In what is being hailed as the first cross-country delivery by an automated semi truck, Plus.ai brought butter from California to Pennsylvania—no driver required. The Cupertino-based (of course) company took three days to tow the 40,000-pound shipment from Tulare, California, to Quakertown, Pennsylvania—which is a 2,800-mile trip. The technology behind the wheel included “multimodal sensor fusion, deep learning visual algorithms, and simultaneous location and mapping (SLAM) technologies,” according to the press release. That puts the technology at what is known as automation level four, where a human driver stands by […]
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Baby food delivery is one of those “why didn’t I think of that” ideas in the delivery world, especially when they announce a huge investment round like Yumi just did. Yumi is a science-based, early-childhood meal delivery program and one of a handful of startups in the baby food delivery market. It just successfully raised $8 million to fuel further expansion. So far, the company has now raised $12.1 million. According to a Techcrunch article about the fundraising efforts, the latest round included big names in next-wave foodservice like Blue […]
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After dipping spoons into delivered ice cream this summer, four members of the Food On Demand brain trust ordered burritos for lunch on a perfectly normal, 25-degree day in Minneapolis. Looking for a mix of variety and control, we ordered from two national chains and one independent, and used four different third-party delivery services for a quick snapshot of the delivery landscape. The scene was typical for early December in Minneapolis, two days after back-to-back Thanksgiving snowstorms blanketed the city. Roads were plowed, skies were clear and we were looking […]
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Chris Baggott, the founder and CEO of ClusterTruck, said after many, many conversations with restaurant owners, he found what might be the ideal ghost kitchen partner in grocery giant Kroger. ClusterTruck, the “virtual food truck” that offers everything from pad Thai to hamburgers out of four vertically-integrated delivery-only kitchens, and the largest grocery chain in the U.S. will partner to expand the reach of the delivery operations. Baggott founded ClusterTruck in 2015 as the delivery world was taking flight. He saw the blend of high-fees, low margins and third party […]
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With more restaurants and delivery brands vying for customers’ attention, along with the plethora of online marketing channels, it’s getting harder to promote a restaurant that could use more eyeballs on it. A new company has added a more personal option to the small-business marketing catalogue, and some Schlotzsky’s franchisees are using its boots-on-the-ground marketers to build buzz ahead of grand openings and promote delivery and catering options. With pricing far below most marketing campaigns or ad buys, Field Day deploys a single person or a phalanx of energetic marketers […]
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A new report by Deloitte paints a rosy picture of delivery’s effects in Europe. Titled “Delivering Growth,” Deloitte tapped into sales data, consumer surveys and public information to explore how the explosion of delivery has changed operations for European restaurants. In short, the study concluded that delivery has been a net positive. Restaurants included in the study reported sales increasing after implementing Uber Eats, which paid for the study. According to Uber, the share of restaurants reporting an increase in sales was 59 percent in Madrid, 67 percent in Warsaw, […]
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The restaurant delivery scene is about to get Trivago-ed. Or Pricelined, Expedia-d or Googled—whatever your favorite industry middleman brand might be. With the great restaurant reshuffle now divided between the two sides of the gym—nervous restaurateurs on one side and cocksure third-party delivery services on the other—FoodBoss is coming in as a neutral party giving customers one single place where they can see which delivery service is offering the best deal in total cost and delivery time, among other filters. The goal is to create an aggregator for meal-delivery marketplaces, […]
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BMW has partnered with Olo, the New York-based food-ordering platform, to launch a trial enabling U.S. BMW drivers to order restaurant meals while behind the wheel of their cars. Nekter Juice Bar and Portillo’s Hot Dogs are the first brands to participate in the in-car ordering pilot. BMW owners can send food orders directly from their vehicles by visiting the BMW Labs website through the car’s infotainment, and then the onboard navigation will direct them to the restaurant to pick up the meals. The pilot is an R&D exploration of […]
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Looking to juice its sales during Thanksgiving week, Subway is offering free delivery on all orders from Nov. 24 through Nov. 30 for all third-party orders coming in through Uber Eats, DoorDash, Postmates, Grubhub and Seamless. Michael Lang, the company’s senior director of global convenience said, “We want to help our guests avoid the need for extra cooking, cleaning and driving around so they can be in the moment with friends and family.” Taken individually, limited-time offers and discounted deliveries aren’t exactly news, but Subway boasts the largest delivery network […]
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After a career on Wall Street, Enrique Mendez and his business partner dabbled in growing hydroponic tomatoes, which worked out surprisingly well and led them toward an intensely ambitious goal: creating a new restaurant to offer the finest and most sustainable pizza in New York City. Two years after opening a brick-and-mortar store in Midtown, and just weeks after opening a second location within the first Zuul Kitchens facility in SoHo, Mendez has cultivated strong feelings about big-city landlords, which he characterized as predators feeding off the revenue of fledgling […]
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