Food delivery is a quintessential service that Singaporeans can’t live without.
When the same old lunch options near your office become mundane, when you’re staying late at work and need a quick dinner fix, or when you just want to spend the weekend chilling at home — you know where this is going: “Eh, want to order GrabFood?”
Ordering GrabFood has become such a natural thing to do that it’s surprising to think the service was only launched in 2018.
In this short span of two years, its food offerings have expanded to more than 8,500 F&B merchants, with options ranging from fast food to bubble tea to mala hotpot.
The app has also changed a lot in terms of functionality.
We can now quickly search for available food merchants near work or home by creating ‘Saved Places’, suss out the best restaurants through user ratings, as well as chat directly with our assigned rider to check on the delivery without giving out our phone numbers.
Admittedly, it’s hard to keep up with all the updates being rolled out from time to time. So, I decided to take a deep dive into GrabFood and find out what else I’ve been missing.
Here are a few cool features I discovered:
Schedule An Order For Later
Recently introduced, you can now schedule a GrabFood order for a future delivery time of up to two days later. You can select the option to have a scheduled delivery when you’re on the merchant’s page, or just before you check out your basket.
This feature comes in handy when you’re hosting a party, or when you know you have a busy day ahead and won’t have the time to browse and order later.
Currently, scheduled orders are only available for select merchants.
Self-Collect Your GrabFood Order
GrabFood is not just all about delivery too. If you go out to dabao food often, you can use the app’s ‘self pick-up’ option to place an order ahead and skip the queue.
For example, I tried using this feature to buy dinner from a Japanese curry rice restaurant near my home.
When I placed my order, the app told me how long it would take for the restaurant to prepare my food, so I only needed to make my way there when it was almost ready. That way, picking it up was instant, and I didn’t waste any time waiting around.
If you’re not quite sure of the restaurant’s location, GrabFood will also pull up directions from Google Maps to help you navigate your way there.
Place Multiple Orders At A Time
With GrabFood, you don’t have to wait till your order is delivered before you place a new order.
While your current order is on the way, you can return to the GrabFood home page and place additional orders.
GrabFood lets you place up to four concurrent orders — they can be from the same or different restaurants, and you can also choose to send them to the same or different address.
To keep track of all your ongoing orders, simply retrieve them from your order history tab.
Using Search Filters
Having a wide variety of food to choose from is great, but sometimes being spoilt for choice can make it hard to come to a decision. After all, “What do you want to eat?” is a notoriously difficult question to answer.
Even when you have a specific cuisine in mind, you might find over 20 results for Japanese food around you.
The next time you encounter this, try switching on the search filter to sort restaurants by user ratings, so you can tap on the wisdom of many to find out which one is worth a try.
GrabFood’s search filters also let you view restaurants according to popularity, recommended merchants, distance and promotions. For Muslim users, you will be pleased to know that you can also filter your search based on Halal options.
Curated Deals And Recommendations On Your Home Page
After ordering Japanese food a couple of times, I realised GrabFood was paying attention. The next time I opened the app, I found a new section on my home page that said ‘Because You Like Japanese’.
GrabFood uses an algorithm to recommend food merchants you might like based on your previous activity on the app.
If you frequently order from the same restaurant, or the same dish, you may see an ‘Order Again’ section that helps you get there faster right from the home page without having to key in your search at all.
GrabFood’s home page also curates suggestions like ‘What’s Good For Breakfast’ or ‘Crowd Picks For Dinner’ depending on the time of day, and shows you all the food deals around your location so you never miss out.
Late-Night Food Delivery
When hunger pangs strike at midnight, we often turn to fast food delivery as a quick and convenient option.
Thanks to GrabFood, supper delivery options are now no longer limited. As of 28 October 2019, GrabFood has extended its delivery hours to 24/7 islandwide so you can fix your cravings anytime.
Since many food delivery firms stop delivering after 10pm, some night owls have dubbed GrabFood’s 24/7 delivery service as a lifesaver.
Of course, the extent of variety you can find in the wee hours of the night depends on the number of merchants that are open till late.
I browsed GrabFood at 1am and found a decent mix of food options available in my area, with prata, noodles, dim sum, Western food, Korean food and dessert shops to pick from.
Here’s a full list of 24-hour stalls and restaurants you can order from on GrabFood.
More Than Food: Order Beer, Flowers, Supplements
Contrary to its name, GrabFood actually delivers more than just food.
In line with the firm’s ‘super app’ ambition that lets users do more on a single platform, GrabFood has expanded its offerings to also include delivery for other items like beer, ice cream, health supplements, bak kwa and snacks via the ‘Mart’ icon.
Perhaps even more unexpected is the fact that you can order flowers on the app, which you can find by either tapping on ‘Mart’ or typing ‘flowers’ into the search bar.
Sometimes, couples say ‘I love you’ through the sweet gesture of ordering their significant other’s favourite food for them, but you can now take it a step further by sending a surprise bouquet to your bae.
GrabFood Now, Thank Us Later
Hopefully, these features will come in handy the next time you reach for your phone to satisfy your food cravings.
If you know of any other cool features, share them with us in the comments below!
Featured Image Credit: Vulcan Post
This article was written in collaboration with GrabFood.