In Grab and Go-Jek’s race for dominance in Indonesia, food delivery plays an important role. It’s one aspect of on-demand service businesses that shows promising revenues.
Grab’s been innovating to achieve better efficiency and more options for shoppers in its food delivery network and it has started to establish “cloud kitchens” or delivery-only kitchens, as part of this plan. The first of this kind opened in September last year in one neighborhood of the capital Jakarta, and now Grab is adding two new locations.
GrabKitchen invites restaurants to open local branches in these facilities so that they can cater to customers in the area utilizing Grab’s fleet and app. The idea is to help small merchants expand their business without requiring them to invest in setting up a new space. All the basics are rovided in Grab’s cloud kitchen, which means a small street food vendor that’s famous in one part of town can more easily set up shop in a new neighborhood this way.
It also enables small businesses from outside of Jakarta to have a branch in the capital.
The food delivery business has grown very fast in Indonesia and across Southeast Asia. GrabFood’s delivery volume grew almost 10-fold in Indonesia from December 2017 to December 2018, according to Tomaso Rodriguez, the vice president of GrabFood. In an interview with KrASIA last year, Rodriguez suggested that food is a key pillar in Grab’s strategy and the path to profitability. He said that the company plans to open more GrabKitchen outlets this year, believing that it will be a game-changing experience for customers.
The two new neighborhoods that are getting GrabKitchen outlets are Cideng and Kramat, both in Central Jakarta.
The first GrabKitchen in West Jakarta was able to reduce the average delivery time of GrabFood orders in West Jakarta by 20%, Grab said.
Editor: Nadine Freischlad