DoorDash remains the top dog among the largest U.S. third-party delivery providers, according to new research from Edison Trends. Gleaning national share from an analysis of more than 150,000 transactions in January, DoorDash is still the leading provider with nearly 35 percent of the market, followed closely by Uber Eats at nearly 29 percent. As Grubhub declines to just under 22 percent of the national delivery market, Postmates has grown to nearly 10 percent based on percent of overall consumer spending.
Among the “big four” delivery providers, Postmates has posted the largest gain in share, moving from 6 to 9.7 percent of the market over the last five months. Other smaller, more regional brands account for 4.2 percent of all meal-delivery spending in the country.
The table appears set for an epic food fight among U.S. delivery players throughout 2020, with plenty of speculation about mergers, acquisitions or new entrants joining the scene. Financial Times reports that DoorDash’s largest investor, SoftBank, urged it to explore merging with Uber Eats last summer, as Uber began the process to unload its delivery business in India.
In an interview with Yahoo Finance this week, Grubhub CEO Matt Maloney threw cold water on the idea that consolidation would be a net positive for the industry.
“Everyone is very fixated on consolidation. It’s not preordained. There is no reason that two is better than four or five. What we have proven is that you can successfully buy scale, but you aren’t going to buy scale at an obscene price. It has to be accretive to our shareholders. If there is an opportunity to expand our scale and better leverage our delivery, loyalty and sales infrastructure and product and engineering of course we would do it,” he said.
As scrutiny increases for large meal-delivery brands, many industry watchers are predicting a slowdown in the ongoing battle for new delivery customers that has shuffled the leaderboard. That said, it remains a buyer’s market for delivery consumers willing to shop around for the best deal.
