The SME Story: Mohamed Al Fayed, co-founder and CEO of GrubTech

What is the core concept of GrubTech?
GrubTech is an all-in-one platform enabling the digital transformation of restaurants and cloud kitchens. We have developed a comprehensive, purpose-built software stack that maximises revenue per square metre, minimises cost, streamlines kitchen operations and delivers on the best customer experience. The platform consolidates an otherwise fragmented tech stack that F&B operators typically deal with, automating manual and time-consuming tasks. It also provides value-added services to F&B operators in the end-to-end lifecycle of an order, enabling them to develop a deeper understanding of their operations.

Give us a business overview of GrubTech.
At the moment, GrubTech serves more than 150 brands across 12 countries. We serve cloud kitchens in the UAE, and various others across the GCC, Jordan, Egypt, Pakistan, Malaysia and South Africa. To date, GrubTech has raised $5m as part of its seed and pre-Series A rounds. The company’s funds have been focused on developing a plug-and-play, all-in-one, comprehensive platform to power cloud kitchens, restaurants, and micro cloud kitchens. We have a team of 70 individuals. We have seen a growth of over 600 per cent in revenue since our inception in 2019.

What are some of the business forecasts you have for the cloud kitchen business overall?
Cloud kitchens are projected to reach a market size of $71.4bn by 2027. Recent reports also suggest that in the Middle East and North Africa region, the UAE is the second-largest market for online food delivery with an annual market size of $834m, followed by Saudi Arabia. Despite the lifting of Covid-19 restrictions, the trend towards digital ordering has been on the rise, with about 60 per cent of restaurants indicating increased revenue from online orders.

You have recently collaborated with Foodics. What strategic advantage does that give GrubTech?
Through our strategic partnership with Foodics, we aim to integrate over 7,000 companies from Foodics’ customer base with a variety of food aggregators such as talabat, Jahez and Careem. The integration will enable restaurants to automate tasks, centrally manage menus and automatically receive orders from food aggregators directly into the Foodics POS.

What will be the extent and nature of your services offered at Expo with talabat?
GrubTech and talabat joined hands to debut the first 3D printed Smart Locker System for online food delivery at Expo 2020. As the official food delivery provider for Expo 2020 Dubai, talabat aims to introduce different modes of delivery while having full control and visibility on the end-to-end order journey. All lockers are installed with a printed proprietary circuit board, allowing them to be controlled remotely.

What are your expansion plans?
We aim to develop and reinvent the technology stack from the ground up keeping in mind specific features to serve the requirements of the F&B industry. We aim to keep updating our product suite that can help restaurant and cloud kitchen operators to streamline the entire end-to-end operations from demand generation, food aggregator integration, in-kitchen operations, order dispatching and delivery service provider control. With our future funding rounds, we aim to accelerate our global expansion efforts into the rest of MENA and APAC.