I Tracked Every GrabFood Order for 3 Months

I knew I was ordering too much food delivery. What I didn't know was that "too much" meant $1,847 in three months.

Let me back up. I work from home two to three days a week. On those days, the GrabFood app is dangerously convenient. I'm in the middle of something, lunch time hits, and the thought of leaving my desk to go to the hawker centre feels like too much effort. So I open the app, scroll for 5 minutes, order something, and get back to work. Thirty minutes later, food appears at my door.

I never thought about how much this habit was costing me because each order felt small. $12 here, $18 there. It's just lunch, right?

Setting Up the Tracking

In January 2026, I set up Graiden to auto-forward my GrabFood receipt emails. The setup took about a minute. I created a Gmail filter for emails from "no-reply@grab.com" and set them to forward to my Graiden address.

I also set up forwarding for Foodpanda, since I use that occasionally when GrabFood's options feel stale.

Then I forgot about it. That's the point of automated tracking. You set it up and let it run. Three months later, I looked at the data.

The Numbers (January - March 2026)

Here's what three months of food delivery looked like:

Month	Orders	Total Spent	Avg per Order
January	24	$587	$24.46
February	19	$498	$26.21
March (so far)	22	$762	$34.64

Three-month total: $1,847

That's $615 per month on average. I would have guessed $300, maybe $350. I was off by almost half.

Where the Money Went

Breaking it down further revealed some patterns I didn't expect:

Delivery fees and platform fees: $247 (13.4% of total). For every $100 of food I ordered, about $13 went to fees. Over three months, I paid nearly $250 just for the privilege of having food brought to my door.

Menu markup: GrabFood restaurant prices are typically 15-30% higher than dine-in prices. That pad thai that costs $8 at the stall is $10.50 on the app. I didn't track this precisely, but a conservative estimate puts the markup at another $200-$300 over three months.

Late night orders: $412 (22% of total). Orders placed after 9 PM. These were almost always impulsive. I wasn't hungry at dinner time, snacked until late, then felt like "treating myself." Late night orders also had higher average values ($28 vs $22 for daytime) because I'd add sides and drinks more freely.

Weekend orders: $689 (37% of total). Weekends were worse than weekdays, even though I have more time to cook or go out. Laziness peaks on Saturday afternoons.

The Comparison That Stung

$615/month on food delivery. Let's compare:

• Eating the same meals at the hawker centre: roughly $6-$8 per meal, so about $130-$170/month for the same frequency
• Cooking at home: roughly $4-$6 per meal including groceries, so $85-$130/month
• The delivery premium I'm paying: $450-$500/month

$500/month is $6,000/year. That's a holiday. That's a solid chunk of a BTO renovation fund. That's enough to max out your SRS contribution. It's not a small amount of money, even though it felt small in $15-$25 increments.

The Patterns I Noticed

Looking at the data over three months, some clear patterns emerged:

Ordering breeds ordering. If I ordered delivery on Monday, I was much more likely to order again on Tuesday. The app was fresh in my recent apps, the habit loop was primed, and the barrier felt lower. Delivery-free days tended to cluster together too.

Browsing time correlated with order value. When I knew what I wanted, I'd order quickly and spend $12-$15. When I spent 10+ minutes browsing the app, I'd end up with a $25-$30 order because I'd add items impulsively.

Promos are traps. "Free delivery over $25" sounds like a deal. But it made me add a $6 drink I didn't need to hit the threshold. I "saved" $3 on delivery and spent $6 on a drink. The promo cost me $3.

Work stress correlated with orders. My highest-spending weeks aligned with crunch periods at work. Stress eating is real, and delivery apps make it frictionless.

What I Changed

I'm not going to pretend I quit food delivery entirely. That's unrealistic and unnecessary. Instead, I set some rules:

A weekly delivery budget of $60. That's roughly 2-3 orders per week, which covers the days I genuinely don't have time or energy to go out. I check my Graiden dashboard weekly to see where I stand.

No late-night orders. I deleted the app from my home screen and moved it to a folder. The extra 5 seconds of friction is enough to make me reconsider at 10 PM. If I'm actually hungry, I eat something from the fridge.

Meal prep on Sundays. I cook a big batch of something simple, enough for 3-4 meals. This eliminates the "I have nothing to eat" excuse on work-from-home days. I'm not a great cook, but rice + protein + vegetables doesn't require skill.

Know before you order. If I do order delivery, I decide what I want before opening the app. No browsing. Open, search the restaurant, order, close. This cut my average order from $25 to about $16.

One Month After the Changes

After implementing these rules, my April food delivery spending is tracking at around $220. That's a $400/month reduction. Not by depriving myself, but by cutting the orders that were driven by habit, boredom, or impulse rather than genuine need.

$400/month redirected to savings is $4,800/year. That's real money.

The Point of Tracking

I didn't need an app to tell me food delivery is expensive. I needed the app to show me exactly how expensive, and specifically where the waste was. "You spend too much on food delivery" is vague and easy to dismiss. "$615/month, with $247 in fees and $412 in late-night impulse orders" is specific and actionable.

If you suspect your food delivery habit is bigger than you think, set up auto-forwarding for your GrabFood receipts to Graiden. It takes one minute and costs nothing. Let it run for a month. The data might surprise you the same way it surprised me.

At worst, you confirm you're spending what you thought. At best, you find $300-$500/month you can put to better use.