SINGAPORE, Feb 1 — When some businesses and families struggled to stay afloat last year during the Covid-19 pandemic, media company Halalfoodhunt took it upon itself to rally the community to support those struggling to get by.

The firm, which produces content to promote halal food merchants to their social media followers, organised a fundraising drive to feed families who were finding it hard to make ends meet as the coronavirus laid waste to the economy.

After setting a budget of S$6 (RM18) a meal, Halalfoodhunt’s co-founder and chief executive officer Jumaiyah Mahathir and her team tapped their network of food-and-beverage (F&B) businesses to prepare and distribute the meals to the families.

This, in turn, helped some of these F&B businesses tide over the circuit breaker from April to June last year, when people were barred from dining out and could only buy takeouts or order food from delivery services to combat Covid-19.

Advertisement

“There was a lot of panic when the circuit breaker period happened,” Jumaiyah, 31, told TODAY last week.

“Especially during (Islam’s holy fasting month of) Ramadan, there were a lot of families who were worried about whether they could feed their babies… for some of them, their family members just lost their jobs,” she said. 

In the space of one-and-a-half weeks, the company raised S$120,000 for its “sponsor a family” initiative, supporting 240 families with food and other necessities such as groceries and milk powder.

Advertisement

Even though Halalfoodhunt wanted to carry on with the initiative, Jumaiyah said that it was limited by manpower and resources.

“Even after all the families were sponsored, there were people still writing in and asking whether they could contribute some more… but I don’t think our team could handle it,” she said, noting that there were only three people running the company’s operations then. 

“Two-hundred and forty families is already quite a feat for a small team.” 

Businesses happy to do their part

Business owners who took part in the campaign said that they did not think twice when approached by Halalfoodhunt. 

They lowered the prices of their food as part of the charity drive, even though their earnings had taken a severe knock during the circuit breaker. 

One of them is Aina Zulkarnain, 29. She owns food caterer The Flameshack, which recorded dwindling sales during that period. 

Since her catering kitchen in Tampines had the capacity to churn out high volumes of food, Aina was determined to help and even roped in some friends who initially struggled to take their business online because they were not on food delivery platforms.

“With the help of this campaign, it helped sustain the other businesses for the first two weeks of the circuit breaker because it gave them something to do and some income from the donations,” Aina said. 

Joanne Lee, who helps her parents with their family eatery Gourmet Pizza at Kallang Wave Mall, said they agreed to take part in the campaign, even though their sales had taken a beating. 

“The circuit breaker had coincided with the Ramadan period and the festive season… and people couldn’t go out and celebrate. When we were approached for this campaign, we thought why not? We can help people,” said the 21-year-old. 

This was also her way of giving back to Halalfoodhunt, which had helped advertise her business online and expand her customer base before Covid-19 struck. 

“It (became) quite hectic for us. But we made sure that we got those orders out and we also got our own orders out, and the entire Ramadan period just felt extra meaningful that we were able to do this for other people,” said Lee. 

Digitisation made it possible

Jumaiyah said that the goal was always for Halalfoodhunt to become a community-based platform, but before the coronavirus outbreak, the company did not imagine that it could play that role. 

The pandemic provided the perfect opportunity to plunge into it. For one, by that time, Halalfoodhunt had spent seven years working with halal F&B businesses and growing its audience.

Mobilising the community for a charity drive was therefore not difficult, given its fairly large following online, Jumaiyah said.

Another reason it could easily rally people behind the cause was the fact that it already had strong digital processes that made it efficient to do shoutouts online.

In 2019, Halalfoodhunt tapped digital solutions offered by OCBC Bank to make its business processes more efficient.

This was done through the Government’s Start Digital initiative, which provides small- and medium-sized firms with foundational and easy-to-use digital solutions, to help them on the path towards digitisation.

By using platforms such as MailChimp, an integrated marketing service for small businesses, Halalfoodhunt discovered that it could easily reach its followers and subscribers to keep them abreast of campaigns and initiatives. 

It also launched more campaign-driven projects, and offered marketing and advertising services to its clients at a fraction of the usual cost during the pandemic.

This was especially helpful for firms that were tightening their marketing and advertising budgets.

For instance, Halalfoodhunt in 2019 tapped e-commerce service Shopify and published on its website a catalogue of kuehs (bite-sized desserts) for sale during Hari Raya, which marks the end of Ramadan.

Customers then bought the desserts from the merchants through Halalfoodhunt’s site.

Halalfoodhunt earns a commission of between 20 and 30 per cent from every sale made.

Jumaiyah said: “Because Halalfoodhunt was very agile, it allowed us to increase our growth in 2020 by 30 per cent. 

“The guarantee of business survival will be agility. So, to build agility within your business, tech definitely helps with that.” — TODAY