Earlier in April, it was announced that the grocery and food delivery service Honestbee was ceasing its services in Hong Kong and Indonesia and suspending operations in the Philippines and Japan. Its food delivery service was also stopped in Thailand.
Now, the company has just announced that it will be temporarily suspending both its food and grocery delivery services here in Malaysia from 22nd July onwards. An e-mail was sent out by Honestbee’s Malaysian division clarifying that this decision was made by their headquarters in Singapore.
According to The Star, in a press statement, the company said this temporary suspension was “to ensure we can meet our financial commitments to our merchants, partners, and suppliers as we carefully review the future of our operations.”
While full-time employees of Honestbee won’t be affected by this suspension, riders and shoppers under the company will “have the option to pursue other career paths when the opportunity arises” but will be welcomed to rejoin Honestbee when operations are restored.
Source: Marketing Interactive
For those who purchased a subscription plan under beehive, they will be contacted by Honestbee to be issued refunds. An excerpt from a statement from Honestbee reads,
“As CEO and chairman of the board at Honestbee headquarters, Brian and the group leadership team at Honestbee have been focused on fundraising and pursuing other strategic opportunities to leverage our successes thus far and to bring the company to financial sustainability.”
“The team at Honestbee Malaysia and our regional counterparts endeavour to meet all our payment obligations to our merchants, partners, and suppliers. On top of that, the communication individually will take place at a local level in the next few days.”
Meanwhile, popular Subang restaurant Jibril addressed news of Honestbee’s operations being suspended in a post on their Facebook page, claiming that the company has owed them thousands of Ringgit for the past few months. An excerpt from their post reads,
“After disappearing for a few months, we received a call from them, to take back their tab (even though they still owed us thousands). No news and they only gave us this (e-mail) today.”
honestbee owed us quite a few thousands RM since few months back. It is still due as at today. After dissapearing for…
Posted by Jibril on Wednesday, July 17, 2019
The announcement of Honestbee temporarily suspending its Malaysian operations comes after news of its CEO, Joel Sng, stepped down and was succeeded by Brian Koo in May.
What do you think of this situation? Let us know in the comments section.
Also read: Honestbee Allegedly Fires CEO After Laying Off 10% Of Staff & Suspending Some Of Its Operations
