Whisperer

Businessmen have been given an admirable lesson on how to best deal with complaints or sticky issues.

Instead of squirming or passing the buck to a slick PR agency, Mahmoud Badawy, MD of food delivery app Talabat Bahrain/Jordan, dealt with concerns raised by children with an instant response and a personal visit to the classroom, pictured above.

Junior pupils at the British School of Bahrain used the ‘power of the pen’ when Year 5 tackled the issue of single use plastic. The pupils of class 5.2 had highlighted that every time their families ordered food from Talabat, plastic cutlery was included in the delivery. 

Invariably it was used once and thrown away or not used at all ... and thrown away.

Pupils had learned how a huge amount of plastic waste ended up in the sea. Hoping to see if they could change the thinking of businesses in Bahrain, the pupils wrote directly to Talabat and requested that it help reduce the amount of plastic cutlery sent by its partner restaurants. 

They were delighted to swiftly receive an email directly from Mahmoud who thanked them for their interest in the subject and revealed that a ‘no plastic cutlery’ feature would soon be appearing on order forms.

He delivered some potted plants for each child too in recognition of their environmental efforts and said that although restaurants were responsible for including cutlery, Talabat was keen to encourage them to take steps towards environmental sustainability.

Class teacher, Thomas Monks reported that the children ‘were delighted’ to have received such a positive response and that the pupils were incredibly proud of their achievement.