CEBU CITY, Philippines – Ever wondered why you could not order from Honestbee when your area is actually covered by its service?
Online discussions say the company is experiencing a cash crunch and has been courting buyers to save the company which revolutionized food and grocery shopping in the country.
Honestbee has not released an official statement about this issue except for Facebook posts saying that their system is down, but they are working on being back soon.
Crystal Lee Gonzales, country head of Honestbee Philippines, also posted on her Facebook account that stories about the company’s operation shutdown in the Philippines is “fake news.”
On April 20, Saturday, Honestbee Philippines’ Facebook page announced that their systems are “currently unavailable” but said that they “we’ll be buzzing again soon.”
“We’ll be right back! We’re sorry we had to leave you at this time. We’ll be buzzing here again before you know it,” the infographics posted on their page says.
But what users thought was one-day, temporary system shutdown extended for two days with honestbee posting a teary-eyed bee with the caption:” We’re really sorry we can’t be here for you right now. But don’t worry, we’re busy buzzin’ behind the scenes so we can get back to serving you in no time.”
The post used the hashtags #BeeRightBack and #BeeMissYou.
On April 22, Gonzales posted on her Facebook account a video showing Honestbee employees in the Manila office.
The video was accompanied with a caption that says, “YugaTech Esquire Philippines #fakenews! Honestbee all 200+ people STILL HERE AT THE OFFICE WORKING SINCE 7am!”
Honestbee posted about how “Bee really miss doing your food and grocery deliveries” on April 23, Tuesday.
Its most recent post was on April 25, Thursday, where it called on users to share their favorite stories and photos of Honestbee.
On the same day, it also sent an email to its users that ended with “#BeeMissYou and we look forward to serving you again soon.”
“These past few days, we know that it feels empty without your bag of groceries and milk tea waiting by your door. We feel empty without you too,” the message reads.
“We want to let you know that, we too miss doing your food and grocery deliveries as much as you miss ordering them. Thank you for always supporting us,” the Honestbee email says.
Honestbee started out in Singapore in 2015 and has since expanded to Hong Kong, Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and Japan.
In the Philippines, it started its Manila operations in the middle of 2017 and officially launched its presence in Cebu on January 2018.
As of this writing, CDN Digital has not received any official statement as to when Honestbee would be serving its users again.
