Websites and apps to snag good deals on food

With more people staying at home due to Phase 2 (Heightened Alert) COVID-19 measures, delivering or taking away food has become an essential part of our daily lives.

Here are some food resources that you can use to get the food you want at affordable prices.

SG Hood Telegram Groups helps you find food deals around your area and pitch in group buys, helping your quest to find good priced food deals. There are 82 groups right now, for different areas such as Punggol, Bishan/Ang Mo Kio and Jurong West.

If you would like a Telegram Group that covers all of Singapore instead, subscribing to the SG Food Deals group is your next best bet.

If you are feeling bummed about paying high delivery fees to get food from your favourite restaurant, this private group is for you.

This group features restaurants which provide their own delivery service so you do not have to fork out extra money to pay for delivery through a delivery platform.

The group supports independent and small group restaurants only, so you are unlikely to find restaurants with plenty of franchises and outlets.

Complete with a one to five-star rating system, this website gives you all there is to know about Singapore’s Hawker culture, from how to “chope” a seat with a tissue to the less obvious facts such as every stall in a Hawker centre being inspected for cleanliness twice a year.

While it is a shame that not all the stuff mentioned in the Hawker guide on the website can be enjoyed for now, JointHawker makes it easy for one to find takeaway or delivery options.

Just type in a food item to the search engine, set the filters such as your location, your budget, cuisine preference among others and all the different stalls and its ratings will show up on JointHawker.

Now you can easily find some of the best versions of Hawker food in Singapore with the help of this website.

Just Dabao is a social enterprise that helps eateries sell their surplus food.

Every order from this social enterprise is known as a Shiok Bag, containing a variety of unsold food and beverages from eateries. Brief descriptions of the meal and eatery are stated on the website, with name and address of the restaurant you ordered the bag from only revealed after you have paid for the Shiok Bag.

You will then have to pick up your bag from the restaurant yourself after you have bought it. Do not let this turn you off, however, as prices for the bags can be more than 50 per cent off the original price of the item, depending on the eatery you choose.

Talk about a little mystery plus low prices to spice up your day.

ChewApp is a collaborative marketplace that matches people who want to order food to someone who is willing to deliver the food. That means that you will have the freedom to order from any eatery with no minimum order or marked up prices.

There are two ways that you can request for a food delivery: Requesting a food order or picking an offer on the app.

This concept of our local community helping one another to get food and earn income is an interesting one and may just be a sustainable idea for Singaporeans for years to come.

The app is available to download from the App Store or Google Play Store.

Eating is considered to be one of the national past-times of Singapore and with great deals to be had for both takeaways and deliveries, you will get to enjoy this past-time more than you already do.