Asia’s largest brands partnership launched

foodpanda on Thursday announced a long-term, multi-market partnership with Rebel Foods to enable restaurant partners and cloud kitchen operators to grow additional revenue streams, at little or no start-up costs.

Rebel Foods is the world’s largest internet restaurant company headquartered in India. The new digital-first F&B format sees foodpanda and Rebel Foods joining forces for the benefit of local and small players in the F&B industry, said a media statement.

Through this partnership-for an initial five years-both companies will aim to launch more than 10 virtual brands in over 2,000 outlets across the region, making this the largest virtual brand partnership in Asia, and the first of its kind in the region at this scale.

As part of the partnership, Rebel Foods brings their culinary expertise, efficient SOPs and iconic ready-to-deploy brands that are easily customisable for local preferences in any region.

Meanwhile, foodpanda enables hundreds of thousands of restaurant partners and cloud kitchen operators to plug-and-play virtual brands into their current operations to grow additional revenue streams, at little to no start-up costs.

Smaller SMEs and restaurant partners on the foodpanda platform can adopt new recipes and utilise their spare capacity to grow additional revenue streams while creating diversity in their menu offerings.

In the first phase of the partnership, which began in December 2019, Rebel Foods introduced four brands across six markets-Singapore, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Thailand, Hong Kong and the Philippines through the foodpanda network. Orders for Rebel Foods’ brands on the foodpanda app on average grew 40 per cent month-on-month in the past six months, with more than 200 outlets across the six markets signed up to add virtual brands to their existing food and beverage (F&B) offerings.

“This foodpanda-Rebel Foods partnership introduces a new digital-first F&B format to Asia. foodpanda is always seeking new, innovative ways to change the way F&B businesses operate in a hyper-digitalised economy-we want to push our ecosystem further into the future,” said foodpanda COO Pedram Assadi.

“Most importantly, these virtual brands will give our restaurant partners, especially SMEs, new opportunities to earn additional revenue.”

A virtual brand is an online-only food concept where a brand exists digitally, with no dine-in presence, and offers food that is available for delivery or pick-up from the outlet.