Food delivery apps Grab and Foodpanda expand into dine-in services as explosive growth stalls

SINGAPORE — Singapore-based meals supply apps Grab and Foodpanda are increasing into the dine-in house, as customers look to eat out extra post-pandemic.

Grab is testing its dine-in characteristic throughout 15 cities in Singapore, Thailand and Indonesia, permitting customers to pre-purchase dine-in vouchers at as much as 50% reductions. App customers may view eating places’ menus and opinions, order and pay by way of a QR-based system, in addition to e-book rides to eating places.

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The firm informed CNBC it has plans to launch in Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam as nicely.

Foodpanda was the primary meals supply firms in Singapore to introduce dine-in options in 2021.

Foodpanda Dine-in is at the moment obtainable in Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Since 2022, over 8,000 eating places throughout these nations have began providing dine-in reductions starting from 15% to 25%.

“We triggered the discussion already during the pandemic. And of course, we knew back then already, that there will be life after [the pandemic],” stated Jakob Sebastian Angele, Asia Pacific CEO at Foodpanda, at a media briefing final week.

Angele stated the corporate sees “a huge potential in dine-in” and it will probably develop into “very, very sizable” for Foodpanda. Food supply is at the moment nonetheless Foodpanda’s largest business, adopted by grocery supply, he stated.

Last week, Foodpanda introduced a collaboration with Singapore-based restaurant options supplier TabSquare to automate meals ordering processes by means of digital menus, QR ordering and extra. TabSquare was totally acquired by Foodpanda’s guardian firm Delivery Hero in 2021.

In June, meals supply service AirAsia Food launched dine-in companies in collaboration with restaurant reservation platform eatigo. In Thailand, it even affords a queuing service which permits customers to e-book riders to queue up for them at eating places.

Tay Chuen Jein, head of deliveries for Singapore at Grab, stated on the time when the agency launched GrabFood’s Dine-in service that providing these reductions “makes eating out more affordable.”

“It not only helps our users discover restaurants to go to, but also makes eating out more affordable as several merchant-partners are offering attractive dine-in vouchers that can be purchased through the app,” Tay stated in a press launch.

Jonathan Woo, a senior analyst at Phillip Securities Research, stated that with eating out prices growing with larger inflation, “consumers are also looking for deals to save costs wherever they can, and there’s almost no better feeling than having a good meal at a discount.”

He stated Grab can “indirectly generate incremental revenue from dine-in services.” In this occasion, revenues are derived from fee charges for every dine-in voucher buy.

“Increasing monetization from existing users is significantly more cost effective, while also raising awareness for F&B merchants,” stated Woo.

Investment banking agency Benchmark Company stated in an April report that meals supply skilled stellar development prior to now three years.

But the report added {that a} 50% compound annual development fee “has been showing signs of moderating growth lately as consumers resume their normal daily routines and go out and dine in more frequently.”

“With reduced incentives as high growth companies prioritize cash preservation, we anticipate that consumers may order less frequently, and merchants will likely shift their efforts towards dine-in, which could further slow on-demand order volume growth near term,” stated the analysts at Benchmark Company.

Benchmark added that it anticipated “normalized food delivery growth going forward with a CAGR of 13% through 2025.” CAGR is a measure of annualized returns for an funding over a time frame, with the idea that income are reinvested on the finish of every yr.

Grab’s CFO Peter Oey stated throughout the agency’s first-quarter earnings name in May that the corporate expects deliveries to get better within the second quarter. Deliveries gross merchandize quantity within the first quarter was about 9% decrease than a yr in the past.

“Notably, deliveries transactions have rebound strongly in the back end of April, following the Ramadan fasting period, and this has been sustained into the early parts of the month of May,” stated Oey.

Chinese tech giants akin to Alibaba and ByteDance present so-called native life companies, together with meals supply, in-store eating, journey reserving and group shopping for. Chinese meals supply big Meituan affords in-store eating companies which embody dine-in vouchers.

Sachin Mittal, head of telecom, media and web sector analysis at DBS Bank, informed CNBC this was a “standard template which everyone does.”

“Food delivery apps want to help [restaurants] get some business in terms of dining in and booking. So I think it’s a very natural thing to do,” stated Mittal.

“Whether it’s because of Covid or not, it has to be done like this because there’s no delivery charges involved in this so this increases the [profit] margin,” stated Mittal.