Food and groceries delivery firm Honestbee launches dining and retail concept

Photo credit: Honestbee

It seems going offline by setting up or working with retail stores is a popular move by internet startups these days.  Singapore-headquartered Honestbee, an on-demand service providing food, groceries, and laundry, will be opening its own dining and retail concept store in the city-state on October 18.

Called Habitat by Honestbee, the “tech-enabled” store is a five-minute walk from Mapletree Business City, a major tech hub containing the offices of Google, Samsung, and the government’s Info-communications Media Development Authority.

Habitat by Honestbee is about the size of a football field, or 60,000 square feet. It has a variety of food stalls and an event space, and promises a cashless and queueless experience. Customers can use the Honestbee app to scan and pay. Those with 10 items or less can walk out with their purchases right away. For the rest, a system of robots and conveyor belts handle the sorting and packing.

The space has many facets. It serves as a fulfillment center. Online grocery orders are prepared on-site and then delivered to the doorstep. It’s also an R&D lab and a platform for its retail and F&B partners to have an inexpensive physical presence. For the launch, it will have 15 food concepts that are available for dine-in or takeaway.

Photo credit: Honestbee

Online-to-offline (O2O) commerce – in which customers are driven from online channels to shop at physical locations – is a relatively new concept in Southeast Asia.

The trend is in full bloom elsewhere. In the US, Amazon and startups like Warby Parker have been pioneering this concept. In China, Alibaba is putting the pedal to the metal with its Hema chain of supermarkets, which already has over 65 outlets since its 2015 launch.

At Hema stores, customers use an app to find product information. Payment is made through Alibaba’s payment system, Alipay. These stores collect data on consumers and double as distribution centers.

The birth of “new retail” has traditional supermarkets and stores in jitters. Honestbee could bridge that gap, as it is partnering with major Singapore supermarket chain FairPrice as well as various restaurants and retailers to serve as a distribution channel.

With the ecommerce race heating up in Asia, Honestbee is preparing for a fight. The startup has raised at least US$49 million since its series A round in 2015. A major backer appears to be South Korea’s LS Group.