New GrabKitchen offers Makati residents tastes beyond their boundaries
MAKATI RESIDENTS can now stop fretting: the dishes of Omakase, Mister Kabab, 24 Chicken, Recovery Food, and Frank and Dean, all restaurants which are outside the city, are now available in the area, while CoCo Fresh Tea and Juice has expanded its delivery operations in the area. This isn’t because they’ve opened up new branches. They’re all there thanks to Grab’s GrabKitchen.
Grab, collecting data from its GrabFood operations, figured out that the aforementioned restaurants are those most-widely searched for in the area (among other factors), but due to the limitations of delivery radii, aren’t available in Makati.
Now, under one roof in Glorietta 2, the six merchants have been equipped with fully operational kitchens so as to fulfill orders within the area. GrabKitchen also has a dine-in area, seating around 20, where one can order via a digital kiosk. Furthermore, one can mix and match orders from the partner merchants, and make food bundles such as the Awesome Twosome Bun-deal, with seven pieces of 24 Chicken’s Boneless chicken, and CoCo’s Three Buddies Milk Tea, and Omakase’s California Maki, for a limited period. Consumers can get discounts on bundles with promo codes GKBUNDEAL60 and GKBUNDEAL100 until Feb. 29.
This is the first GrabKitchen in the Philippines, but Grab has had them up and running in Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Singapore. According to GrabFood Head EJ Dela Vega, they plan to build three more in six months, in different locations around Metro Manila. “The goal is to have as much coverage as possible,” Mr. Dela Vega told BusinessWorld at the media launch of Feb. 12 at the GrabKitchen in Glroietta 2.
The ease for customers is quite obvious, but we asked how it benefits merchants who might want to get on the program. “They don’t have to pay a fixed rent (a percentage is taken from their sales); they don’t have to build a space,” he said. “It opens a virtual branch for them, basically. They don’t have to invest in the high costs of putting up a new branch.” — Joseph L. Garcia
