Serving Up More Than Just Good Food—GrabFood Turns One

When you think about it, the world is just one great dining table with a grand feast laid out on distant ends. We’re all sitting around it, trying to reach a certain dish or a certain dream—dying for a taste of that sublime chocolate cake…but it’s sitting too far away to get to. People beside you? They’re all busy trying to reach their own cravings at different sides of the table. No one is helping each other.

But what if we did? What if someone got up and thought, “why don’t we all work together to help each other reach our dreams?” Whether it’s reaching for that slice of metaphorical chocolate cake or something that’s not too far from where we all are in life—like hoping to send your children to a good school, expanding your business, or even something as simple as enjoying a meal with someone you care about.

Well, someone did and we all get to join the feast. For a year now, GrabFood has been bringing together a community of people: from businesses to consumers, to delivery-partners—all who make up the ‘great dining table,’ so to speak. Grab’s food delivery arm is now celebrating a year of bridging people to good food. Beyond that, it has opened an avenue for local restaurants to bring their food out to a wider audience as well as create new jobs for their delivery partners and their families. Just recently, Grab joined the festivities at the Masskara Festival in Bacolod where they brought iconic institutions and homegrown brands in the local food scene and took these different diverse flavors onto a different market.

A Year’s Journey

A friend of mine personally shared that their growing brand—local coffee and milktea store, Beanleaf—grew their presence on GrabFood, “It’s helped us grow our brand and reach more of our customers, especially as we’re still expanding in Metro Manila. Some of our stores are dead spots during non-peak times. Plus, other stores only cater to the immediate vicinity and so people really come and go. Like after school or work. But now we get orders during these times because people who can’t physically come to our stores want to indulge in milktea or coffee for merienda.”

“We only joined GrabFood last month but we already got a lot of new fans. Sales are growing, too. We’re an underrated indulgence—our drinks are really good but we’re homegrown so obviously [Beanleaf is] not as big as some of the other brands yet so people don’t know about us [as much]. GrabFood has helped a lot in raising brand awareness and showing our franchise partners that we’re putting effort into our brand,” she adds.

Much like Beanleaf, around 40,000 small, medium, and micro-entrepreneurs now participate in this new digital food economy. A win-win, with new job opportunities opening as these businesses grow and at the same time, Grab is also able to employ more delivery-partners to serve the increasing demand. Before the rise of food delivery services, most people had to confine their choices to only what was available in the market. I personally didn’t like ordering because you’re often forced to meet a minimum amount or the food would take forever to arrive. But now, if you need to quickly get food on the table or if the random milktea/burger/pasta (or anything, really) craving strikes, then GrabFood is the answer to your problems.

A market survey from Kantar shows that GrabFood is the number one most often used food delivery platform in the Philippines, a position that it has held for ten consecutive months from December 2018 to September 2019. And currently, it is able to empower tens of thousands of riders who can earn as much double the average daily minimum wage in the Philippines. This makes a huge difference especially as a lot of them are the breadwinners of their family. Grab has also provided an option to deliver via bicycle or on foot for those who don’t have motorbikes and at the same time paving the way for places where roads are sparse or underdeveloped.

Former fish dealer, Albert Orea, who was named as the Top GrabFood Delivery Partner during Grab’s first-ever Golden Lunch Box Awards also shares his story. Orea has so far accomplished more than 4,000 deliveries this 2019 alone. “With GrabFood, I now have means to survive everyday. Grab changed my family’s life. I am now able to put my child in a private school using my income as a GrabFood rider,” he said.

One Big Handaan for Everyone

The community that eats together, celebrates together; and to give back to all the hungry people out there, Grab is throwing a party for everyone until December 6, with several deals lined up. There’s the piso delivery sale—which is pretty self-explanatory—but those who spend a minimum of P400 on food and drinks from participating merchants get a P1 only delivery charge. There will also be a happy hour from 2 to 5pm daily as well as blowout deals that features different restaurants with exclusive promos to be availed of. Additionally, buy-one/get-one offers will be cropping up from different merchants along with P111 vouchers to be gotten. Over two dozen merchants in Metro Manila and Cebu are joining the promotion with up to 40% of discounts to be grabbed (pun intended).

Last and definitely not the least, Grab is also offering a lucky winner the chance to win GrabFood for a year (equivalent to 15 voucher codes worth P350 each per month)! Anyone who orders a minimum of P300 from anniversary restaurant partners can earn one raffle entry.

So the next time you crave for a small treat (or even a huge feast), the answer is at the tip of your fingers. GrabFood delivers.