GoFood, the food delivery service of superapp Gojek, continues to grow its lead in the food delivery industry, recording a 20-fold increase in revenue over the last four years of its operation.
Thanks to the service’s resilience and ability to adapt quickly during the pandemic, GoFood has contributed a positive margin to Gojek’s overall revenue for 2020. This is an impressive achievement amid the recession brought on by the pandemic, and could further strengthen GoFood’s business fundamentals toward attaining sustainable growth.
In addition to its consistency in providing customers with the best experience in food delivery services, GoFood has also played a significant role in shaping culinary trends as a barometer for both customers and the culinary industry alike.
Customers rely on GoFood for its top culinary recommendations when searching for palatal novelties. On the supply side, its food business partners gain insights from GoFood’s data on customers’ culinary preferences so they can adjust their product strategy to meet demand.
“Providing convenience for our customers for culinary exploration has been GoFood’s top priority. Our technology allows customers not only to rely on us as a food delivery service platform, but also as a destination to explore more than 20 million food and beverage items across Indonesia based on their personal preferences,” said Gojek Group Chief Food Officer Catherine Hindra Sutjahyo.
Besides serving as a trusted and dependable food delivery app for customers, GoFood has constantly supported the growth of its business partners, focusing specifically on helping to develop the micro, small and medium enterprise (MSME) segment, the backbone of the Indonesian economy.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, GoFood recorded 40 percent growth among its MSME culinary partners, helping them adapt to newly emerging consumer behavior by transitioning rapidly to the online marketplace. By the end of 2020, Gojek Indonesia had recorded an astounding 50 percent year-on-year increase to 750,000 culinary partners, especially from the MSME segment.
“Our focus was to help customers adapt to the pandemic situation, starting from technological development to health protocol education, as well as information and communication [services] through our application, [that] has come to fruition,” said Catherine.
GoFood also won global acclaim for its valuable innovations to address changing customer needs from the onset of the pandemic.
“Our attempts to adapt GoFood’s user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) to respond to the pandemic [...] have also been recognized globally, such as by UXAlliance, USaria and SomiaCX,” Catherine added.
In line with GoFood’s #LebihHepi (More Happy) brand spirit, the platform seeks to provide customers joyful culinary experiences through its comprehensive menu as well as its diverse range of merchant partners.
Customers and merchant partners both say they have benefited from the series of new innovations GoFood launched in 2020.
Foremost among these is the Contactless Delivery feature. The automated texting function allows drivers to leave orders at a gate or other drop-off point according to customers’ specifications to promote physical distancing. Since its launch in March 2020, GoFood has recorded a five-fold increase in the number of customers using the Contactless Delivery feature.
In a similar vein, the GoFood Pickup feature allows customers to preorder foods and beverages and thereby comply with physical distancing rules by avoiding queuing at outlets, needing to visit the outlet only to pick up their orders in person. This feature recorded a whopping 30-fold increase after it was launched last year.
Another new feature that has rapidly gained popularity is the location picker, which allows customers to send food orders straight to the homes of friends and family members through the app, even to a destination in a different city. This has helped GoFood customers to maintain their personal relationships and show some love, even amid the nationwide restrictions that have reduced occasions for family and social gatherings. An average 20 percent of all GoFood customers made daily use of this feature throughout 2020.
Customers taking advantage of GoFood’s family and bundle meal options contributed 40 percent to all transactions, testifying to its ideal of maintaining personal ties and community togetherness despite the social restrictions. Meanwhile, homebound families have relied on GoFood for their daily meals.
December 2020 saw the largest transaction in family meals, thanks to GoFood’s Foodiskon promotional program for families to enjoy a culinary holiday adventure while #DiRumahAja (#StayingAtHome).
2020 culinary trends and 2021 predictions
As a barometer of local culinary delights, GoFood kept track of the leading culinary trends in 2020 that has informed its forecast on what kinds of foods and beverages will be popular this year.
Last year’s top culinary item is still shared by two enduring champions, ayam goreng (fried chicken) and kopi susu (milk coffee), the traditional comfort food and beverage for Indonesians through time. These two items helped comfort Indonesians who inevitably felt stuck at home under the work from home and at-home learning policies.
Aside from these two usual suspects, the 2020 culinary trend also saw three newcomers: mie pedas (spicy noodles), which merchants have given sensational names to accentuate their extreme spiciness, such as mie setan (Satan’s noodles) and mie iblis (devil’s noodles).
Blended milk-based beverages also continued to accompany Indonesians at home, with sweet flavors like matcha (green tea), pandan and boba (Taiwanese milk tea) dominating. In the snacks category, fried shrimp rambutan dim sum, especially from MSME merchants, became a 2020 staple delicacy among customers.
Based on past trends, GoFood forecasts that three new culinary items will gain popularity this year. First are boxed desserts, primarily cakes. Second are any foods or beverages with Milo as the primary ingredient. Third are rice bowls with a variety of toppings for customers to choose from. This culinary forecast aims to help GoFood’s merchant partners develop new menus to get a step ahead of this year’s emerging trends.
“In 2021, GoFood will continue to design technologies that can improve customer experience. GoFood will prioritize its personalization technology, while striving to be Indonesia’s primary culinary reference and destination through several new features we will launch throughout 2021,” said Catherine.
GoFood already adjusted its UI and boosted its UX at the end of 2020 to strengthen service personalization. These adjustments include a new navigation page, a food delivery status tracker as well as an autocorrect function in its search bar.
In the near future, GoFood plans to complement its ratings feature with a review column that allows customers to share their experience with a particular merchant for the benefit of other users as well as merchants.
