Portillo’s, the Chicago-dog institution, will be coming to diners via native delivery soon. The company first implemented delivery via DoorDash in 2017 and has expanded with Uber Eats as well, but a new hiring spree of “several hundred” workers will help the company pivot into in-house delivery program. According to a press release outlining the move, “The chain will soon begin using its own drivers to deliver select orders that come through portillos.com or its app, bringing the true Portillo’s experience to customer’s doorsteps.” A company representative said there will […]
Read More
While we’re hopefully past the worst of the pandemic shortages and hoarding, FreshRealm is betting restaurants still have a lot to gain by packaging cook-at-home meals that can either be sold individually or as an up-sell for customers already dropping by to pick up traditional, fully cooked takeout orders. Offering a full spectrum of options, from traditional meal kits that need full assembly down to less intensive options where you just cook the protein or heat the meal back up in an oven—all the way down to TV-dinner-style meals that […]
Read More
Bite Squad—a third-party delivery platform that’s a subsidiary of Waitr—is back in growth mode, according to various news reports, as it looks to add hundreds of new drivers in key markets, along with new executive team members and expanding its delivery service in Oahu, a critical market for the brand. The Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal first reported that Bite Squad is adding 500 new drivers, which would be a more than 70 percent increase of its Twin Cities fleet. Following a brutal 2019 for parent company Waitr, the Louisiana-based delivery […]
Read More
A new model for ghost kitchens has quietly rolled out in Los Angeles. CloudKitchens opened up what amounts to an alley adjacent to several shared-kitchen storefronts. According to the foodservice newsletter HNGRY, it’s an expensive new idea that combines both drive-thru and shared-kitchen operations. According to the publication, CloudKitchens bought the land for $420,000 and spent a further $1.5 million for three custom shipping-container kitchen facilities. It’s the first modular site for the secretive company and is located nearby the University of Southern California. Currently, a golf cart ferries orders […]
Read More
From the unintended-consequences-of-food-delivery desk comes the story of NBA great Richaun Holmes stuck in his hotel room after getting a food delivery order. Holmes, the center for the Sacramento Kings, “broke the bubble” the NBA has created around the Disney World Campus in Orlando, where the league has teams under very strict rules to guard against quarantine. Anyone entering the bubble is quarantined for two days upon arrival during which they are tested for COVID-19. If they leave after that initial period, they face a 10-day quarantine. Just days after […]
Read More
After purchasing a majority stake in Latin America’s Cornershop grocery delivery service, Uber has announced a dramatic expansion of its grocery delivery offering into select cities in Latin America, Canada and, later this month, the United States. With the promise of more markets coming online soon, Uber has positioned this rollout as a significant part of its plans to find new opportunities for growth after the pandemic significantly curtailed ride-hailing volumes in cities across the globe. This product launch comes after grocery delivery experiments with more than 9,500 merchants in […]
Read More
Domino’s Pizza has added a new service, Carside Delivery, that gives customers a new option to pick-up orders they’ve already paid for online. It’s now available in more than 6,100 U.S. locations. “Domino’s Carside Delivery gives customers the option to stay in their vehicle while a team member delivers their order to them, making for a convenient, contactless carryout experience,” said Dennis Maloney, Domino’s senior vice president and chief innovation officer. When customers place a prepaid digital carryout order, they’ll see the option for Domino’s Carside Delivery. Once they make […]
Read More
Ritual, a Toronto-based tech startup, has launched a new service to help small- and medium-sized restaurants in the Chicago metro area set up delivery, takeout and contactless orders. Called Ritual ONE, the new service initially debuted in its home city before rolling out to Chicagoland in late June. For new restaurants on the platform, Ritual is offering a free commission promotion for the service that normally costs $49 per month for individual restaurant locations. Ritual added that “any current or new Ritual customers in the Chicago area will receive the […]
Read More
After years of speculation about how the U.S. restaurant delivery scene will change with anticipated consolidation among the four largest third-party delivery services, the landscape has dramatically shifted with the news that Uber is in the process of buying Postmates, just weeks after Europe’s Just Eat Takeaway.com announced plans to purchase Grubhub. Just after the Independence Day weekend, on July 6th, Uber announced an agreement to acquire Postmates for approximately $2.65 billion in an all-stock transaction that will narrow the list of large-scale national delivery providers down to the “big […]
Read More
Waitr, the Louisiana-based company that acquired Bite Squad and went public in 2018, shared some strong results ahead of its quarterly release after several difficult, money-losing quarters. According to Carl Grimstad, Waitr’s chairman and CEO, the strong performance is part COVID-19 and part sweeping changes the company undertook in late 2019 and early 2020. Those changes included a new CEO and numerous layoffs. “We are pleased to present a preliminary look at our second quarter results and we are excited to deliver strong revenue growth and profitability, driven, in part, […]
Read More