The Commerce Ministry yesterday kicked off a fresh discount campaign for food prices and deliveries, aiming to help consumers, restaurants and food outlets.
Presiding over the campaign, Commerce Minister Jurin Laksanawisit said it features a 60% discount on food prices delivered through five online platforms: Foodpanda, Grab, Lineman, Gojek and Robinhood.
For consumers, four digital platforms -- Robinhood, Foodpanda, Grab and Gojek -- have also agreed to waive delivery fees for the first 3-5 kilometres from a maximum of 40 baht.
For restaurants and food operators, Robinhood, Foodpanda, Grab, Gojek and Lineman have agreed to reduce their gross profit (GP) share or commission fee to 25% from 30-35%.
Robinhood, the online food delivery service provider under Siam Commercial Bank, has waived GP collection.
Foodpanda does not charge a GP to new restaurants or food shops.
The GP fee reduction scheme runs for one month starting the first week of June for restaurants and food shops in Greater Bangkok, while the food discount scheme is offered to consumers nationwide during the same period.
According to Mr Jurin, online food delivery operators are expected to forgo revenue of 250-350 million baht by participating in the latest discount campaign.
In a related development, he said to help restaurants easily access soft loans, the ministry teamed up with six financial institutions to organise a loan-matching programme for restaurants that sell food through online delivery platforms.
The six financial institutions are the Small and Medium Enterprise Development Bank of Thailand, Krungthai Bank, Government Savings Bank, Islamic Bank of Thailand, Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives and Thai Credit Guarantee Corporation.
The loan-matching programme is scheduled to occur both online and offline between June 7-20 this year.
The number of registered restaurants with the Business Development Department is 118,967, of which 15,967 are registered as a company and 103,000 as an individual operator.