The Latest News
DoorDash Accelerates New York, New Jersey Restaurants
DoorDash announced the latest round of $10,000 grants and intensive training for 20 restaurants in New York and New Jersey.
Beer Tech Company BarTrack Gives ‘Bird’s Eye View’ into Draft Waste, Quality
BarTrack’s SmartDraft sensor plugs right into draft lines with no moving parts, giving operators insight into real-time data on keg levels, pressure, line temperature and more.
Instacart Debuts AI Powered Smart Carts for Grocery Shoppers
Instacart’s latest version of its Caper Carts uses AI, computer vision and weight to automatically ring up items as they are placed in the cart.
Full-Service Dining Satisfaction Back to Pre-Pandemic Levels
ACSI reports that full-service restaurant satisfaction is back up to pre-pandemic levels, topping all other industries included in the index.
VDC’s Guy Fieri Flavortown Kitchen Hits 160 Locations
Guy Fieri’s Flavortown Kitchen is the latest celebrity-backed virtual restaurant from Virtual Dining Concepts (VDC), and since its rollout in early 2021, Flavortown Kitchen is already up to approximately 160 locations.
Albertsons Launches Pilot of RC Delivery Cart
Albertsons Companies has partnered with Tortoise, an automated logistics company focused on last-mile solutions, to pilot its remote-controlled, zero-emission delivery cart in Northern California.
Dragontail Systems Partners with Valqari Drone Delivery
Dragontail Systems, a restaurant technology and software provider, has teamed up with Valqari, a Chicago-based drone delivery startup, to use autonomous drones to drop orders at remote landing zones.
PAR Technology Integrates Lunchbox into Brink POS
Point-of-sale provider ParTech has added functionality for Lunchbox, a fast-growing provider of restaurant delivery integration and marketing software, into its Brink POS platform.
Indy Operator Spotlight: Michael Kudrna of Frato’s Culinary Kitchen
Frato’s Pizza & Catering in Chicago, isn’t just experimenting with direct sales and virtual concepts to survive the pandemic. It’s also with culinary students to provide real-world experience that’s not part of most culinary coursework, including creating virtual brands.
Postmates Spins off Serve Robotics
Less than three months after Uber finalized its deal to acquire Postmates, the combined entity is spinning off Postmates’ robotics division as an independent company, now called Serve Robotics. Along with that announcement came word that Serve Robotics closed its first round of funding, led by venture capital firm Neo with participation by Uber and other investors.
Delivery Service Hungr Rolls out Eight Virtual Brands
Hungr, a San Diego-based order management and restaurant-delivery service, is the latest company striding into the virtual restaurant space with its new offering, Hungr Kitchen, which is launching with a stable of eight delivery-only brands aimed at existing restaurant spaces.
Instacart Raise Sends Valuation Sky High
Instacart raised another $265 million from investors, sending the grocery delivery company’s valuation to just shy of $39 billion. This represents the fourth raise during the pandemic and doubles the valuation for the second time in the last year. The company raised...
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
Amazon to Disrupt Food Landscape with Whole Foods—Is Grubhub Next?
Hey grocery, here comes the “AMZN” Amazon with a frontal assault in the form of a 13.7 billion deal to acquire Whole Foods Market.
Research
Online Grocery Sales Forecasted to Grow in ‘19
U.S. consumers are predicted to continue migrating online for grocery shopping, with a new study suggesting online grocery sales will expand an additional 15% during 2019, increasing the overall share captured online in 2019 to 6.3%; however, providers that offer...
The Deliverers
Starship Launches In-App Robotic Delivery at Missouri S&T
Starship placed 16 delivery robots on the Missouri University of Science & Technology campus.
Best Practices
What are your peers doing in delivery? Get some of the best practices out there.
Sitka Salmon Shares on Building Sustainable Delivery Memberships
Delivering shipments of wild-caught fish from Alaska is a fundamentally different challenge than restaurant delivery, but it has similarly exploded in popularity.