In the wake of WeWork’s near implosion and fresh memories of Uber’s $5.2 billion quarterly loss earlier this year, a range of business pubs are claiming that the era of growth-before-profits companies is coming to an end, including third-party restaurant delivery services. With this highly pressurized backdrop, publicly traded Grubhub is set to release its third-quarter results two days before Halloween. As Grubhub’s shares have fallen nearly 50 percent from previous highs back in the salad days of late 2018, market intelligence firm Cowen published a preview of Chicago-based Grubhub’s […]
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It was October of 2017 when DoorDash first announced plans to open DoorDash-branded delivery-only ghost kitchens, and two years later its first example has opened in Redwood City, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area. The facility’s first restaurant tenants include The Halal Guys, Rooster & Rice, Nation’s Giant Hamburgers and Humphry Slocombe. “With DoorDash Kitchens, the restaurants have a turnkey solution to quickly establish a foothold in a new market and generate revenue,” the company said in a blog post announcing the news. “They are not beholden to 10+ […]
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Another week brings yet another example of a third-party delivery company partnering with a restaurant to launch a new virtual restaurant. This latest is New York City-based Just Salad partnering with Grubhub to launch Health Tribes, a digital-only concept that launched October 10 and will be available for delivery or pickup at any of the healthy concept’s locations. The brand’s U.S. turf includes New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Florida and North Carolina. Healthy Tribes offers a variety of diet-specific recipes, including nutritionist-verified recipes that are compatible with keto, vegan, gluten-free and […]
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Delivery consumers aren’t the thriftiest folks out there, as survey after survey says they see the cost of convenience as worth the price. As these delivery networks attempt to make a profit and the economy takes a turn, fees could become a more impactful piece of the delivery puzzle. In a new round of checks on delivery fees by Kinetic 12, a management consultancy focused on the foodservice industry, the company found that the price of delivery can vary significantly from company to company, and the fees are generally going […]
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Stuck because a robot won’t move out of the way might sound like a dumb episode of “Black Mirror,” but that was the reality for a doctoral student on the University of Pittsburgh campus. Emily Ackerman, a chemical engineering student who uses a wheelchair, said she was crossing the street as she does every day, but a Starship food-delivery robot blocked her path, leaving her stuck in a busy street. Ackerman was able to navigate up on the curb, and later took to Twitter to share her story. when a […]
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It seems like every day there is a new automated something or another in foodservice, but all the bots, automation and other futuristic stuff generally either takes a long time or it doesn’t work. But Stephen Klein, cofounder and CEO of Ono Food Co. said they’ve built an automated truck to sell healthy smoothies (they call them “blends”) under the Ono Blends brand at scale in an almost shocking amount of time. “We have one truck that is built and operational, we’re about 14 months old,” he said. “We did […]
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An atypical California-based pizza brand is diversifying itself beyond delivering pizzas into developing mobile delivery kitchens and new packaging to reduce the environmental impact of meal delivery. Originally started as a pizza restaurant that pivoted into mobile delivery kitchens (with &pizza, check it out HERE) Zume is now adding an entirely new dimension to the company with the goal of eliminating unnecessary packaging and making restaurant meal delivery less of a burden on the planet. With all that as a backdrop, we had a quick conversation with Zume CEO and […]
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Uber Eats has added food-allergy filters to its app to make meal ordering easier for customers with restricted diets, and it’s also giving everyone the ability to opt out of single-use utensils that are falling out of favor with customers and some municipalities. According to a company blog post, restaurants are being directed to no longer include such disposable items by default. “Research suggests that single-use plastics harm the environment by disrupting the productivity of natural systems like our oceans and clogging urban infrastructure,” wrote Emily Boman, global policy for […]
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Uber is getting into the online grocery business, which is increasingly being bundled into the same ecosystem as third-party restaurant delivery. In acquiring majority ownership of online grocer Cornershop, Uber will now have a toehold in Chile, Mexico, Peru and Toronto markets. The investment is expected to close in early 2020 and is subject to regulatory approval. Somewhat similar to Instacart, Target’s Shipt and other online grocery options in the United States, Cornershop (also known as Delivery Technologies) allows customers to browse the store and add items to their cart, […]
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As part of an unusual but interesting study examining the U.S. retail scene as e-commerce disrupts a range of industries, MetLife Investment Management predicts that U.S. online grocery sales could swell to at least 7 percent of total sales by 2023. This would be a notable change, as online grocery sales haven’t taken off like other retail categories, especially restaurants, electronics and apparel. The authors predicted this would change by the mid-2020s. “Firms like Instacart, Peapod, Amazon and FreshDirect, however, have been refining their logistics, and we believe consumers who […]
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