How Does AirAsia Food Stack Up Against GrabFood, Deliveroo And Foodpanda?

How Does AirAsia Food Stack Up Against GrabFood, Deliveroo And Foodpanda?

It is clear to see that the aviation industry has been badly impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic.

In fact, there was less than half the passenger traffic in the whole of 2020 as compared to 2019. Airlines around the world therefore have had no choice but to pivot in order to survive.

For Southeast Asia’s low-cost carrier AirAsia, the pandemic served as an opportunity for them to speed up its digital transformation and evolve to go beyond being just an airline.

It has boldly dubbed itself as “the Asean super app”, which now includes an ecosystem of new services including food delivery, grocery delivery and even online shopping, in addition to its usual lineup of flight tickets and hotel booking services.

On March 2, AirAsia food made its debut in Singapore, marking its first overseas foray.

As the newest player in Singapore’s saturated food delivery market, how does it stack up against the big players?

Initial Thoughts And Experience On AirAsia food

When a new player joins the arena — much like when Gojek first entered Singapore — consumers are undoubtedly excited at the prospects of an additional option for them to choose from, and promo codes to entice new users.

For AirAsia food, it is offering free unlimited food delivery until March 16 — this is applicable only for deliveries within 8km from the order point.

At launch, AirAsia food is featuring about 80 restaurants, including Swee Choon Tim Sum Restaurant, No Signboard Seafood, The Shepherd’s Pie, Maki-san, Pizza Express and more.

Another 300 restaurants will be onboarded onto the platform at a later stage.

Although there are no promo codes per se, the lure of free delivery is enough to entice users to at least download the app and check out the food offerings available.

However, I was disappointed with my virgin AirAsia app experience — it was very laggy and took awhile to load. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one to experience this, as seen by the app reviews on Apple App Store.

To add on, the location feature seems buggy. It couldn’t detect my exact address and accurately list the nearby restaurants. However, it seemed to work fine on the web platform.

My takeaway is that the app is not yet optimised and requires an update. If you want to check out AirAsia food, log on to airasia.com/food instead of downloading their app.

To add on, the interface (for both mobile and web platforms) is not very user-friendly.

For instance, the list of restaurants is not sorted according to distance. At the top of the page, I’m being recommended restaurants that are 15km away from my location.

A quick workaround to this is to filter the list of options by distance — when you filter to 8km, you are technically shown restaurants that are eligible for the free delivery promo.

Regardless, the existing food options is very limited and I actually observed price discrepancies between two same brands from different outlets for the same menu.

The first time round, I tried ordering from 7 Wonders restaurant and it turns out that it only accepted pre-orders (but it didn’t have the pre-order tag on the listings page). To add on, the earliest timing for the pre-order delivery was 1.30pm to 2pm, which is way after my lunch hour.

When I tried ordering from AirAsia food again on another day, the payment page took very long to load (more than 15 minutes). It was such a long wait that I ended up giving up on the order and exiting the app.

A Comparison Against Its Key Rivals

AirAsia food aims to give better value by offering low-cost options, much like the mantra of the budget airline.

It’s charging restaurants only 15 per cent commission per delivery, which is much lower than rivals GrabFood, Foodpanda and Deliveroo, which ranges between 25 to 35 per cent.

AirAsia food reasoned that lower commission fees will lead to more savings, which are passed on to the consumers.

While the selection of restaurants is currently not as vast as the other players, it is a short-term problem that will gradually diminish as new merchants come onboard.

Moreover, with low commission fees, more merchants are expected to jump on AirAsia food.

While AirAsia food said that its delivery fee is “five per cent lower” for customers as compared to other platforms, it cited delivery fees ranging between S$2.99 and S$20.

It’s also worthy to note that Deliveroo and foodpanda deliver within a restricted radius of 2km to 6m, while GrabFood delivers islandwide only for selected partners.

In contrast, AirAsia food offers delivery from restaurants up to 20km away. A bigger delivery radius however, will mean a longer delivery time. This could explain why it promises delivery within 60 minutes.

Acknowledging that a one-hour delivery time is lengthy, AirAsia food has said that it will strive to shorten it over time.

To shorten the delivery time, AirAsia food needs to beef up its fleet of riders. It has recruited only 500 riders now (while GrabFood, Deliveroo and foodpanda has thousands of riders), but aims to double that number by third quarter of 2021.

The main difference you’ll notice on AirAsia food compared to other platforms is the inability to track your order in real-time.

