Grab today has announced the pilot launch of its new service called GrabSupermarket, which they state is not quite the same as the GrabMart you may be used to.
According to the team, GrabSupermarket is Grab’s first foray into its online grocery delivery service that’ll be operating from a fully functional and stocked dark store.
Dictionary Time: A dark store is a large retail facility that resembles a conventional supermarket or other store but is not open to the public, housing goods used to fulfil orders placed online.
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What To Expect
From GrabSupermarket, you would be able to access a wide variety of household needs ranging from fresh produce, frozen food, packaged food and beverages to homecare, household products, personal health, supplements, and more.
These, they claim, will be available at low prices, and with zero delivery fees. There will also be no minimum order, or a cap to your order.
However, in the case that items that you’ve selected are later found to be unavailable for purchase, Grab will inform you and remove the items from your order.
If you wish to cancel your entire order though, you’d have to contact their Help Centre 24 hours before the schedule delivery time.
You’ll only be charged for your order once it gets delivered to you, and payment will be done via the Grab app so as to keep the process cashless and contactless.
GrabSupermarket VS GrabMart
So, what’s the difference between GrabMart and GrabSupermarket then?
GrabMart is meant to be an on-demand grocery delivery service, which means it can deliver urgent goods to you within 30 minutes.
On the other hand, GrabSupermarket is meant to replicate your traditional grocery shopping a little more, where you may not necessarily be rushing to purchase goods. Instead, you’ll be buying in bulk.
GrabSupermarket doesn’t offer 30-minute deliveries or even same-day deliveries, you’d have to make your order first and then it’ll come the next day.
You can pick your delivery slot for between 8PM to 10.30PM the next day when you checkout.
It’s worth noting that GrabMart actually doesn’t have a minimum order requirement either, but the difference is that you will have delivery fees that depend on each store you order from.
Who Can Experience This First
As this is only the pilot stage, Grab has limited access to it for those within Petaling Jaya, in the areas of Section 12 and 13.
Their FAQ states that eventually it’ll be opened up to Petaling Jaya Section 12-17 for further testing, but there’s no date given yet.
How To Access GrabSupermarket
If you’re within the aforementioned areas, you can access GrabSupermarket by clicking on “Mart” in your Grab app, and then typing “Supermarket” in the search box.
At the moment, there isn’t a more straightforward way of accessing it.
Initial Concerns
The fact that there are zero delivery fees sounds great, but one has to wonder if GrabSupermarket’s low prices will actually be as low as claimed.
As none of us at Vulcan Post stay in Petaling Jaya Section 12 to 13, we were unable to do a quick price comparison of GrabSupermarket’s offerings versus what you can get from, say, Jaya Grocer or Tesco’s online grocery delivery services.
Furthermore, while notifying consumers before removing unavailable items from their order is a good call, the fact that cancelling one’s entire order has to be done through the Help Centre seems more trouble than it’s worth.
Grab would have to be able to keep up with the potential volume of users in order for order cancellations to go smoothly. Hopefully, a better solution to cancelling one’s orders can be found later.
Accessing GrabSupermarket in the Grab app also is not as convenient as one would hope for yet, since it’s not a little tile of its own like “Mart”.
Of course, all it takes is some manual information input here and there, but still, customers love any convenience they can get.
It’s still in a very early stage of development though, so I’m sure that if the demand is there and consistent, Grab won’t hesitate to add a special tile for the service.
From what we know of the service thus far, it seems like a competitor for MyGroser, which also utilises dark/cloud stores of its own for its online grocery delivery service.
Editor’s Note: We’ll update this piece with our findings if we get more information on GrabSupermarket and how it holds up to its competitors in terms of pricing.
- You can find out more about GrabSupermarket here, and Grab here.
- You can read other articles we’ve written about Grab here.
Featured Image Credit: Grab
