Grab aims to train 3,000 food-delivery merchants by end-2020

GRAB is rolling out an online training programme that features more than 20 modules to help merchants grow their food-delivery businesses.

Through the programme called Grab Merchant Academy, business owners can pick up skills - for free - in areas such as online store management, menu optimisation, community management and online marketing.

The modules will be rolled out from mid-September to 3,000 merchants for a start, and then thrown open to the rest. There are now more than 12,000 GrabFood and GrabMart merchants on the platform.

The modules are categorised according to the maturity of the merchant's food delivery business - that is, whether they have just joined Grab, are already receiving orders on the platform, or have steady order volumes.

To aid food establishments that are strapped for digital resources, Grab is also launching an online repository of images sourced from users. Merchants will be able to use these images for their menu listing and promotions to drive sales conversion.

A completed pilot project by Grab has found that merchants who use images of their menu items field up to two times more sales than when they run their storefront without visuals.

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Users can contribute photos to the new GrabFood Bank initiative by including a #GrabFoodBank hashtag on Instagram and tagging the merchant. Businesses can then repost or use the images for digital marketing, and are not required to credit the source.

Dilip Roussenaly, senior director of GrabFood Singapore, said in a statement that being successful online requires a different strategy and approach from the traditional way of driving traffic to brick-and-mortar stores.

"This is increasingly apparent as the online F&B scene becomes more crowded. Business owners will need to learn more digital skills to be able to stand out. We understand our merchant-partners have very different levels of digital proficiency and this is where we hope to help," he said.

Separately, he told The Business Times that merchants generally need the most support in going online for the first time and to improve food safety and hygiene standards. A Grab study has found that half of consumers consider the merchant's hygiene standards when ordering.

About 5,500 merchants have joined GrabFood since March, he said.

During Phase 2 of Singapore's reopening, GrabFood users ordered twice as frequently than before the "circuit-breaker" period, though slightly less frequently than during the circuit breaker and Phase 1.

Advertising and marketing by merchants on the GrabFood platform have also picked up since the start of the partial lockdown in Singapore in April. About 20 per cent of merchants (with at most three outlets) who ran marketing campaigns recorded a 50 per cent rise in daily orders during the campaign period; 31 per cent of merchants continued to see increased basket sizes of at least 10 per cent post-campaign.

These merchants took up the GrabFood Capability Development Pack launched in partnership with Enterprise Singapore, which provided more than S$1,500 worth of digitalisation support.

Grab also launched a campaign that provided S$50 in free GrabAd credits to more than 3,000 single-outlet merchants. These credits can be used to create banner and search ads in order to boost their visibility and sales on GrabFood. Grab said partners who have run ads have registered up to 10 times more returns for every dollar spent on GrabAds.