Foodpanda continues Indonesian domination with launch in Surabaya this January

Foodpanda will launch in Surabaya in early 2015, according to managing director Sander Van Der Veen. This means that the food ordering service will be present in the majority of Indonesia’s biggest cities, as it already operates in Jakarta, Bandung, Bogor, Bali, and a few more locations.

Foodpanda currently has 600 restaurants in Jakarta and 80 in Bali, and although no exact number was given, Van Der Veen tells us that it receives multiple hundreds of orders per day, 80 percent of which come from Jakarta. Of these orders, 50 percent come from the mobile app. There is no word yet on how many restaurants it has signed up for Surabaya.

Foodpanda also plans to launch a new service for corporate clients. This service will essentially allow a company to create a Foodpanda account and list their employees under it, allowing them to order food individually (at the company’s expense). Managers will also be able to order food for the entire company, if he or she so chose. Foodpanda also plans on working with food vendors to provide discounts for corporate clients. Companies will be able to pay via invoice (in addition to online and cash) and have the order overview sent to them every month. “We believe the corporate market is even bigger than the individual market and therefore presents an enormous opportunity for Foodpanda,” says Van Der Veen.

One major obstacle Foodpanda faces in its expansion is often the lack of delivery options from restaurants or other delivery providers. However, the startup has begun taking matters into its own hands by building a delivery network. Van Der Veen hopes that in the future, Foodpanda will be able to control the entire delivery process as well, rather than having the restaurants take care of it. “We’ve noticed that consumers are more satisfied when we perform the delivery as opposed to when the restaurants take care of it.” Foodpanda currently has 40 delivery riders in Jakarta, but it plans on hiring more.

(Photo by nathaninsandiego)