Ape Works’ food truck fest: Let’s 'Grab' some food

This post is sponsored by Ape Works.

The nation is gradually turning into a cashless society by the year 2025 according to the Singapore Government. Since digital payments are moving fast, why not create a phenomenal event to reinforce the use of cashless payments where participants can have fun with the ease of being cashless? With a similar goal in mind, Grab worked with advertising and integrated events agency Ape Works to create the first and largest Food Truck Fest in Singapore.

As one of the major highlights of Marina Bay Singapore 2019 Countdown, Singapore’s largest countdown event, Ape Works designed a 4-day event that brings together people from all walks of life for a night of revelry and reflection at the Marina Bay Sands (MBS) Event Plaza. The event agency created the concept of Food Truck Fest, the first and largest Food Truck Fest in Singapore.

Grab has developed as an everyday application offering business, transport, food delivery and payment solutions. With a proposition to feature and integrate all their product offerings including the cashless payment solution, GrabPay, this sponsorship arrangement would provide Grab with an avenue to reach a wide audience and consequently achieve a high conversion rate to adopt this new form of payment method.

With the food delivery scene picking up momentum in Singapore, the festival was also a platform for Grab to onboard food vendors to offer food delivery services.

With the aim of standing out among other events that were potential alternative venues for New Year’s Eve, conventional food stalls were off the list. Instead, food items were served from food trucks.

Participating food vendors downloaded and operated the merchant application which effectively led to merchants adopting GrabPay as a mode of payment.

Hotel guests of MBS hotel were able to enjoy the fare from Food Truck Fest. They were able to order food from the Grab Food application and have them delivered straight to their doorsteps.

To illustrate GrabPay’s key feature of being hassle-free and convenient, patrons who used GrabPay were able to pay directly for food items at the food trucks. This was in contrast to non-GrabPay users who went through the process of queuing to purchase food coupons and proceeded to the food trucks to exchange the coupons for food.

Onsite Grab Ambassadors assisted patrons by providing general enquiries and helped with the downloading of the application, creating a seamless experience for new customers to hop onboard.

As the event’s success depended heavily on the appeal of the food vendors, special thoughts were put into the curation of them, with the help from local culinary and food innovator, Chef Jeremy Nguee. A total of 14 food vendors, many of them award-winning.

All vehicles had promotional materials such as the point of sale banners, stickers and standees, to allow patrons to be exposed to the concept of GrabPay.

Grab had their very own kombi-van stationed at Event Plaza to actively promote GrabPay.

Food Truck Fest attained success. The event attracted much limelight during the festive period as reporters and bloggers came down to detail and experience Food Truck Fest for themselves. The event received live local news coverage from Channel 8 as well as Channel News Asia.

Similarly, regional, local, food and even lifestyle bloggers joined the event to welcome the new year. These extensive coverage in turn helped to draw in more crowds for the remaining days of the event.

Everyone – from clients to food vendors and to event-goers, thoroughly enjoyed the experience of the Food Truck Fest. The sheer volume of queries and responses regarding the anticipation of future Food Truck Fest was a notable yardstick of the event’s success.

The highlight for Ape Works, an event agency, was being able to spearhead such a wide-reaching and impactful event.