AirAsia CEO Tony Fernandes sees this ‘maps’ feature as an “unnecessary frill” that can help to keep operating costs and prices low. He added that customers can still chat with their riders in-app to find out the status of their delivery.

Another interesting feature of AirAsia food is that customers can earn reward points that can be used for AirAsia flights.

Customers can earn 1 BIG point for every S$0.30 spent, and redeem 405 BIG points for every S$1 (or 125 BIG points for every S$1 until March 16). This is equivalent to a rebate of 0.8 per cent (or 2.7 per cent until March 16).

This is nothing unique to AirAsia food though — you can also earn airline miles on GrabFood or foodpanda.

Every 1,000 GrabRewards points can be redeemed for 100 KrisFlyer miles, while every S$1 spent on foodpanda can earn you 1 KrisFlyer mile (with a minimum spend of S$20).

Will AirAsia Food Succeed In S’pore?

AirAsia is very much aware of the stiff competition it will face from the current dominant food delivery players.

While CEO Tony Fernandes don’t think that they will be the largest food delivery service in Singapore, he is confident that they will be a “useful segment for small restaurants”.

That said, it will indeed not be easy for them to earn a lion’s share of the food delivery pie here. Even in its home country Malaysia, it is considered a smaller player.

According to Li Jianggan of Singapore-based venture builder Momentum Works, AirAsia food delivered only 150,000 orders for the first quarter in Malaysia — this is a fraction of the overall market there, which is dominated by Grab and foodpanda.

The advantage that they have however, is that it is a well-known company so it does not have to market themselves as much as fledgling startups and consumers already have trust in their brand.

In addition, it is unlikely for AirAsia food to be financially viable anytime soon — even GrabFood, which has been around since 2018, is not yet profitable.

Earlier this year, Grab president Ming Maa said that he expects Grab to break even in food delivery only by the end of this year.

Furthermore, any revenue that they make will just be a drop in the ocean for the loss-maklng budget airline.

Regardless, it seems like AirAsia is exploring other revenue streams. Beyond food delivery, AirAsia is looking at expanding into the fresh produce delivery market in Singapore.

This means that consumers can soon have fish from Japan or short ribs from Korea imported and delivered to their doorsteps within 48 hours.

In any case, competition breeds innovation and only time will tell if AirAsia food has what it takes to shake up the saturated food delivery market here.

亚航食品如何与GrabFood，Deliveroo和Foodpanda对抗？

显而易见，Covid-19大流行对航空业造成了严重影响。

实际上，与2019年相比，整个2020年的客运量不到一半。因此，世界各地的航空公司别无选择，只能生存下来以求生存。

对于东南亚的低成本航空公司亚航而言，大流行为他们提供了一个机会，以加速其数字化转型，并超越单纯的航空公司而发展。

它被大胆地称为“东盟超级应用程序”，除了通常的机票和酒店预订服务之外，它现在还包括新服务生态系统，包括食品配送，杂货配送甚至在线购物。

3月2日，亚航食品在新加坡首次亮相，标志着其首次海外进军。

作为新加坡饱和食品配送市场的最新参与者，它如何与大型参与者抗衡？

关于亚航食品的初步想法和经验

当一个新玩家加入竞技场时（就像Gojek首次进入新加坡时一样），消费者无疑会为他们提供更多选择的可能性以及促销代码来吸引新用户而感到兴奋。

对于亚航食品，它将在3月16日之前免费提供无限量的食品运送服务-仅适用于订购点后8公里以内的运送。

亚航食品推出之初，约有80家餐厅，包括Swee Choon Tim Sum餐厅，No Signboard海鲜，Shepherd's Pie，Maki-san，Pizza Express等。

稍后，还将有300家餐厅登上平台。

尽管本身没有促销代码，但免费送货的诱惑力足以吸引用户至少下载该应用程序并查看可用的食品。

但是，我对自己最初的亚航应用程序体验感到失望，因为它的运行时间太长，而且加载需要一段时间。从Apple App Store上的应用评论可以看出，显然我并不是唯一一个体验过这一点的人。

