A new marketplace of virtual brands from Deliverect aims to make finding the ideal virtual concept as easy for operators as finding the right lightbulb at Home Depot. Virtual brands are one of the few megatrends in the restaurant space right now. The ideal setup is incremental revenue that takes advantage of fixed costs like rent, labor and possible synergies when it comes to ingredients. The reality, however, doesn’t always match the potential. An operator might get their nephew to make a logo, buy a bunch of frozen chicken tenders […]
DoorDash’s second-annual Restaurant Online Ordering Trends Report shows that volumes are staying strong at the largest U.S. third-party delivery provider.
Restaurants using the Square point-of-sale platform have a new suite of tools at their disposal, including the Mobile POS.
A growing number of restaurants are employing hybrid and native delivery options to tailor their off-premises strategy to their unique circumstances.
Flybuy, a location technology that predicts customer arrival times, has partnered with Apex Ordering Pickup Solutions to create delivery and takeout lockers with real-time data.
Amid ongoing challenges in foodservice supply chains, Galley Solutions raised $14.2 million through a Series A.
Wow Bao, the mostly virtual steamed bun chain, launched the first virtual restaurant rewards program. The program, dubbed Bao Bucks, awards customers with in-program cash to spend on food. The points accumulate only with direct orders, much like other brand loyalty programs, but it works across the more than 600 virtual locations across the U.S. and Canada (and soon in the U.K. and Mexico). Wow Bao president and CEO Geoff Alexander said he’s excited to be the first virtual restaurant brand to do so, and leaned on a longstanding relationship […]
Ask two independent operators how to approach third-party delivery and digital off-premises operations and you’re bound to get five answers. That rang true during a Food On Demand Conference panel titled Case Studies from Independent Operators. Moderated by Hanson Li, the renowned San Francisco restaurant owner and founder of San Francisco-based Salt Partners who’s working a lot on Chinese concept Lazy Susan these days, the panel was packed with novel insights from four savvy and very different independent operators. Joining Li were the co-founder of Zingerman’s, Paul Saginaw; CEO of […]
Grocery delivery giant Instacart has filed with a confidential notice with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the first legal step toward an initial public offering. The statement from the company was terse: Instacart today announced that it has confidentially submitted a draft registration statement on Form S-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The registration statement is expected to become effective after the SEC completes its review process, subject to market and other conditions. At this stage, there’s not a lot of information, and without a public S-1 document (the […]
Building the Automated Kitchen was a fascinating panel at the Food On Demand Conference, and not just because Flippy, Sippy and other neato robots are taking over unpleasant tasks.
