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Olo, Google Partner for Seamless Ordering

By Tom Kaiser | October 3, 2019

The delivery world is rife with partnerships these days as the landscape continues to evolve. A new partnership between Olo and Google shows that the growing delivery industry is shaping how some of the world’s most impactful companies do business, while making it even more frictionless to order delivery meals. With the new partnership, digital order aggregator Olo and Google are linking their technology to provide a nearly seamless way to order from Olo’s 300 restaurant brands and 70,000 locations straight from Google’s pages. The tie-up seems like a major […]

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Study: Boomers Want More Delivery

By Tom Kaiser | October 3, 2019

New data from the National Restaurant Association (NRA) examining consumer spending and desires for dining in restaurants and ordering delivery shows that baby boomers are more likely than other age group to boost their off-premises spending in the future. According to the NRA’s numbers gleaned from a telephone survey of more than 1,000 adults conducted in September, consumer spending in restaurants has “trended generally higher” in 2019, excluding August numbers that showed a one-month decline. Overall, 49 percent of adults want to order both takeout and delivery more frequently going […]

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DoorDash Breach Exposes Millions, 3rd-Party Blamed

By Nicholas Upton | September 27, 2019

DoorDash is alerting customers about a massive data breach that occurred back in May. In all, the data of 4.9 million customers, drivers and merchants was exposed in the breach. There was a lot of information released, but aside driver’s license numbers for drivers; much of it was relatively low risk information. DoorDash listed the breached data in a blog post. • Profile information including names, email addresses, delivery addresses, order history, phone numbers, as well as hashed, salted passwords — a form of rendering the actual password indecipherable to […]

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Grubhub-Lettuce-Bon Appetit Partner on Chicago Virtual Kitchen

By Tom Kaiser | September 26, 2019

Bon Appetit, the award-winning, food-focused magazine brand, is turning a new page by partnering with Grubhub on online delivery. Bon Appetit, Delivered is a virtual, delivery-only restaurant where customers order food online to be delivered. Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises (LEYE) is the group behind the proverbial digital curtain that will operate this virtual kitchen. LEYE has plenty of experience managing restaurants, as the Chicago-based brand operates more than 130 restaurants in multiple states. Meals will come fully prepared from a menu designed by Bon Appetit’s Test Kitchen editors and produced […]

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Zume, &pizza Team Up on Mobile Kitchens

By Tom Kaiser | September 26, 2019

Zume, a California-based brand focused on creating a more sustainable food system, is partnering with &pizza, a popular East Coast pizza chain, to use its Forward Mobile Kitchens to expand the restaurant brand into new markets and test products before adding them to its brick-and-mortar menus. The goal, according to both companies, is providing a “seamless brand experience” across all of its different restaurant formats, which include commissary kitchens and food trucks. Zume’s leasable mobile kitchens are like food trucks focused exclusively on delivery. Meals are cooked on site, and […]

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Data Shines Spotlight on Delivery Consumers

By fodnews | September 26, 2019

New data shines a light on delivery consumers and their habits. Numerator, a market research and consumer insights company, took a look at some 450,000 American consumers to glean some information about their collective appetite for delivery. The big numbers: The average food-delivery user places an order a little over seven times a year and spends about $22 per order. For some context, McDonald’s dine-in and delivery customers order about once a month or 12 times a year and have an average ticket price of around $5. An interesting statistic […]

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Kitchen United Hauls in Another Huge Investment

By fodnews | September 26, 2019

The cash is still gushing into the delivery ecosystem, with Kitchen United recently announcing another $40 million infusion to the Google-backed national ghost kitchen operator. Its Series B funding round was co-led by RXR Realty, one of New York City’s largest real estate owners, investors and developers. With the new affiliation with RXR, Kitchen United will enter the New York City market, with ghost kitchens opening in RXR and other properties in the greater tri-state area. The company will continue to seek out new locations in its primary growth markets, […]

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Wells Fargo: Delivery Discounting Hits High-Water Mark

By Tom Kaiser | September 26, 2019

In the fifth installment of Wells Fargo’s ongoing delivery-customer survey, analysts Jon Tower and William Miller found that promotions and discounts have reached their highest level to date with big-time TV ad campaigns from most major delivery providers. Zeroing in on customers who are ordering delivery most often, the results showed that heavy users are growing less sensitive to the increasingly high cost of delivered meals. Surveying approximately 650 delivery customers in the U.S., the Wells Fargo study showed a full 70 percent of respondents ordered delivery at least once […]

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Ordermark Partners-Up for Social Media Ordering

By Nicholas Upton | September 26, 2019

Editor’s note: Say2eat is now known as Sauce. The idea of ordering food via social media is gaining more and more traction as messaging platforms gobble up our lives. Huge numbers of consumers live their life on some messaging app or another, be it Slack, Messenger or whatever. Ordermark is sliding right in via a new partnership with Say2eat Messaging. Ordermark CEO Alex Canter said it’s another way the company’s turnkey restaurant platform can help restaurants continue evolving into something more digital—without building their own chatbots. Basically, the white label […]

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Moe’s Coaxes Customers to In-House Delivery Channels

By Tom Kaiser | September 18, 2019

As the corporate guy in charge of marketing, field operations and off-premises at Moe’s Southwest Grill, Tad Low’s job includes threading the needle between customer expectations, franchisee pain points and a fast-changing delivery environment that shines a spotlight on how different foods weather the car trip to at-home diners. That can be especially tough for tacos, which don’t travel especially well, but are obviously one of the pillars for a Mexican fast-casual brand. Moe’s is a part of Atlanta-based Focus Brands, the franchisor of Cinnabon, McAlister’s Deli, Schlotzsky’s, Carvel and […]

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