{"id":184682,"date":"2023-05-04T17:57:36","date_gmt":"2023-05-04T09:57:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.grab.com\/sg\/?post_type=editorial&p=184682"},"modified":"2025-02-26T18:53:54","modified_gmt":"2025-02-26T10:53:54","slug":"these-little-bluetooth-devices-are-helping-grab-predict-food-preparation-time","status":"publish","type":"editorial","link":"https:\/\/www.grab.com\/sg\/inside-grab\/stories\/these-little-bluetooth-devices-are-helping-grab-predict-food-preparation-time\/","title":{"rendered":"These little Bluetooth devices are helping Grab predict food preparation time"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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When a driver-partner arrives at a food outlet to pick up an order, the Grab Driver app asks them to report their arrival by tapping a button. Once the food is ready and they pick up the order, the app shows a prominent button to confirm that action.<\/p>

These two steps allow Grab (NASDAQ:GRAB) to measure more accurately how long an order takes to get prepared by a food outlet.\u00a0<\/p>

The team sought to further increase the precision of these button press timings, because humans may not always click these exactly on time when they\u2019re busy with picking up and packing delivery orders into their bags.<\/p>

Grab wants to be precise with timing because our machine learning engine learns to predict a merchant\u2019s food preparation time. Better estimation of the time needed for a dish to be ready helps the system time a delivery partner\u2019s arrival, cutting down on waiting time for the driver-partner. By timing the pick-up, we also minimise any time the food spends waiting to be picked up too, cutting down the wait time for the end-user at home.<\/p>

This is what led our Geo team to explore placing Bluetooth beacons at merchants\u2019 pick-up areas, to automatically track when a driver-partner arrives.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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It starts with a little Bluetooth beacon<\/h5>

In mid-2022, we started a two-month pilot with 35 merchants across three malls in Singapore with high order volumes, as well as two GrabKitchens\u2014cloud kitchens that serve multiple food brands from one spot.<\/p>

Our team placed these sensors under or by the counter where Grab driver-partners typically pick up food orders from each merchant.<\/p>

Shuangquan Hou, senior product management leader with Grab\u2019s Geo team, said these unobtrusive little Bluetooth pucks are already widely used in different industries, although the application in food delivery is unique.<\/p>

\u201cWe needed to find a way which is low cost, scalable, and accurate,\u201d he said, explaining that the off-the-shelf hardware is already mass produced and available cheaply. The models Grab used for the pilot have batteries that last for about five years.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Driver-partners are prompted to press the \"arrived\" button<\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Beacons in Southeast Asia<\/h5>

After the first pilot in May 2022, the team worked with McDonald\u2019s Singapore to test the beacons across 30 of its locations in the later part of 2022.<\/p>

After that, the Geo team deployed over 1,000 beacons in Singapore, and started piloting 100 beacons each in Jakarta (Indonesia), Klang Valley (Malaysia), Manila (the Philippines), Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam), and Bangkok (Thailand).<\/p>

We plan to scale this further across Southeast Asia in 2023, and the team is aware of different operational differences across countries.<\/p>

\u201cThere is different behaviour in different countries,\u201d explained Hou. \u201cFor example, we see that in Singapore, most driver-partners already have their Bluetooth on. That\u2019s not the case outside Singapore, where we need to remind driver-partners to turn it on.\u201d<\/p>

Ultimately, the goal remains a smoother experience for users, said Ankush Khandelwal, Head of Analytics for Geo.<\/p>

It all starts with good data. \u201cYou need confidence that the data is accurate, and precisely captures what\u2019s happening,\u201d he said.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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