Turkish food delivery app Yemeksepeti deploys $2.5M virus fund for restaurants

Yemeksepeti, an online food delivery app in Turkey, has announced a TL 20 million ($2.55 million) support package for restaurants feeling the pinch of the coronavirus pandemic.

Turkey on Monday announced it will impose a weekday curfew and a full lockdown on weekends to combat the spread of the outbreak.

The regulations only allow restaurants to deliver food.

Yemeksepeti's package, "We Are Stronger Together," will make fortnightly payments to restaurants instead of monthly ones and the listing fee will be waived off.

Moreover, the app will allow users to place takeway orders through the app, saving the costs of hiring riders.

“We are aware of the difficulties experienced by small businesses who have closed dine-in services and we are with them,” said Nevzat Aydin, the company’s CEO.

Yemeksepeti also said it would launch a TL 2 million fund to support projects that will be developed by sector organizations.

The company had also deployed support packages and programs for restaurants during the previous lockdown period.

A partial lockdown on weekdays between 9 p.m. and 5 a.m. was implemented along with a complete curfew on weekends.

Some sectors, including supply chains and production, are exempted from the measures which began on Tuesday.

Founded in 2001 by four new graduates, Yemeksepeti is the leading Turkish online food delivery platform.

It was acquired by the multinational online food ordering platform Delivery Hero in 2015 in a transaction valued at $589 million.

It has 25,000 contracted delivery restaurants across 69 cities in Turkey. It says it has more than 12 million registered users and an average of 450,000 orders daily.