MANILA, Philippines – At 1 p.m., 39-year-old dietitian Violah Koh has already won her fifth pack of the day: two plants, pots and grassland.
“I try not to faint if I can. Fortunately, now you can buy almost everything online,” he says.
Pilots and flight attendants have hung up their fashion uniforms and are now driving around Manila to deliver dim sum. A popular rapper raps jingles on his Facebook and YouTube accounts to advertise his fried bird business.
Those who in closed communities set up Facebook pages to connect shoppers and distributors in neighborhoods. Everything from pets and air conditioners to a used McLaren sports car is exchanged.
Jazzmin San Mateo, a senior, says her 40-year-old mother promotes noodles, spring rolls and fried bananas online after being fired from her payroll assignment in June.
His mother had a knack for cooking and supplemented his source of income with a makeshift food stand in front of his house, he adds. The only parent keeps four children in school.
“My mom doesn’t know when she’ll be called to get her back to work,” says San Mateo. So, for now, everyone has their mother been able to sell meals to spend the day.
It’s a difficult task that leaves little time to rest, and everyone in the family circle has to participate so the money doesn’t come, he says. Ms. San Mateo says she is the social media marketing manager and is helping her brother with deliveries.
Those who can’t go online bring what they have to sell directly to their customers’ homes.
Mr. Albert Terejesas, 26, and his wife walk about 10 miles a day to sell fish, shrimp and squid from one space to another.
Her mom had a vegetable stand at a public market. But when much of the country closed in March, others stopped coming. So, around April, he had to deal with the buyers.
He and his wife would go to a fisherman’s pier early in the morning, fill two buckets of seafood and load them on a bicycle and start knocking on doors.
In this way, it makes between P500 and P600 a day. “It’s a life,” he says.
But it’s a regime where they wouldn’t have income. He’s constantly worried about getting sick. He has two children, one and four years old.
For now, the call is there.
With about 27 million other people still limited to shelters in homes and an already unleashed coronavirus epidemic, seven out of 10 Filipinos living in the capital buy the most of the things they want online.
Data through the government showed a 6.6% expansion in the communications and data sector.
Grab Philippines’ public manager, Arvi Lopez, told the Straits Times that his food delivery business, GrabFood, has quadrupled its deliveries since the pandemic.
Roland Gonzales, 37, began delivering for GrabFood in June after the printing plant it had stopped working because sales plummeted.
He says he’s still climbing up the ranks of GrabFood’s accreditation. He earns up to six hundred pesos with 4 trips a day, enough to cover the source of income he lost in his previous job.
More drivers make at least 8 deliveries a day, he said.
Although there is massive demand for goods and online, the margins of the maximum distributors are not very giant and many of them prefer to return to their old paid jobs.
“It’s a gift from heaven,” says Ms. San Mateo, whose mother earns around 400 P a day promoting food online. That’s less than the minimum wage of P500 in Manila City.
Her brother, who is in college, had to leave school this year and she doesn’t know if she’ll buy the computer and phone she wants for her online studies.
“I guess we just have to help others get ahead,” he says.
The market for those pushed online is expected to exist as long as a suspected virus population continues to buy supermarkets, public markets, retail branches, supermarkets and restaurants.
In general, while the online concert economy provides a lifeline for those who have lost their jobs or had to close their businesses, it does not replace paid employment or a fully operational business.
Mr. Jan Vincent C. Robles, 32, sells 40 pieces of shawarma a day from his GrabFood or Foodpanda home, at about a hundred pesos each.
Now he plans to hire a food stand on a busy street to develop his source of income if he can’t restart his audio and lighting business. He made many more rental devices for weddings and anniversaries.
Mr. Gonzales, the driver of GrabFood, says that even if he wins a little more now, he prefers to go back to his old job.
“The schedules are fixed and it’s safer to be in an internal workplace than to be on the road all day on the road on a motorcycle, with the virus present,” he says.
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