How Expats Can Send Food to the Philippines

As an expat, I always want to surprise my family back home even in the simplest way.  One thing I love doing is having food delivered to my family's doorsteps especially during special occasions and sometimes for no reason at all.

Back in 2004 when I first arrived here, I was able to send Andok's lechon manok (roasted chicken) via one remittance company and they were very happy to receive something unexpected!  Now, although it's really predictable that I will be sending food to them during special occasions, their excitement never ceased. My family is still enthusiastic about the food that I am going to send them every now and then.

I only have a few choices.  I don't usually order form third party companies because they charge double if not triple of the original price.  Below is the list of the companies where I usually order food from:

1.  Max's Restaurant

• Minimum order is P500.
• Online order must be placed at least 1 hour in advance for deliver now transactions and pick up, 2 hours in advance for deliver later transactions, and 24 hours in advance for dine-in transactions.
• Mode of payment:  Credit card.
• Revisions and cancellations should be made at most 5 minutes after order is placed (for deliver now transactions) or 1 hour after order is placed (for takeout and deliver later and dine-in transactions).

2.  Shakey's Pizza

• Minimum order is P500.
• Advance order cannot be made.
• Mode of payment:  Credit card and Paypal.

3.  Jollibee 

• Minimun food purchase of P1000.
• Orders will be delivered within 24 hours upon confirmation of the order with the recipient.
• Mode of payment:  Credit card, over the counter remittance.

4.  Goldilocks

• Minimum order is $30
• Customer must present ID to claim their items.
• Delivery service is temporarily unavailable until further notice.
• Minimum of three days order lead time.
• Mode of payment:  Credit card.

5.  Yellow Cab

• Minimum order is P300.
• Delivery 45 minutes to 1 hour after confirmation of order. 
• Mode of payment:  Pesopay

Why not try sending a package to your family and then tell me how did it go?

Jollibee Padala

It has been by my habit to send my family back home food from different food chains every time there is a special occasion such as my parents' birthday, anniversary, etc.  During the last few years, I had been ordering from three different food chains only since they were the only ones who had the facility for online food purchase.  There were times that I had to order from some third party companies just to have variety on the food that I send, but these companies charge double or sometimes three times more!

Thanks to Jollibee Padala, now I have one more option to choose from to send to my family back home.

Photo credits to Jollibee Padala

They have several packages to choose from that you can check out here.

They have two options for payment.  The first one is via credit card (Visa and Mastercard only) online purchase and the second one is via over-the-counter remittance with their partners such as BDO, BPI, filgifts.com, Iremit, PNB, RCBC, Sendah, TechAlley, and TransTech.  Please note that if you choose the first option, you have to send a copy of your government issued photo identification card for verification purposes.

Jollibee is still new on this venture and in my opinion they can probably give better service taking into consideration the following:

• The sender should be given the option of choosing the date and time of delivery.  The current process is a Jollibee representative will call the beneficiary as to when the beneficiary is available for delivery.  Hence, the element of surprise will be gone as the recipients will know beforehand that they will receive something from the sender.
• Jollibee Padala only has packages available and does not give the option of choosing individual food items , which do not give the sender the freedom to mix and match what he/she would like to send.  
• The sender can view the status of his/her order online; however when it shows that the status of your order is complete - it doesn't  mean that it has been delivered.  Complete, according to their customer service representative, means that the order is being processed.  When I asked the CSR if the status will change to Delivered once the recipient received the package, the CSR told me that the status will still remain as Complete and that the only way to check if the package has been delivered is by confirming with the beneficiary.  This is really stupid ridiculous because there is no distinction whether your order is still being processed or it has already been delivered, thus defeating the purpose of this online status check.

My feedback as stated above can easily be corrected and taken care of.  I am hoping that Jollibee Padala will further improve their service in time. 

So what are you waiting for?  Send some Langhap-Sarap goodness to your family back home now.

More information can be found on their website.