Food and grocery delivery service Honestbee Taiwan on Saturday said that it has suspended its operations in the nation.
The Singapore-based company said it is trying to resolve payment issues and asked its employees not to report for duty.
“We regret to announce that our management team in Taiwan has received instructions from the Singapore headquarters office that we are to immediately suspend all our business operations in Taiwan,” the company said in a statement.
Photo: Chen Ping-hung, Taipei Times
The company said it is awaiting further instructions from the headquarters “to ensure that the operating problems can be mitigated and solutions found, then we will resume our business operations in Taiwan.”
The company launched in Taiwan in January 2016.
The suspension came only days after representatives of a “victims self-help association” on Wednesday held a protest outside Taipei City Hall to demand payment from the firm and asked the government to help get their money back.
Association spokespeople said that Honestbee Taiwan owed about NT$7.79 million (US$250,708) to mostly small businesses and shop owners across the nation.
A total of 286 food suppliers and restaurateurs were ready to file a class-action lawsuit against the company, they said.
Honestbee Taiwan’s official Web site and social media pages were still online as of press time last night, and people who said they were owed money by the company posted messages on them.
“We had 10 restaurant owners who had received back payments on Friday, so Honestbee Taiwan has not declared bankruptcy and is still operating. We will follow up to monitor the development of payments for our members,” association head Chen Chien-hao (陳建豪) said yesterday.
Honestbee Taiwan’s Taipei office had been empty over the past few days and it was closed after the suspension was announced, Chen said.
He said that Honestbee employees were instructed to work from home for their own safety, as there had allegedly been altercations with shop owners and creditors demanding payment, he said, citing unknown sources.
Company officials have promised to deal with the payments and other problems, saying they were waiting for funds to be transferred from Singapore, he added.
China has reserved offshore airspace in the Yellow Sea and East China Sea from March 27 to May 6, issuing alerts usually used to warn of military exercises, although no such exercises have been announced, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported yesterday. Reserving such a large area for 40 days without explanation is an “unusual step,” as military exercises normally only last a few days, the paper said. These alerts, known as Notice to Air Missions (Notams), “are intended to inform pilots and aviation authorities of temporary airspace hazards or restrictions,” the article said. The airspace reserved in the alert is
NAMING SPAT: The foreign ministry called on Denmark to propose an acceptable solution to the erroneous nationality used for Taiwanese on residence permits Taiwan has revoked some privileges for Danish diplomatic staff over a Danish permit that lists “Taiwan” as “China,” Eric Huang (黃鈞耀), head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Department of European Affairs, told a news conference in Taipei yesterday. Reporters asked Huang whether the Danish government had responded to the ministry’s request that it correct the nationality on Danish residence permits of Taiwanese, which has been listed as “China” since 2024. Taiwan’s representative office in Denmark continues to communicate with the Danish government, and the ministry has revoked some privileges previously granted to Danish representatives in Taiwan and would continue to review
More than 6,000 Taiwanese students have participated in exchange programs in China over the past two years, despite the Mainland Affairs Council’s (MAC) “orange light” travel advisory, government records showed. The MAC’s publicly available registry showed that Taiwanese college and university students who went on exchange programs across the Strait numbered 3,592 and 2,966 people respectively. The National Immigration Agency data revealed that 2,296 and 2,551 Chinese students visited Taiwan for study in the same two years. A review of the Web sites of publicly-run universities and colleges showed that Taiwanese higher education institutions continued to recruit students for Chinese educational programs without
China has reserved offshore airspace over the Yellow Sea and East China Sea from March 27 to May 6, issuing alerts that are usually used to warn of military exercises, although no such exercises have been announced, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Sunday. Reserving such a large area for 40 days without explanation is an “unusual step,” as military exercises normally only last a few days, the paper said. The alerts, known as notice to air missions (NOTAMs), “are intended to inform pilots and aviation authorities of temporary airspace hazards or restrictions,” the article said. The airspace reserved in the alert
RSS