Ele.me's digital meal assistance for the elderly: every meal delivery is a visit
Every meal delivery is a visit, the warmth of technology in Ele.me’s digital meal assistance for the elderly
Food is the most important thing for people, especially for the elderly. A small bowl of rice is filled with happiness in old age. Recently, the Civil Affairs Bureau of Putuo District signed a strategic cooperation agreement with all streets and towns in the district, Ele.me, Leyang Charity and Elderly Technology. All parties will explore and innovate in-depth meal assistance services for the elderly. Among them, the "Assisting the Elderly e-meals" community delivery service customized by Ele.me was officially launched in Putuo. In each meal delivery process, the efficiency of digitalization and the warmth of serving the elderly are integrated. .
Community canteen riders: solving the "last meter" problem for elderly people to eat
Around 10 o'clock every day, at the meal pick-up point of the Bailan Community Elderly Canteen in Changfeng New Village Street, dozens of packed lunches for the elderly in the street are neatly placed. At this time, there are no customers eating in the canteen, but three Ele.me "blue riders" have arrived on time. They are all excellent riders from the nearby Global Harbor station and were selected into the Ele.me "elderly e-meal" delivery team three months ago. After picking up the meals, they will deliver today's lunch to each elderly person's home within half an hour.
"Community canteens have always faced problems such as limited audiences and difficult cost control." The Community Affairs Development Center of the Pudong District Civil Affairs Bureau introduced that as early as 2008, Pudong District listed community dining assistance points for the elderly as a government practical project. Now Pudong District has built 113 community dining assistance service places for the elderly, including 38 community elderly canteens and 75 elderly dining assistance points. A dining service network covering 10 streets and towns in the district has basically been formed.
However, the network of elderly meal assistance services is becoming more and more dense, but there are still elderly people who have difficulty in eating, especially the elderly who are very old and have difficulty going out. For them, eating in the canteen is almost a luxury. For example, for Grandpa Liu, who is 85 years old and lives alone, even if the canteen is right at the entrance of the community, it seems far away to him.
Since he had surgery on his legs more than a decade ago, Grandpa Liu's daily range of activities is to walk from the bedroom to the living room with the help of a booster. Data shows that about 90% of the elderly choose to live at home. For those who have difficulty in traveling and are bedridden at home, like Grandpa Liu, the demand for meal assistance services is more urgent. Home delivery can solve the "last mile" of their meal needs.
Home delivery is also a good deal for community canteens. For example, the coverage area of the Wuning Community Elderly Canteen is 4 square kilometers, but after all, the elderly who come to eat in the store are still mainly from nearby communities. The dining-in capacity of the canteen is not fully utilized, especially in bad weather such as winter and rainy days. There are even fewer customers dining in, which is also a waste of the community canteen's dining capacity. Only when professional meal delivery services are improved can the 4 square kilometers of service coverage be guaranteed to match the dining capacity of the elderly canteen.
In other words, the addition of high-quality home meal delivery service is a win-win situation for both the elderly and community canteens.
One-click ordering and dedicated customer service: digital upgrades made possible by joint efforts of multiple parties
For the elderly, home delivery of meals has gradually become a rigid demand. Putuo District has long discovered this and gradually explored solutions. It is reported that Putuo District initially tried the model of community volunteer meal delivery. Elderly people who are old, disabled, and need special protection can register for meal service on a monthly basis at the neighborhood committee, and meal delivery volunteers will deliver meals to their homes at noon every day.
However, this model encountered challenges in its implementation. The delivery team, which is composed of community volunteers and employees hired by catering companies, is mostly young elderly people who complete the door-to-door delivery work in between their jobs as milkmen and garbage collectors. Therefore, the delivery timeliness and service level cannot be guaranteed.
Three years ago, Changfeng New Village Street piloted a meal delivery service team with Ele.me. Putuo Kintetsu Station was responsible for delivering meals to the elderly and disabled in Changfeng New Village Street. However, although the delivery personnel have been replaced by "professionals", because the orders have not yet been digitized, the riders need to plan their own routes for delivery every day according to the address form given by the meal assistance point, so the replication and promotion of this model is limited.
