After building a track record as a super app in the transport network business, Grab now aims to boost entrepreneurship through the expansion of its food- delivery service, GrabFood, by forging partnerships with more micro and small food businesses to reach out to more markets and customers.
“Even as I speak to my team, one of the most important things to ask is, why do we grow the business? One of Grab’s most important objectives of its vision is to grow micro entrepreneurship. That is quite important for us. We’ve done that on transport by bringing more earning opportunities for car drivers,” said EJ de la Vega, GrabFood Philippines head in a recent interview with the BusinessMirror.
“Now we’ve really grown our opportunities that will enable more earning opportunities to thousands of delivery-partners with motorbikes,” he added.
Through Grab’s online store front, de la Vega said entrepreneurs are assured of a level playing field because they can now compete with the bigger players in terms of promoting their products.
“The idea of an online store front is that a small business is no longer constrained by location and definitely opens up more opportunities despite of not having a presence in a mall or a high foot traffic area,” de la Vega pointed out.
“The GrabFood system allows you to expand your reach beyond the confines of your store,” he added.
By going online, de la Vega said a small business can accept a bigger volume of customers in contrast to a brick-and-mortar setup constrained by a very limited space.
“We level the playing field in the restaurant space, and I love to hear from them that they achieved growth despite the limited space in their physical store,” he said.
He said GrabFood also serves as a marketing platform that will enable micro and small businesses to reach more clients.
Right now, Grab has over 5,000 food merchants to serve the market.
Brian Cu, president of Grab
Philippines, said Grab is engaged in the so-called everyday business to serve
the daily essential needs of highly social Filipinos, while improving the
revenue of merchant-partners and providing livelihood for delivery partners.
“As the only everyday super app for Filipinos, our mission is to use technology to help improve the lives of both our consumers and partners. With food delivery as one of our most important business focuses for 2019, we will continue to bring innovative and rewarding food experiences to our consumers, while helping our partners reap the benefits of participating in the Philippines’s digital economy,” Cu said.
Recently, GrabFood formed a partnership with McDonald’s Philippines for its delivery service with additional online storefronts, access to millions of Grab users and an extended pool of delivery partners.
“Our partnership with McDonald’s Philippines is consistent with our vision of helping Filipinos become micro-entrepreneurs via the Grab platform. At GrabFood, we are committed to empower businesses and micro-entrepreneurs, and help them embrace new methods to grow their business,” de la Vega said.
“Our best-performing delivery partners can earn up to two times the minimum daily national average, on flexible schedules that they decide on. While restaurant-partners can expect incremental orders and revenue on top of the in-store visits they receive. We have effectively become the trusted platform of our consumers and partners, making us the number one food- delivery app in the Philippines,” added de la Vega.
GrabFood continues to sustain its hyper growth stage after growing 12 times in terms of completed orders in less than a year since its beta launch last June 2018.
“Through this partnership, we’re excited to offer our customers another convenient way to access our food online. We are confident that GrabFood can help bring McDonald’s closer to ‘time-starved consumers,’” said Margot Torres, managing director of McDonald’s Philippines.