With the explosion of virtual operations in response to the pandemic, it bears asking: what is peak virtual restaurant? According to panelists in a session of the Restaurant Finance Monitor’s Restaurant Finance Week, we aren’t even close. The panel, titled The Economics of Virtual Restaurants, explored the space from a lot of different angles. As for the big question about economics, that depends. According to Kristen Adamowski, strategic initiatives lead, virtual restaurants at Uber Eats, there is a lot of variation between brands, markets and operators. She looks to one […]
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Your Fare continues a busy year with two transformational acquisitions. The Austin-based order integration and logistics company acquired Pronto, an online ordering solution for restaurants. The acquisition comes on the tails of Your Fare purchasing Beyond4, a SMS and loyalty app. Both deals were announced last week. Your Fare founder and CEO Chris Monk said both help build out its one-stop suite of offerings under the Your Fare umbrella, one that is especially suited for smaller chains and independent operators struggling to develop their technology to manage through COVID-19. “Both […]
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Olo, the New York-based delivery integration and ecommerce platform, announced a range of upgrades to help restaurant clients improve operations and guest safety as digital ordering and delivery volumes continue to grow.
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When Chipotle’s first digital-only restaurant opened last week in Highland Falls, New York, it became the first of what will certainly be many. In a lot of ways, the restaurant is the culmination of a huge amount of work to reformat the restaurant with a focus on convenience. “A lot of thought went into designing this restaurant—a tremendous amount of thought from branding and marketing, the tech and IT team. So, we feel pretty good about this test,” said Chipotle’s Chief Development Officer Tabassum Zalotrawala. She said given the incredible […]
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Started in a dorm room 10 years ago, Madison, Wisconsin-based EatStreet has raked in $50 million in investment funds, which helped the company expand to four states and 25 delivery markets across the Midwest. With W-2 drivers, rather than independent contractors, EatStreet is finding success in the shadows of the delivery industry’s giants.
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Two Chicago delivery-focused brands are finally formally integrated now that Chowly has entered into a partnership with Grubhub to bring its menu management and order fulfillment solution to restaurants on the Grubhub marketplace.
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With this pandemic clearly dragging into the new year, Grubhub and The Greg Hill Foundation’s Restaurant Strong Fund announced the Restaurant Winterization Grant program, a new initiative to provide $10,000 grants to eligible independent restaurants.
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Seven years after its founding, DoorDash filed its Form S-1 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission today signaling its imminent intent to become a publicly traded company. This is a significant milestone for the San Francisco-based company and the delivery industry as a whole, finally providing a look inside the economics of the largest U.S. delivery provider by market share.
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Proposition 22 has passed in California, allowing gig-employment giants like DoorDash, Uber, Lyft and Grubhub exemption from the state’s gig-employment law. The total votes are still being tallied in California, but it appears that the ballot measure won by a resounding margin. As of November 10, 58.4 percent of voters voted “yes” on the measure. As we’ve covered in the past, the ballot measure came out of the landmark AB5 bill that would have forced companies to consider workers as employees if they didn’t pass a three-part test. The test, […]
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Ride-hailing second chair Lyft said it will soon be entering the food-delivery space. The San Francisco-based ride-sharing operator reported a nearly 50-percent drop in quarterly revenue, falling to $499.7 million. That’s still ahead of analyst expectations, but like Uber, Lyft is now looking to pivot into a growing part of the convenience economy. According to an article from Reuters, Lyft is looking to enter the crowded delivery field at a less-crowded end of the proverbial pool: delivering food for restaurants without a full-fledged customer-facing platform. President John Zimmer told Reuters […]
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