will continue to leverage its platform and partnership with FoodSHAP to implement a range of measures and initiatives that will continue to raise the standards of safety, hygiene, and quality throughout the entire food delivery life cycle.

Food safety training for all merchant and delivery partners

Starting June 2021, Grab Philippines and FoodSHAP will conduct monthly food safety and quality training for their merchant partners through the GrabAcademy Merchant platform and webinars. To ensure safety and cleanliness throughout the food delivery life cycle, Grab Philippines will also conduct mandatory food safety training for its delivery partners through the GrabAcademy platform by offering online courses developed by FoodSHAP.

FoodSHAP is the Philippines’ first and leading educational institution at the forefront of food safety and quality with years of expertise in developing internationally recognized certificate programs for top chefs, restaurant owners, and food handlers. FoodSHAP is the first food safety certificate program developer in Asia to be fully accredited by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and is recognized by the Department of Health (DOH) and accredited by the Department of Education (DepEd).

Grab Philippines is the first platform in the country to offer food safety courses to its partners and is also the first platform to collaborate with FoodSHAP in offering best-in-class learning experiences to merchant and delivery partners on safety and hygiene protocols, proper food handling, and food quality assurance.

Helping merchant partners enhance their service quality standards

Apart from the food safety and quality training, Grab Philippines will also introduce new measures to help merchant-partners continuously improve their service quality standards.

Grab will provide its merchantpartners real-time consumer feedback focusing on food safety and quality, allowing them to address key consumer issues and enhance their service quality and performance. This will be done through the introduction of the Merchant Quality Score where performance against key performance indicators and customer feedback on food safety and quality will be shared directly with merchant-partners in-app. This aims to allow merchants to refer to detailed feedback, identify areas of improvement, and refer to tips on what to do to improve their business.

Conducting food safety and quality audits

Grab Philippines will hire an internal auditor to conduct food safety and quality audits to ensure that merchant-partners are able to continuously maintain the service quality and adhere to the food safety protocols.

“As an advocate for food safety, we want to empower the public in promoting a positive food safety culture, making every meal we prepare and serve be safe for consumption. The organization believes that collaborative efforts are vital as Food Safety is everyone’s business. This partnership with Grab Philippines is something that we are proud of–we are looking forward to helping our countrymen in safeguarding their health especially during these times of pandemic. Let us all team up for food safety for a safe and healthy tomorrow,” says Elsie Gatpayat, director of FoodSHAP.

“The food delivery industry in the Philippines has provided meaningful services to many of our kababayans, and as we continue to grow and serve the needs of our consumers, we should also continue to raise the bar on safety, hygiene, and quality to outserve their needs and expectations. We are committed to leveraging our platform to raise the safety and hygiene standards in the food delivery industry in the Philippines, and by doing so, we are able to provide consumers with greater peace of mind every time they order from our platform, contributing to the business of our merchant partners, and the livelihoods of our delivery partners. Our partnership with FoodSHAP is a significant milestone in our ongoing efforts on food safety and quality, and we will continue to innovate and introduce meaningful initiatives to help meet the ever-changing needs of our kababayans,” says Greg Camacho, Head of GrabFood Philippines.