SINGAPORE: Food delivery service provider Deliveroo is introducing a digital dining concept that it hopes food lovers in Singapore would like to tuck in to.
This comes as it launched on Tuesday (Mar 12) its biggest Deliveroo Editions site in Singapore to date, featuring 10 kitchens as well as a 40-seat dining space at Alice@Mediapolis.
There will be seven restaurants offering 11 food concepts at the outlet and these include: Korean fried chicken brand Bonchon, Omakase Burger, Vietnamese noodle bar NamNam, Rasa Rasa, The Flying Squirrel, ComNam and Blu Kouzina.
A closer look at how the Deliveroo Food Market looks from the inside. (Photo: Deliveroo)
Deliveroo Singapore’s general manager Siddharth Shanker told Channel NewsAsia on Tuesday that it chose the site of its latest Editions outlet, called Deliveroo Food Market, using the data it collected.
“We found that the 4km to 5km radius of Clementi, Queenstown and Holland Village to be very interesting, and there is a big catchment area,” Mr Shanker said.
He added that the restaurants it brought together at the Alice@Mediapolis outlet was based primarily on user demand and ordering patterns as well. For example, Blu Kouzina’s Mediterranean fare was favoured by residents in the areas Deliveroo wants to serve, although the data also showed that the preferred price point was between S$15 and S$20.
This led to the restaurant bringing two food concepts – Vios and Lucky Souvlaki – that offer more affordable Greek and Mediterranean food to the new co-kitchen space, Mr Shanker explained.
Deliveroo Food Market will be open seven days a week, Mr Shanker said. Lunchtime will range from 11am to 2.30pm while the dine-in space for dinner will open from 4.30pm to 9.30pm. Food delivery orders from here will end at 10pm, the company added.
DIGITAL DINING EXPERIENCE
Besides the data-driven site location and food choices, it is also collaborating with San Francisco-based tech company eatsa to bring the latter’s fully automated ordering system here.
Diners who complete their orders would see their names on the digital orders board on top of the “smart” cubby holes – a technology brought here by San Francisco-based firm eatsa.
Customers will have to place their orders at one of the self-service kiosks situated at the entrance of the outlet, after which their orders are registered and names put up on the digital order board.
Once ready, the food will be placed in one of the 12 cubby holes and the smart screen will light up with the diner’s name for pick-up. Visitors then tap twice at the top right-hand side of the screen to open the cubby and pick up the food.
Eatsa’s senior program manager Danny Lee, who is in town for the launch, told Channel NewsAsia that this is the first time the company is offering its food ordering system outside the United States.
He explained that eatsa provided the software, hardware and ordering system in place for Deliveroo’s latest Editions site, and worked together with the latter’s team during the design and building of the location.
When a customer’s order is ready, the cubby’s screen will light up with the diner’s name and a moving animation of a pair of hands holding folk and spoon.
Mr Lee said the Singapore market was a natural choice for eatsa to expand to.
“Singapore consumers are very accepting to new technologies and ready for a digital ordering experience like ours,” he said, adding that the adoption of mobile payments here is also another attraction.
The US company does not have an office in Singapore currently, but depending on this “experiment” with Deliveroo, it could be something it looks into, said Mr Lee.
Mr Shanker said the whole outlet took about six months to conceptualise and build, but declined to share how much was invested for this venture.
And he is confident that the company’s experience and track record in running its “super kitchens” concept will stand it in good stead against rivals such as Foodpanda and GrabFood.
The company started Editions in 2017 in Katong before expanding to another site in Lavender a year later. These sites, he explained, helped the company finetune its operations such as providing a rest area for its food delivery riders, and pushed it towards having a dine-in area.
“These (learnings) are not easy to copy,” Mr Shanker asserted.
Foodpanda, on its end, opened a central kitchen with a dine-in area in Woodlands last March.
Grab, too, confirmed with Channel NewsAsia its plans to bring its Kitchen by GrabFood concept to Singapore after it bagged US$1.5 billion of funding from SoftBank’s Vision Fund last week. It did not say when and where this is happening.
