SINGAPORE – Moonstone Bar along Amoy Street is hoping to leverage a new Grab initiative to raise its visibility among diners as it accelerates its shift towards a more food-focused menu.
The bar, which has introduced more food options over the past year in the light of slowing alcohol consumption, wants to build on those efforts through Grab Full House Mission, said 21 Moonstone Group managing director Jeremy Lim.
The programme aims to equip small food and beverage (F&B) businesses with the tools to become more discoverable on the Grab platform and attract more customers.
“The reality is that many people today open an app first before they even decide what they’re going to eat,” said Grab managing director Alejandro Osorio at the programme’s launch on June 9.
“In fact, 84 per cent of Singapore-based users have used the Grab app to discover new restaurants or stores…; 61 per cent of users enter our app not knowing actually who they will order from on a given day,” noted Osorio.
“So if we can help merchants to get discovered at that moment, we can help bring more customers to their doors as well,” he told the media on the sidelines of the programme’s launch at Tanjong Pagar Community Club.
Under the initiative, several precincts well known for their concentration of F&B outlets and iconic food venues – namely Tanjong Pagar, Holland Village and Jalan Besar – will be featured in Grab’s Dine Out campaigns.
Developed in partnership with Enterprise Singapore, the campaigns aim to increase footfall and visibility for merchants in selected precincts through consumer promotions, said Grab.
The first campaign – running in Tanjong Pagar from May 26 to July 25 – will be followed by similar ones planned for Holland Village and Jalan Besar later in 2026.
Grab Full House Mission also includes several initiatives to help merchants strengthen their digital capabilities.
Four workshops and masterclasses will be held in partnership with EnterpriseSG and SkillsFuture Singapore annually over the next three years for merchants nationwide.
This is aimed at helping them evolve alongside the larger F&B industry in areas such as digital marketing and AI adoption.
Roundtable sessions will also be held to allow business owners to exchange practical insights and discuss common challenges. The first session, held in Tanjong Pagar on June 9, focused on issues such as manpower constraints, rising operating costs and the use of digital tools to improve operational efficiency.
Grab will also release a biannual industry insights report on consumer trends, practical ways to use AI, and digital marketing, among other topics.
In addition, there will be monthly outreach sessions in various neighbourhoods, allowing merchants to receive consultations and support closer to their businesses.
Such sessions will provide practical guidance on improving their visibility on the app as well as orders and analytics, alongside one-on-one operational and digital support, real-time troubleshooting and optimisation advice.
“Not only do we help to drive demand for our different merchant partners, but we also want to help them be more resilient in the long run, help them build their own capabilities, be more digitally savvy, and online-aware,” said Osorio.
Lim, who participated in the first consultation on June 9, found it useful. The 21 Moonstone Group – whose businesses including craft beer joint Almost Famous and Bugis bar Middle Child – is actively looking for ways to diversify the way it does business.
“It was a reminder that our approach of looking at F&B needs to be different… It needs to come with a more digital-first approach, looking at insights before (making) relevant decisions,” he said.
“If we need sales, it’s more than just getting listed on a delivery platform. There’s optimisation to be done, there are conversions to be looked at,” added Lim, referring to the conversion of page views to actual orders.
Senior Minister of State for Trade and Industry Low Yen Ling said at the launch that the operating environment has become more challenging for F&B businesses, with intense competition and constantly evolving consumer preferences.
She added that the Grab initiative will evolve based on the merchants’ feedback and potential blind spots that might have been overlooked.
On how the success of the initiative will be measured, Osorio said customer footfall and demand – both online and offline – would be among the indicators used.
“Beyond that, we’ll observe… if the merchants are able to leverage the insights and the capabilities that we’re helping them develop to help give themselves more of a boost in the long run,” he added.
With the exit of delivery platform Deliveroo in March, Osorio noted that new merchants have joined the Grab platform, and others have re-engaged with it after many years.
“Some exciting brands that may have been exclusive to Deliveroo in the past have now come onboard with Grab, so it’s helped to extend the variety of choices that we have on our platform,” he said.
