API Connections with GrabFood, ShopeeFood and Baemin

What is an API connection?

API stands for Application Programming Interface. It is a mechanism through which applications can interact and exchange data.

To make this easier to picture, in the food-delivery industry, API connections open up the following possibilities for restaurant owners:

• Integrate with other business systems such as inventory management and customer service

• Analyze restaurant performance in depth using customer and order data

• Synchronize data between online and offline management systems

• ...

The current state of food-delivery app API connections

Food-delivery brands that have made APIs available:

• ✅ GrabFood API - Integrate with an existing POS system to manage menus, orders, promotions and more

• ✅ GoFood API - Integrate with an existing POS system to manage menus, orders, products, payments, statistics and more

• ☑️ ShopeeFood - There is currently no information about an API for ShopeeFood. However, Shopee has provided an API for its official e-commerce platform (see Shopee Open Platform), so we can look forward to a ShopeeFood API in the future.

• ❌ Some other apps, Baemin, BeFood and Loship, have not announced APIs or released official API documentation.

One thing to note is that existing APIs are not truly “open” to everyone. Only certain large partners with sufficient qualifications and staffing are allowed access, and API features mainly focus on restaurants using POS terminals.

Small and medium-sized restaurant owners who want to set up APIs to retrieve information face challenges: they may not know where to start, or implementation costs may be too high if they sell through several apps.

Overall, setting up APIs is not an accessible option for everyone at this point, especially if the need is simply to retrieve information and sales statistics from multiple apps.

Is there a solution?

There is currently no official solution on the market in Vietnam that connects all food-delivery apps in one place. Restaurant owners who need to retrieve information or integrate with other systems have to use third-party services.

To create a lower-cost alternative that provides some API functions for small restaurant owners, Optimus has developed an automated reporting tool for food-delivery apps. It automatically combines daily sales revenue from multiple branches and apps into a single report. Restaurant owners only need to read the report.

Conclusion

APIs offer many benefits and open up new opportunities for restaurant growth. Food-delivery apps are also gradually opening their API systems to external users. However, we still need to wait before API integration and related services become widespread. In the meantime, restaurant owners can continue managing things manually, turn to specialist system integration services, or use Optimus's automated reporting service if they only need revenue statistics from multiple apps.

Optimus hopes these insights provide useful information to help restaurant owners grow their restaurants.