A certain Karen Anne Selva has brought her frustration to Facebook after foodpanda allegedly took most of her sales.

Since the start of COVID-19 pandemic, online food delivery platforms have been more relevant than ever. One of them is foodpanda which has thousands of partners in the Philippines, offering a wide range of food, groceries, and more.

However, according to the owner of Selvas Café, the popular on-demand delivery platform takes a huge commission fee in addition to various deductions. In a now-viral Facebook post, the owner shared the breakdown of fees collected by foodpanda.

As can be seen, Selva earned only Php 38.50 for four orders worth Php 450. This is because foodpanda deducted Php 112.50 for commission fee, Php 223.22 for “fees and adjustments,” and Php 369.30 for taxes.

“Omygod. muntik na kaming nagbenta for them sana kinuha na nila lahat. PLEASE STOP ORDERING FROM FOOD PANDA! Better to order direct sa page please. They are not helping small businesses. Ang sakit sa puso,” Selva said.

Furthermore, she disclosed that foodpanda charges a Php 250 weekly deduction on top of the commissions per successful order. This is despite the agreement that the platform can only charge restaurants the said fee if the orders are over Php 4,000 for the whole month.

UPDATE

foodpanda reached out and gave their statement on this matter. Since we are avoiding impartiality at all cost, please see and consider their statement below:

One of our partner vendors has recently aired some concerns about our platform fees, which we hope to clarify.

At foodpanda, we work hand in hand with our partner vendors to help them deliver food quickly to their loyal customers, reach
new and untapped customers through our app, and be able to seamlessly receive and fulfill their customers’ orders through their vendor devices.

As part of our agreements with our partner vendors, they are charged a minimal weekly platform fee that goes into providing
the above mentioned services to our vendor partners. It also fully covers our partners’ usage of their foodpanda devices, including data charges, as well as administrative expenses. These fees are discussed prior and during vendors’ onboarding to our platform.

These VAT-inclusive payments are done on a weekly basis to help our partner vendors better manage their cash flow. At the same time, as we fully understand that vendors may experience ebbs and flows in demand, we only charge these platform fees if and only if they hit a modest threshold sales number for the
previous month. On this basis, our partner vendor had their platform fees waived for a number of weeks; last month, they
were able to enjoy additional sales and reached the threshold sales target, and they were charged platform fees this month accordingly.

We have already reached out to our partner vendor to address their concerns in greater detail. We are grateful for their feedback and remain committed to supporting their business.