However, with the digital transformation of elderly meal assistance services by the Pudong District Civil Affairs Bureau, Leyang Charity and Ele.me, the delivery service has ushered in a breakthrough moment. Leyang Charity has developed a "Elderly Meal Assistance" applet platform for the Pudong Civil Affairs Bureau. All the needy elderly people in Pudong District who need home meals can place orders online. After the platform is connected with Ele.me, riders can receive assigned orders through their mobile phones. The increase, decrease and change of orders can also be done online at any time, and there is no need for street staff to "keep records" every day, which greatly liberates manpower.
But for the elderly, simply having food delivered to their door is not enough. Unlike ordinary takeout users, the elderly have a stronger sense of safety and are resistant to having food delivered to them by strangers every day. In addition, because the elderly are slower in answering the phone and opening the door, they also have higher requirements for the patience of the service.
Therefore, under the requirements and guidance of the Pudong District Civil Affairs Bureau, Ele.me innovated the delivery plan and service standards based on the pick-up and delivery characteristics of elderly meal assistance services, launched the "Elderly e-Meals" community delivery service, and opened a special customer service hotline for the elderly.
In terms of logistics and distribution, the "one-point pick-up and multiple-point delivery" model is adopted to improve efficiency and reduce costs. In terms of delivery personnel, orders for elderly meals will be preferentially allocated to the "elderly e-meal" delivery team composed of party members and advanced riders. Therefore, the personnel are relatively fixed. Basically, after a few days of delivering meals, the riders can "get to know" the elderly and give them enough sense of security.
Before starting to deliver meals, these riders will undergo professional training, with the main emphasis on giving the elderly enough patience. In addition to delivering meals, they must also pay attention to the elderly's condition and promptly report any situation to the street, making meal delivery itself a "outpost" for caring for the elderly.
For those riders who are willing to participate in community service, Ele.me has also specially created a "Community Hero" incentive system and designed a series of honor incentives, material incentives and development incentives.
Putuo Model: the first "government-public welfare enterprise" cooperation model
Shanghai is the first city in China to enter an aging society. In Putuo District, the registered elderly population over the age of 60 is as high as 383,400, accounting for 42.76% of the total population. It is one of the three districts in Shanghai with the highest proportion of elderly population.
How to serve nearly 400,000 elderly people in the jurisdiction is obviously an unattainable task relying solely on community grassroots staff and volunteers. Putuo District is determined to seek the answer from "digitalization".
To this end, Putuo has built the city’s first district-level smart meal assistance system - the Putuo District Smart Elderly Care Meal Assistance Service Management Platform, to create a community smart meal assistance scene, and realized the “one card to eat, enjoy discounts” for dine-in scenes.
In response to the needs of needy elderly people for door-to-door meal delivery, through the "Elderly Meal Assistance" mini-program mentioned above, digital elderly meal delivery has achieved district-wide coverage, and Ele.me riders provide professional and efficient delivery services.
In order to meet the needs of more elderly people to dine at home, Putuo District has also piloted a digital solution for community canteens to launch a food delivery platform and provide subsidies. After the community canteens are launched on the Ele.me App, elderly residents can enjoy the subsidized meal prices by ordering meals through their mobile phones as long as they complete the registration and binding.
As a result, the "Putuo Model" of digital meal assistance services for the elderly with full coverage and full scenarios has taken shape.
Since 2023, a series of policies centered on meal assistance services for the elderly have attracted public attention. The "Action Plan for Actively Developing Meal Assistance Services for the Elderly", "Three-Year Action Plan for Comprehensively Promoting the Construction of Urban 15-minute Convenience Living Circles", and "Work Plan for Promoting the High-quality Development of Digital Technology for the Elderly" have been implemented one after another, clearly proposing to carry out meal assistance services for the elderly for the society, guide business entities such as food delivery platforms and logistics companies to participate in meal assistance delivery for the elderly, explore the development of community canteens, and establish a meal assistance service network for the elderly.
Adhere to the cooperation between government and enterprises, introduce professional services; seek answers from digitalization, improve service efficiency, Putuo District pioneered the digital cooperation model of "government public welfare enterprise" for elderly meal assistance services, showing replicable and sustainable characteristics. At the same time, it also gave birth to the humane "by-product" such as "elderly e-meals", which built a solid foundation for more elderly people to enjoy high-quality home-based elderly care services.
