The Latest News
Donatos Looks to New Markets with Autonomous Pizza Vending Machine
Donatos teams with Appetronix in developing an autonomous pizza machine to serve high-traffic areas from campuses to hospitals.
Kristen Barnett Blends Culinary Talent with Experiential Marketing
Hungry House founder Kristen Barnett is moving from her “anti-ghost kitchen” concept to something entirely new, but still largely focused on food influencers.
Restaurants Turn to New Prototypes to Stay Competitive and Drive Sales
Mooyah Burgers, Shakes and Fries is hard at work putting together new prototype restaurants with smaller dining spaces, updated tech and drive-thrus.
Olo Adds Card-Present Kiosk Payment Processing, Among Other Updates
Olo unveiled a slew of 10 new features across its primary categories: Order, Pay and Engage, including Card-Present Payment Processing for kiosks.
Kiwibot Sets Stage for Massive (and Adorable) Growth
Kiwibot unveiled new partners and an updated robot that the company says will help propel them to massive scale. The land-based delivery robot announced a handful of new delivery partners, new city testbeds and new manufacturing partners that will push the company...
ChowNow Sees No Delivery Slowdown, Few Closures
Even as the vaccine rolls out, warmer weather returns and pandemic-fatigued consumers seek to dine out however they can, the volume of delivery orders remains high. That's according to ChowNow CEO and co-founder, Chris Webb. The leader of the online food-delivery...
Consumer Engagement Becomes Tech Topic du Jour
In the past 16 months, much of the restaurant industry has turned its attention to customer engagement at all costs. When COVID hit, there was a widespread realization among operators that when customers aren't coming in or have to stay home, smiling, happy regulars...
Kitch is a Matchmaker for Underutilized Kitchen Spaces
Kitch is a matchmaker connecting growth-minded restaurant brands or aspiring chefs who aren’t looking to sign multi-year leases with underutilized kitchen spaces.
Slice Closes $40M Investment to Keep Growing
Slice is on the receiving end of a big block of mozzarella as two former Twitter execs joined the Cross Creek investment firm on a $40 million Series D funding round to help the New York-based pizza-focused delivery service kick off its latest round of growth.
Domino’s Officially Begins Automated-Delivery Test
Some lucky customers in Texas can now get a fully automated robot delivery from Domino's. In the real-world launch of a partnership we covered last year, the pizza giant and automation partner Nuro are finally doing real-world testing of automated deliveries. The test...
Tech Stack Recap: Low-Friction Order Handoffs
During the FOD Tech Stack panel focused on low-friction order handoffs, Del Taco, Apex Supply Chain and CardFree shared creative high-tech and non-tech solutions to increase volume and ease the ordering process for consumers.
Tech-Stack Recap: Savvy Marketing is a Data Hog
Take one look at the ecommerce marketing world and you'll see a frightening amount of data at work. One search for socks follows you to the very ends of the earth. The restaurant industry is playing catch-up on big consumer data, but the massive shift to digital...
Outstanding Operators
Food On Demand Outstanding Operators features restaurant brands with innovative operations that are taking creative paths to success with delivery and all things off-premises.
Food On Demand Topics
Finance
Bite Squad Completes Massive, 17-Company Acquisition
Bite Squad, a seven-year-old, third-party restaurant delivery service based in Minneapolis, announced a massive 17-company acquisition that expands its footprint to more than 30 U.S. metro areas and vaults the company into one of the category’s largest brands.
Research
Wayback’s Solution: On-site Cooking in Electric Vehicles
The name itself piques interest: Viddl-It. Wayback Burgers’ new electric vehicle initiative, Viddl-It combines the on-site cooking of food trucks with on-demand delivery technology to ultimately bring consumers a better product.
The Deliverers
Virturant Unveils Reconciliation Update
Virturant, a virtual restaurant provider, launched a new upgrade aimed at helping restaurant operators reconcile their third-party delivery orders.
Best Practices
What are your peers doing in delivery? Get some of the best practices out there.
New ClusterTruck Model: Smaller, More Automated
Ghost kitchen operator ClusterTruck has a new model designed to help the company fill in existing markets and quickly scale new ones. ClusterTruck has been operating since 2016, founded on the principle of vertical integration. It controls the order platform, the...