GrabFood grabs pole position in Vietnam food delivery market

GrabFood recently announced that it has grown 25 times since June 2018, in terms of orders received.

A survey by Kantar TNS in January 2019 found that GrabFood was the most often used food delivery service in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, as cited by 68 percent of respondents.

The GCOMM market research company, which polled 600 people in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, said in a recent report that 98 percent were satisfied with GrabFood's service.

This was a surprising outcome, given that GrabFood is a new entrant in Vietnam's food delivery market, which is witnessing fierce competition with the likes of Foody.vn, Now and Vietnammm all in the fray.

Grab’s ecosystem with a large network of driver-partners has greatly contributed to this success. More than 175,000 driver-partners in 15 cities and provinces have joined GrabFood’s network within seven months. The problem of recruiting a huge number of partners, which demands a large recruitment team and financial resources and yet takes many years, has been overcome.

Driver-partners also saw a 20 percent increase in income from delivering food and parcels, according to latest statistics from Grab.

The huge number of GrabBike driver-partners is a key factor in GrabFood's instant success.

GrabFood has also focused on building a network of merchant-partners. According to a Grab representative, an expansion in the number of merchant-partners was imperative for further growth. GrabFood cares about its partners’ growth and wants to build a win-win relationship so that they can grow together, the representative said.

Instead of offering a slew of discounts and other promotional programs to attract customers, GrabFood competes based on creative strategies, adapting to the diverse demands and tastes of customers in the various regions. 

For example, GrabFood has many exclusive menus of well-known restaurants with "GrabFood Signatures". These co-created dishes and drinks are constantly in the top three of most ordered items at big partners like Gong Cha and MeetFresh.

In addition, GrabFood has reduced the average delivery time to just 20 minutes, which means customers can enjoy their favorite food delivered fresh and delicious. This, in turn, means that merchant-partners can retain customer loyalty. At the same time, marketing campaigns undertaken in cooperation with GrabFood help them increase their customer base.

The Grab representative also said that on average, merchant-partners earn up to 300 percent in incremental revenue within two to three months of being on the platform.

GrabFood has the advantage of being a technology mobile platform to which smart functions have been integrated, including locating the nearest restaurants, updating status of orders and chatting with drivers via GrabChat. 

Cashless payment for food delivery via GrabPay by Moca has been beta tested in Hanoi, and will soon be expanded to all three cities GrabFood currently operates in.

GrabFood has reduced the average delivery time to just 20 minutes per order.

At the beginning of 2019, GrabFood announced that it was expanding its network to 15 cities and provinces.

"Our goal is to become the number one on-demand food delivery service in Southeast Asia and Vietnam in 2019," the representative said.

"On the whole, Grab’s management has made good moves. Expanding into payments and food delivery are smart, synergistic moves," said Nitin Pangarkar, Associate Professor, Department of Strategy and Policy at the National University of Singapore (NUS) Business School.