Grab’s fast food pivot
Grab’s grocery arm, GrabMart, is growing far faster than its food delivery business and is reshaping the company’s unit economics — social analysis shows GrabMart growing about 1.7× faster than GrabFood. (BourbonCap’s recent write‑up cites GrabMart’s 1.7× faster growth versus GrabFood, with deliveries making up roughly 10% of GMV and showing ~30% year‑over‑year user growth.) (x.com) (BourbonCap’s related thread also highlights larger recurring‑revenue names and ecosystem plays.) (x.com)
Grab spent years teaching Southeast Asia to tap once for a ride or a hot meal, and now one of its fastest-growing habits is a supermarket run in the same app. In its February 12, 2026 results, Grab said it finished 2025 with 50.5 million monthly transacting users, $6.1 billion in fourth-quarter on-demand gross merchandise value, and its first full year of net profit. (grab.com) That shift matters because grocery orders behave differently from restaurant orders. A burger is one dinner, but a basket with rice, detergent, diapers, and drinks can look more like a weekly stock-up, which raises order value and gives the app more chances to sell ads, loyalty perks, and financial products around the same household. (grab.com) Grab has been building toward this for years with real stores, not just couriers. It completed the acquisition of a majority stake in Malaysia’s Jaya Grocer in January 2022 and says it operates supermarkets in Malaysia under Jaya Grocer and Everrise, giving it tighter control over inventory, pricing, and fulfillment than a pure marketplace app gets. (sec.gov 1) (sec.gov 2) By 2025, deliveries were no sideshow inside Grab’s business. Grab’s interim report said deliveries gross merchandise value rose 19% to $6.6 billion in the first six months of 2025, and its third-quarter results said deliveries revenue reached $465 million, up 23% year over year, helped by delivery volume and advertising revenue. (links.sgx.com) (sec.gov) The grocery angle is showing up in outside analysis too. A recent BourbonCap thread argued GrabMart is growing about 1.7 times as fast as GrabFood, with deliveries making up roughly 10% of gross merchandise value and user growth near 30% year over year, which fits the company’s own story that newer delivery formats are lifting engagement beyond takeout. (x.com) Grab’s own language around 2026 and 2028 sounds less like a food-delivery app and more like a household spending network. In its latest results, the company said its multi-year plan is to expand its addressable market through “affordability and reliability” while using product-led features to deepen ecosystem engagement and increase user lifetime value. (grab.com) Grocery helps that plan because it fills dead space in the day. Restaurant delivery spikes at lunch and dinner, while supermarket orders, convenience items, and scheduled stock-ups can keep riders, merchants, and ad inventory busier across more hours and more categories. (grab.com) That wider basket also feeds Grab’s higher-margin businesses. Grab said financial services loan portfolio reached $1.18 billion in the fourth quarter of 2025, up 120% year over year, and the company has repeatedly described its ecosystem as one where data and engagement from one service strengthen the others. (grab.com 1) (grab.com 2) Investors are watching this because the company is no longer pitching survival. Grab guided for 2026 revenue of $4.04 billion to $4.10 billion and adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization of $700 million to $720 million, while targeting $1.5 billion in adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization by 2028. (grab.com) So the story is not that Grab wants to sell more groceries instead of more meals. The story is that a supermarket basket can be a better anchor than a single lunch order for loyalty points, ad spend, bank products, and repeat household demand inside one Southeast Asia app. (grab.com)
