Why The Grab, At Your Gate Pairing Is Significant In Airports

Can there be a union more perfect and more long-awaited than that of food ordering platform Grab and food and retail delivery service At Your Gate? Well, there might be but at least for now there isn’t one. Grab had a similar partnership with Airport Sherpa in Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, which I pondered at the time that I would love to see implemented elsewhere. I'm sure it wasn't from a lack of trying.

So here we are.

I wrote this on the heels of the announcement (which you can read here) that the two services will be partnering to bring together their respective strengths to serve airport travelers in the new era of COVID. 

As much as this can be celebrated between the two firms and the airports they will be serving, the winners will most certainly be the travelers. In addition to touchless experiences they will benefit from the convenience of delivery.

My take? I liken Grab and At Your Gate to John Lennon and Paul McCartney: good solo artists but as a duo they completed and complemented each other. As I’ve written in an earlier piece, the behaviors that make their services appealing are already ingrained in the habits of the consumer. We are used to ordering from various platforms and we are used to having items delivered. COVID further deepened these behaviors into our daily lives. The only drawback was that these services were not yet ubiquitous and that there wasn’t a single service that encapsulated the entire experience in an airport. They often existed separately. Well, no longer.

Three reasons why I’m excited

1. Less movement in the concourses. Until there is a vaccine, social distancing, mask wearing, and continual cleaning of common spaces are all that we have. Minimizing movement reduces the chances of close contact heading up and down and up and down and up and down a concourse looking for food. It’s like taking cars off the road. As traffic inches further upward, the pathways and common areas will become more congested. Not fun. 

2. You have to look at this from a post-COVID, vaccine attained period of air travel. When traffic returns to anywhere close to 100% of pre-COVID levels, concourses will be bustling with hungry travelers who now have a more expansive menu of dining options to choose from. Geography will no longer be an issue. I used to fly into ATL’s Concourse C, order a breakfast sandwich from Food & Wine (formerly the Food Network Kitchen) in Concourse D. It would be ready as I got off my plane and headed over. Now I can get food from Bobby’s Burger Palace or One Flew South. This will broaden the options for travelers who are likely to always remain tethered to their seat at their gate.

3. Ultimately this is about convenience. I imagine traveling with my kids and being able to simply order food for delivery via the app. Looking into the future where TSA screening lines could potentially look like the labyrinthine queues in an amusement park, it is a bonus to know that you can order ahead or order delivery of a meal as you wait and, hopefully, not miss a beat.

Three reasons why I’m hesitant

1. There is still the challenge of awareness. A trickling of adoption may come as business travelers apply Grab and At Your Gate to their leisure travel. But will it be the same for those who are solely leisure travelers? Will travelers know that there is such a valuable service? Repeated impressions from Google ads or terminal signage might do the trick. Ultimately, it will take a collective effort amongst not just Grab and At Your Gate, but the airport, the dining and retail operators, and, perhaps, even the carriers. That’s a lot of cats to herd.

2. Related to the above: penetration. The challenge is that these services were not prevalent in the airport space. Grab is available in 50 airports while At Your Gate is in nine. Both are respectable. Perhaps the partnership will net new locations as airports will like the more complete service. Deeper penetration also means greater awareness, making the point above even easier to overcome.

3. Will this be a sustainable and profitable marriage? At least in the short term (and there’s no knowing how long the "short term" will be) it is not inconceivable that any business travel could see a tighter restriction on expenses, especially at the airport where prices can be higher than on the street. What are the cost implications for all involved?

Three reasons why I’m intrigued 

1. New entrants. GrubHub, which was recently acquired by European delivery service Just Eat Takeaway, has been exploring the airport market. That said, the GrubHub name is known and perhaps even more so as a result of COVID affecting restaurants on the street side. There are a couple issues that give me pause. The gig economy GrubHub is reliant on is not possible in airports. Well, at least not yet. Secondly, how does the GrubHub app get integrated into the airport world? Could others see airports as a viable market?

2. There will be a shift in the idea of what concessions will look like post-COVID. I’ve written and advocated for the adoption of a virtual restaurant in airports. The approach had been undertaken by Breeze before COVID decimated the industry and hit a pause button on the business. I still feel that Breeze has plenty of promise. That said, two of the major components to making virtual restaurants a reality—order and delivery—are now in place. As a result, airports and operators will look at space utilization much more differently. Will there be not so prime locations that suddenly aren’t so bad because they can be featured and pushed via the Grab and At Your Gate pairing? I feel so.

3. I’ve written this piece focusing mainly on food, but retail (specifically travel convenience) is one that could truly benefit. Yes, there isn’t much difference in how this could work with retail as it would with food. But my intrigue can be summed up in one word: Amazon. This past March, OTG announced that it will be incorporating Amazon’s Just Walk Out technology in their CIBO stores. I’ve intimated that this could be a Trojan horse that will eventually lead to an Amazon store in an airport. Who knows? But until then, there is not yet an app or a service that would house and catalog the inventory of these travel convenience stores and make them available to travelers. Could this partnership do just that? It might not be in their plans (though Grab has an Airport Marketplace) but in my opinion this would be the closest to the two behaviors that have strengthened retail during COVID—BOPIS and delivery. 

Final thoughts

The airport industry has been quick to pivot to accommodate passengers and evolve their environments and services in response to COVID. The Grab and At Your Gate union is yet another example. What I look forward to and find myself excited about is not just the convenience that travelers will experience with this service, but that this is the first step into a more transformative airport dining and retail experience.

Feel free to leave a comment on the points above.