另外，位置功能似乎有问题。它无法检测到我的确切地址并准确列出附近的餐馆。但是，它似乎可以在Web平台上正常工作。

我的收获是该应用程序尚未优化，需要更新。如果您想查看亚航美食，请登录airasia.com/food，而不要下载其应用程序。

另外，该界面（针对移动平台和Web平台）不是非常用户友好。

例如，饭店列表不是根据距离排序的。在页面顶部，推荐我的餐厅距离我的位置15公里。

一种快速的解决方法是按距离过滤选项列表-当您过滤到8公里时，从技术上讲，您可以看到符合免费送货促销条件的餐厅。

无论如何，现有的食物选择非常有限，我实际上观察到来自同一商店不同商店的两个相同品牌之间的价格差异。

第一次，我尝试从7 Wonders餐厅订购，结果发现它仅接受预订（但在列表页面上没有预订标签）。另外，最早的预订时间是下午1.30到2pm，这是我午饭后的时间。

当我第二天再次尝试从亚航食品订购时，付款页面的加载时间很长（超过15分钟）。漫长的等待使我最终放弃了订单并退出了该应用程序。

与主要竞争对手的比较

亚航食品的目标是通过提供低成本的选择来提供更好的价值，就像廉价航空公司的口头禅一样。

它只向餐馆收取每次交付15％的佣金，远低于竞争对手GrabFood，Foodpanda和Deliveroo，后者在25％至35％之间。

虽然亚航食品表示，与其他平台相比，其客户的送货费“低了百分之五”，但它提到的送货费在2.99新元至20新元之间。

还值得注意的是，Deliveroo和foodpanda在2km至6m的限制半径内进行交付，而GrabFood仅在选定的合作伙伴范围内进行全岛交付。

相比之下，亚航食品提供从20公里以外的餐馆运送食物的服务。但是，较大的传送半径将意味着较长的传送时间。这可以解释为什么它承诺在60分钟内交货。

亚航食品承认一个小时的交货时间很长，因此表示将努力缩短交货时间。

亚航食品认为，较低的佣金将带来更多的节省，并转嫁给消费者。

虽然目前餐馆的选择不如其他餐馆那么广泛，但这是一个短期问题，随着新商人的加入，这种问题将逐渐减少。

此外，由于佣金低，预计更多的商人会选择亚航食品。

为了缩短交货时间，亚航食品需要加强其乘员队伍。它现在只招募了500名车手（而GrabFood，Deliveroo和foodpanda有数千名车手），但目标是到2021年第三季度使这一数字翻一番。

与其他平台相比，您在亚航食品上会注意到的主要区别是无法实时跟踪您的订单。

亚航首席执行官托尼·费尔南德斯（Tony Fernandes）将此“地图”功能视为“不必要的装饰”，可以帮助保持较低的运营成本和价格。他补充说，客户仍然可以在应用程序内与骑手聊天，以了解交付状态。

亚航食品的另一个有趣特征是，客户可以获得可用于亚航航班的奖励积分。

客户每消费0.30新元可赚取1 BIG积分，每3新元可兑换405 BIG积分（或到3月16日，每1新元可兑换125 BIG积分）。这相当于有0.8％的回扣（或到3月16日为止为2.7％）。

但是，这并不是亚航食品所独有的-您还可以通过GrabFood或foodpanda获得飞行里数。

每1,000 GrabRewards积分可兑换100 KrisFlyer里程，而在食品熊猫上每消费S $ 1可赚取1 KrisFlyer里程（最低消费为S $ 20）。

亚航食品会在新加坡成功吗？

亚航非常清楚当前主要的外卖食品供应商将面临的激烈竞争。

尽管首席执行官托尼·费尔南德斯（Tony Fernandes）并不认为它们将成为新加坡最大的送餐服务，但他相信它们将成为“小型餐馆的有用细分市场”。

话虽如此，要让他们在这里赚取大部分的外卖食品，确实不是一件容易的事。即使在其母国马来西亚，它也被认为是规模较小的公司。

据总部位于新加坡的风险投资公司Momentum Works的李江干表示，亚航食品在马来西亚的第一季度仅交付了15万张订单，这是该地区整个市场的一小部分，其中以Grab和foodpanda为主。

但是，他们的优势在于，这是一家知名公司，因此不必像新兴的初创公司那样推销自己，消费者已经对他们的品牌有了信任。

此外，亚航食品不可能在短期内在财务上可行-即使自2018年以来一直存在的GrabFood仍未实现盈利。

今年早些时候，Grab总裁Ming Maa表示，他希望Grab到今年年底才能在食品配送方面达到收支平衡。

此外，他们的任何收入对于制造亏损的廉价航空公司而言都是沧海一粟。

无论如何，亚航似乎正在探索其他收入来源。除了提供食品外，亚航还计划扩展到新加坡的新鲜食品外卖市场。

这意味着消费者可以在48小时内从日本进口鱼或从韩国进口短肋骨，然后送到家门口。

无论如何，竞争助长了创新，只有时间才能证明亚航食品是否有能力撼动这里饱和的食品配送市场。