KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 15 — Want a home-cooked meal but too busy to go outside and buy groceries?

There’s an app for that.

Happy Fresh is the first service in Malaysia, launched last March, that gives users the opportunity to order any item available from select supermarkets in the Klang Valley — De Market, Red Tix and Sam’s Groceria, all with a click of a button on their website or app, and to have it delivered to their doorstep within the hour.

Apart from delivering groceries, Happy Fresh also provides personal shoppers who are trained to select the freshest produce available.

“There is a lot of particular requirements when it comes to groceries, I think, in terms of picking fresh items, in terms of handling chilled and frozen items and making sure the temperature is right throughout the whole process.

Happy Fresh personal shopper picking out fresh produce for customer.

“This is our niche, this is our core. We concentrate only on groceries, so everything we do is tailored to handling that,” Happy Fresh Malaysia’s managing director Opal Wu said in a recent interview with Malay Mail Online.

“The reason why the founders wanted to do this idea was really to solve a personal problem they were facing. They had busy lifestyles, travelling a lot, and they found it hard to make better food choices; they wanted to cook and prepare meals at home, but it’s such a pain to have to go buy groceries and they end up eating out all the time,” he added.

However, Happy Fresh is faced with a unique set of challenges, Wu pointed out, in having to deal with raw produce compared to other simpler delivery services for electronics or clothes.

“Because you are buying things you’re eating yourselves and feeding your families with, people were naturally very sceptical,” he said.

Hence, Happy Fresh’s personal shoppers have to go through stringent background checks and extensive training at the Happy Fresh Academy to ensure that the products they pick for their customers are top notch.

“It’s not just anybody buying things for you; it’s really people whose job it is to pick the freshest and best items. And they’re shopping for you as if they’re shopping for themselves, so there’s some quality guarantee there,” Wu said.

Happy Fresh Malaysia MD Opal Wu.

The delivery service model is nothing new in KL, Wu admitted, with various concierge services popping up following the advent of the smartphone and the convenience of an app.

However, the abysmal traffic and shortage of parking makes a service like Happy Fresh all the more viable, which often surprises their customers, he said.

“They’ve all been surprised at how fast we’ve been able to deliver to them. In Malaysia, an hour is really really fast, I think,” Wu said.

Wu also acknowledged that some supermarkets offer delivery services, while others who don’t have partnered up with concierge services in order to have groceries delivered to the doorstep of their customers.

But he pointed out that Happy Fresh was distinct in its instantaneousness and its risk-free model that allowed for a last-minute return of products purchased.

“If you don’t like any of the items you receive, you can reject them on the spot and we’ll only charge you for what you accept.

“There’s always a chance that we take a hit but… customers feel that it’s easier to trust the service if they can return things on the spot,” he said.

Wu noted that grocery shopping tends to be a chore and said people’s growing appreciation of their time have made Happy Fresh a favourite among working parents, millennials and expatriates.

“People are working harder, their lives are becoming more and more intense, so time becomes a limiting factor to what they want to do.

“So they can either choose to spend two to three hours grocery shopping, or they can get a massage, or watch a movie, or spend some time with family,” he said.