Foodpanda vs Deliveroo vs UberEats: Hong Kong food delivery services put to the test
We try out the apps and services of the three main Hong Kong companies delivering restaurant meals to your door or office – and hear the gripes of some customers
Food delivery services aim to make our lives easier with just a few taps on an app, but it’s not all peaches and cream, as we found talking to regular users and trying some ourselves. They also have their fair share of blunders and bugs, in some cases literally.
Speaking from Los Angeles, foodie Wendy Wu says: “Once I ordered salads on Doordash [a food courier in the US), but a cockroach climbed out of the bag. I screamed.”
Another food delivery service user, Adaobi Ugoagu, also in LA, says: “For my first order with UberEats, the GPS showed that the driver had arrived. I went outside and there was nobody there. I called the driver and the person who answered told me I had called the wrong number. I feel like the driver ran off with my food.”
No stories of creepy crawlies emerged in Hong Kong, thankfully, where three dominant courier services – Foodpanda, Deliveroo and UberEats – are slugging it out, but there are niggles.
“You can tell both Deliveroo and Foodpanda’s priority is to get the food there on time, as most of my deliveries have arrived squashed against the side of the box,” regular courier user Caryn Yap says. “The one time we ordered sushi, it arrived as sashimi, and blobs of rice had stuck to one corner of the box.”
Another user, David Tang, says: “I ordered food on UberEats and I saw [on the tracking function] that the driver was arriving. But I did not receive any call.