In the battle of food delivery services, will the kangaroo leapfrog the panda? We put Deliveroo and Foodpanda to the test
Deliveroo
Variety: Deliveroo is all about making 'hyper-localised' deliveries of premium restaurants, which probably explains why our food arrived in about 30 minutes. We had 33 options to pick from at lunch, and an additional 21 to preorder for later – most restaurants on the list are within 1.3 kilometres from our office on Ann Siang Road.
Fees: No minimum order, but for receipts below $25, delivery is charged at $5. Orders above $25 are billed a $3 Roo Charge.
Cool offerings: Burgers from Potato Head Folk, The Butchers Club and MEATliquor, all-day breakfast food from Group Therapy, and lattes and cold-brewed coffee from Dapper Coffee.
Service: We received an email right after placing our order to let us know it went through, but had to wait up to 20 minutes for confirmation from the restaurants we ordered from. Our pasta order from OCF was rejected after 10 minutes, and we found ourselves scrambling for a backup. Thankfully, our eggs benny from Group Therapy arrived with poached eggs still wobbly, and pastas from Food for Thought came piping hot.
Foodpanda
Variety: More than a hundred restaurants pop up for our location, with delivery times ranging from one to one and a half hours. It's mostly fast food and quck-service joints like Burger King, 4Fingers, The Soup Spoon and Swensens, most of which are quite a distance from our office. Good for when a craving strikes and you can't make the trek out.
Fees: Minimum orders vary from $12 for Burger King, and peak at $60 for briyanis from Islamic Restaurant. Delivery charges ranging from $3 to $10 are levied by the different establishments.
Cool offerings: Beers by the growler from Amber Nectar, Takumen and Tampopo ramen, Korean fried chicken from 4Fingers, and even frosty patbingsu from Cafe Insadong.
Service: No emails, no texts for about a half an hour after we made our orders – that made us a tad worried about possibly starving if our orders didn't go through. A quick call to the friendly Foodpanda hotline assuaged our fears, though. And at our specified time, our takeaway patbingsu arrived still frozen, and our bowls of chicken and tonkotsu soup steaming – though the noodles had already fused into a cake.