Executive summary. Our last brief looked at what GrabFood's commission costs a Singapore restaurant, and at who ends up owning the guest relationship when a platform sits in the middle. This one picks up the same question after Grab's purchase of Chope. In July 2024, Grab said Chope would keep operating independently. Two years on, Chope's reservations and dining deals sit inside Grab Dine Out, a feature of the main Grab app, and diners earn GrabCoins, Grab's own loyalty currency, when they book.
For restaurants, the news is better than the first brief might suggest. Every Chope booking comes with the diner's name and contact details, and Grab now also lets customers authorise direct marketing from a restaurant after they order delivery. More guest data is reaching restaurants than before. This brief looks at what changed and at the question that follows: are restaurants making good use of it?
01The promise, and what happened
When Grab announced the Chope acquisition on 22 July 2024, the message was consistent: Chope would keep operating independently, with no redundancies, as a standalone brand inside Grab's "Omnicommerce" business. Grab's head of deliveries, Ngiam Xin Wei, called Chope "a well-known and well-loved brand" and said the plan was to integrate its services with Grab's merchant base, not to replace the brand.
Grab has since built Dine Out, a feature inside the main Grab app that combines Chope's table reservations with dining deals. Chope's own website now points its users to it. The booking technology underneath is still Chope's, but a diner can now book from inside the Grab app.
02What Dine Out changes for a restaurant
Three things that used to sit in three places now sit in one: reservations (Chope), delivery (GrabFood) and loyalty (GrabRewards, renamed GrabCoins). Grab's merchant page for Dine Out describes the pitch directly. Diners discover and book your restaurant inside the Grab app, with Chope's technology running underneath, and earn GrabCoins for booking and dining, redeemable across the rest of Grab.
For a diner who already has Grab open to book a ride or order dinner, that is convenient. For a restaurant, it means the reservation, the delivery order and the loyalty points all come from the same company.
03A Chope booking comes with the guest's details
Chope's own Personal Information Collection Statement says reservation data, "backed up by both Chope and the restaurant," includes the customer's personal data, and lists the restaurant among the parties it may be given to. In practice, a booking arrives with a name and a phone number, and restaurants that enable it can trigger a confirmation SMS or call to the diner. Chope has had to be more open with these details because it was losing market share to SevenRooms, which gives guest data back to the restaurants it serves.
Using that contact for anything beyond the booking, such as a guest list or a win-back campaign, needs the customer's separate consent, according to the same statement. Restaurants often try to reuse these contacts but might not do it efficiently. The details arrive one booking at a time, and turning them into a list that can be segmented and messaged takes more than an export from the Chope dashboard.
04Delivery now opens up too
Delivery has always worked differently. As mentioned in our previous paper, a delivery guest used to be a customer restaurants cannot reach out to directly, as the platform sits in between.
But that has changed since the acquisition of Chope. Grab now lets customers authorise direct marketing from a restaurant after they order delivery. How many customers say yes is not yet known, and the choice is the customer's each time. Still, a delivery guest can now become a guest the restaurant is allowed to contact.
05Five questions to ask about the guest data you already receive
- Where do the contacts from Chope or Grab Dine Out bookings end up, and can we search them?
- Do we know which of our dine-in guests also order delivery, and which of them have agreed to hear from us?
- Is marketing consent recorded for every guest we message, and where?
- Do our messages differ by guest (last visit, party size, dine-in or delivery), or does everyone get the same one?
- Do we reach guests on WhatsApp, where they actually answer, or only through booking-confirmation SMS?
06What restaurants can do with it
Since the acquisition, more guest data is reaching restaurants: the contact on every Chope booking and, now, delivery guests who agree to be contacted. Whether that helps depends on what the restaurant does next.
Using it well means putting these contacts in one place, alongside the walk-in who leaves a name for the waitlist, the regular who calls directly and the guest who scans a QR code on the table, the receipt or a delivery bag. From there, a restaurant can segment guests by last visit, party size, or whether they dine in or order delivery, and send each group a message that fits, on WhatsApp as well as SMS. That is what RevRoom does: it consolidates guest contacts from every source into one profile, segments them automatically and sends targeted campaigns, including on WhatsApp.
If you haven't seen the first brief on delivery platforms, ask us for a copy. This one is best read as its sequel.
