The GrabMart Journey

Summary

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Grab accelerated the rollout of its GrabMart on-demand grocery delivery service to meet surging regional demand. Early pilot testing within the existing GrabFood interface revealed that grocery shopping fundamentally diverges from meal ordering, as users search at an item level rather than browsing merchants. To support grocery workflows, the team restructured the user experience with item and store categories, one-click add-to-cart functionality, and scheduled delivery options. Engineering teams simultaneously updated core infrastructure across order management, driver allocation systems, and merchant Partner APIs to handle specialized mart bookings. Rollouts were validated across two main phases using the internal Grab Early Access program to catch issues before regional release.

Context

Rapid adoption of online delivery during COVID-19 and early pilot results revealed that grocery shopping differs from food delivery, with users struggling to find specific items within GrabFood's merchant-first flow and drivers facing unsegregated mart orders.

Approach / What changed

The team redesigned GrabMart around item-level search and categories, split delivery into on-demand and scheduled options, updated order management and driver allocation systems, enhanced merchant Partner APIs, and tested releases via the Grab Early Access program.

Takeaways

• Grocery shopping behavior begins at the item level rather than the merchant level, requiring item-focused search and category navigation rather than restaurant-centric listings.
• Scaling GrabMart required cross-system changes across the order management system, driver allocation algorithms, merchant apps, and Partner APIs.
• Splitting feature rollouts into two release phases validated by the Grab Early Access internal testing program helped surface and resolve defects before regional launch.

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