GrabFood vs GoFood Vietnam: Ho Chi Minh City Market Battle Data Study

Important framing: this is a post-mortem, not a current comparison

GoFood is no longer operating in Vietnam. Anyone using GoFood Vietnam menu data for a current decision is working with stale data. This study has three honest purposes: documenting what scraped data revealed in the years leading to the exit, drawing operational lessons for any platform competing in Vietnam today, and mapping the post-exit Ho Chi Minh City landscape as it now stands.

The Vietnam food delivery context

Vietnam is Southeast Asia's smallest but fastest-growing food delivery market, expanding 19% year-on-year in 2025 to roughly US$2.1 billion in combined GMV across the major platforms. The market was crowded in 2023 — six platforms operated: ShopeeFood, GrabFood, BeFood, GoFood, Baemin, and Loship. Within 18 months, three exited: Baemin (December 2023), GoFood (September 2024), and Loship (late 2024).

What remained: ShopeeFood, GrabFood, and BeFood, plus a 2025 new entrant in Xanh SM Ngon (the Vingroup-backed electric-mobility platform expanding into delivery). Per NielsenIQ's April 2025 survey, ShopeeFood and GrabFood together control approximately 90% of the Vietnamese online food delivery sector.

What scraped data showed about GoFood's decline

In the 2022–2024 window, scraping Vietnamese food delivery platforms revealed GoFood's structural weakness on three dimensions:

1. Restaurant network depth

Scraped restaurant counts in District 1, District 3, District 5, and Thu Duc consistently showed GoFood with materially fewer listed merchants than GrabFood or ShopeeFood. As one industry analysis put it, Baemin had far fewer restaurant and driver partners than GrabFood and ShopeeFood, giving users limited options — and GoFood faced similar issues before its exit. A delivery app without inventory is a search bar that returns nothing useful.

2. Subsidy intensity

Scraping promotional flags on identical SKUs across the three platforms showed GoFood running fewer and smaller promotions than ShopeeFood and GrabFood. Vietnamese consumers — heavily promotion-sensitive — defaulted to whichever app offered the cheapest after-promo price. ShopeeFood's mega-sale events (9/9, 10/10, 11/11) captured this segment most aggressively.

3. Delivery density

Scraped delivery-time estimates revealed GoFood's order-to-pickup times trending longer than competitors in 2024, particularly for non-District 1 addresses. Fewer riders meant slower deliveries, which meant fewer orders, which meant even fewer riders willing to stay active on the app. The negative-feedback loop is visible in scraped data weeks before it shows up in regional analyst reports.

The Ho Chi Minh City landscape today

Scraped data on HCMC in 2025–2026 shows a clean two-horse race. GrabFood leads HCMC with approximately 50% market share. ShopeeFood follows closely, particularly strong with the 16–24 age demographic. BeFood holds the residual position, supported by recent Vietnamese investment but operating at much smaller scale.

District 1 is the highest-density GrabFood market in HCMC. Scraped restaurant counts show parity between Grab and Shopee in the CBD, but GrabFood's deeper Western and international-cuisine coverage gives it an edge for tourist and business-traveler usage.

District 2 (Thu Duc) shows the strongest ShopeeFood penetration — the area's younger demographic and apartment-heavy population matches Shopee's customer profile. Scraped promotion intensity is also highest here.

District 7 skews Western and premium, with both platforms competing heavily. Scraped price points are the highest in HCMC outside specific tourist hotspots.

Outer districts (Tan Phu, Binh Tan, Go Vap) have thinner inventory on both apps. Scraped data shows these districts as the swing battleground for the next phase of HCMC market-share competition.

Scraped data: GoFood's last-quarter vs current market structure

Lessons from the GoFood exit for current Vietnam platforms

Four operational lessons emerge from scraping the GoFood Vietnam decline:

• Inventory depth is the leading indicator — a platform with declining merchant counts is in trouble two to four quarters before market-share reports confirm it
• Promotion intensity isn't optional — Vietnamese consumers default to the cheapest after-promo price, and any platform that pulls back on subsidies loses share quickly
• Delivery density compounds — scraped wait times that drift even 3–5 minutes longer than competitors signal an unstable rider economy that gets worse, not better
• Local payment integration matters less in Vietnam than in Indonesia — both surviving platforms work with ZaloPay, MoMo, and standard card rails

What HCMC scraping looks like today

Scraping the current HCMC market means tracking two primary platforms (GrabFood and ShopeeFood), one residual (BeFood), and one emerging entrant (Xanh SM Ngon, launched mid-2025 with curated restaurants in Hanoi expanding to HCMC). Production-grade pipelines capture all four to give Vietnamese F&B operators, FMCG brands, and investors the complete picture. Pricing in HCMC is denominated in VND, which adds a normalization step for cross-market comparison.

FAQ

1. When exactly did GoFood exit Vietnam?

Gojek announced its Vietnam exit in September 2024, ending GoFood operations in the country. The platform had been losing share for several quarters before the decision.

2. Could GoFood return to Vietnam?

There is no public indication of plans to return. GoTo (Gojek's parent) has focused on Indonesia consolidation and has explored regional consolidation talks with Grab without re-entering Vietnam.

3. Is there any GoFood Vietnam data still useful?

Historical scrapes from 2022–2024 remain useful for retrospective market analysis, investor diligence, and academic study. For any current pricing or operational decision, scraping is now limited to GrabFood, ShopeeFood, BeFood, and Xanh SM Ngon.

4. Which platform is winning HCMC now?

GrabFood leads HCMC market share at approximately 50%, with ShopeeFood close behind at around 40%. The gap narrows during Shopee mega-sales and widens in normal weeks.

5. Should investors care about Xanh SM Ngon?

It's early to call. Xanh SM Ngon launched in 2025 with backing from Vietnam's largest conglomerate (Vingroup) and an existing electric two-wheeler ride-hailing network. Scraped restaurant counts will be the leading indicator of whether it becomes a real competitor or remains niche.

Read Vietnam as it is, not as it was

Vietnam's food delivery market is structurally different from what it was 18 months ago. GoFood is gone; ShopeeFood and GrabFood split most of the market; new entrants are testing entry. Actowiz Solutions builds Vietnam scraping pipelines covering Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi, Da Nang, Hai Phong, and Can Tho — across every active platform, normalized to a single schema your team can query.