latest posts

Lunchbox Founder Focuses on Breaking Third-Party Dependence

By Tom Kaiser | January 7, 2021

Nabeel Alamgir of Lunchbox is more of a happy warrior than an angry naysayer. Even in saying “the bad guys are winning” when talking about the largest delivery providers, his message of restaurant independence feels like equal parts pep talk and rallying cry.

Chowbus Reveals 2020’s Asian Food Trends

By Tom Kaiser | December 21, 2020

Chowbus, a food-delivery platform exclusively focused on mom-and-pop-style Asian restaurants, has shared trends and details about what their users have been ordering and eating throughout 2020.

DoorDash Launches DasherDirect Banking for Drivers

By Tom Kaiser | December 21, 2020

DoorDash and Payfare have announced the launch of the DasherDirect platform, a banking platform for DoorDash delivery drivers that includes mobile banking and prepaid Visa cards for its Dashers.

Third-Party Platforms, National Restaurant Association Agree on Policy

By Nicholas Upton | December 21, 2020

The National Restaurant Association (NRA) and a group of third-party delivery providers came together on seven principles when it comes to public policy. While restaurants and third-party delivery have some natural tension in the relationship, they could agree on seven key things that would help both sides of the industry. Like so many things, the process of coming together was accelerated by the pandemic. “Even before the pandemic, delivery—and decisions related to delivery—had major impacts on restaurant operations,” said Mike Whatley, vice president for state and local affairs at the […]

Square Adds DoorDash to its On-Demand Delivery Platform

By Tom Kaiser | December 21, 2020

Restaurant merchants on the Square platform can now dispatch DoorDash delivery drivers for orders placed directly on their own websites through DoorDash Drive. This latest announcement comes after Square first announced on-demand delivery this past June.

Hungr Goes its Own Way by Giving Restaurants Customer Data

By Tom Kaiser | December 21, 2020

Hungr is a smaller delivery player going all in on sharing customer information with restaurants so they can fine-tune their operations and develop marketing campaigns to target the best users and neighborhoods for its restaurant merchants.

ZeroCater Builds Sliding Scale into Cloud Cafe

By Nicholas Upton | December 21, 2020

With fewer big company catering orders between here and who knows when, ZeroCater is rolling out a new product for scalable catering. ZeroCater, a business-to-business catering company that aims to enhance company food programs with an AI food-recommendation engine, had to make some changes during COVID. As droves of office workers went home, the company was left without a lot of the ongoing corporate catering engagements, snack deliveries and big events typical for the company. For nearly every big tech office that dispersed into the proverbial winds, however, ZeroCater CEO […]

Home Chef Delivery App WoodSpoon Raises $2 Million

By Nicholas Upton | December 16, 2020

Billed as an “on-demand craft food marketplace,” WoodSpoon has raised $2 million in seed funding to expand its operations. The company, which we profiled back in July, essentially connects customers to home chefs. It started because the two Israel-born co-founders were craving some good home cooking and saw an opportunity to carve out a niche in the growing delivery world as they started working on the app about two years ago. “We just missed our home food, the Middle Eastern dishes,” said co-founder and CMO Merav Rozengarten. “We thought to […]

DoorDash, Jimmy John’s Show Power of Platform Marketplace

By Nicholas Upton | December 16, 2020

The new partnership between Jimmy John’s and DoorDash demonstrates that even with a “freaky fast” in-house delivery fleet that’s not going anywhere, there is immense power in the platform marketplace. Jimmy John’s and DoorDash announced the two had broken ground on the now-public delivery giant’s new program that allows restaurants to do their own delivery but tap into the DoorDash app. The sandwich maker was the first major brand to sign onto the service after testing the model in 100 restaurants for six months. According to the press release Inspire […]

Lettuce Entertain You, Barilla Launch Virtual Concept on Grubhub

By Tom Kaiser | December 16, 2020

Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises, parent company of Maggiano’s Little Italy and Shaw’s Crab House, among others, has launched a new virtual restaurant in partnership with Barilla, the world’s largest pasta producer. Available exclusively on Grubhub, Barilla Italian Pasteria offers pasta-based comfort foods delivered directly to consumers.