Maybe grocery deliveries just not right for Singapore. The busy country needs a more prepared stuff, like food. Easily and deliciously delivered to customer’s hand. That’s why Honestbee failed while Grain found itself profitable.
A full stack Grain
Grain is a Singapore-based online restaurant. Yes, it’s a restaurant and it sells foods online. It is unlike its competitors such as Grabfood and Foodpanda. Other, such as CloudKitchen rent its space to other restaurant to cook at and help them promoting and delivering the food. While Grabfood just deliver foods from resaturants.
On the other hand, Grain is a full stack company. It handles everything on its own. The company uses unwanted mansion as its kitchen, with its own chefs cooking organic foods. Then it delivers its foods directly to customers hands.
Ernest Sim, Isaac Tan, Rifeng Gao and Yi Sung Yong founded the company in 2014. Not putting a big goal off going international, the company focused on its local market for five years. It held its first funding round in 2016 wiht only $1,6 million.
But those five years were not short. The company nearly closed it services once. And in 2017, it has to deal with the authorities. After its curry rice got more than 20 people hospitalized for food poisoning.
That’s why the company is putting a slow yet sure step to go international. After getting everything settled in Singapore with more than 100 workers. The company raised its Series B round with $10 M to its’ bowl.
The money, according to Yong is going to be used for its first expand in Thailand. But the company does not close the possibility of expanding to other countries. Just if the technical details such as logistic and chefs are perfect.
In Singapore itself, Grain currently delivers thousands of meals per day. And it bragged an eight-figures sale per year. In 2018 only, the sale grew by 200%.
