Speaking to Food On Demand from Israel, before jetting back to the U.S. for a whirlwind circuit including New York, Chicago, Dallas and San Francisco, Bringg CEO Guy Bloch is busy leading a company that helps restaurants and other businesses “Uberize” their companies by bringing goods and services directly to customers. Jetting around the world, as he explained, is just part of the deal for a fast-growing delivery-logistics brand in 2019. With $25 million of investor funds and a staff that’s quickly eclipsing 140 employees, with expectations to hit 500 […]
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Whether it’s Costanza-style worlds colliding or a meme-era “mashup,” a new delivery-only restaurant from Lettuce Entertain You and Grubhub is both the first restaurant solely focused on the restrictive Whole30 diet craze and also the first time a third-party delivery provider is cutting out the middleman by developing its own restaurant. Called Whole30 Delivered, the delivery-only restaurant will be operated by Lettuce Entertain You and will be focused on helping Chicagoland-area diners reset their metabolism with prepared meals tailored to the wildly popular diet. Lettuce and Grub are both based […]
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A couple weeks after acquiring Caviar, DoorDash made another acquisition. This time the fast-growth delivery company acquired automation and remote-driving startup, Scotty Labs. Don’t fret if the company’s name doesn’t ring a bell. The young startup was founded in March 2017 and didn’t make a ton of noise, although it was able to raise $6 million in a series A funding round. The company is comprised of seven PhDs and researchers, and was largely focused on the nerdy stuff behind the robots, as cofounder Tobenna Arodiogbu wrote in a Medium […]
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Dave Ferguson, one of the co-founders of Nuro, said there’s no “Rosie” in sight yet, but automation companies like his are the first step toward a massively automated future. Ferguson is one of the cofounders of the automated-delivery vehicle maker that is currently delivering groceries in several test markets. He discussed the big push toward autonomous operations on The Wall Street Journal’s The Future of Everything podcast. Since falling in love with a “red trashcan-style robot” in college, he’s been all-in on automation. And the company he founded lives by […]
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With delivery reportedly accounting for 7 percent of Panera Bread’s sales—handled in-house by its own drivers—the fast-casual, soup-and-sandwich chain announced it’s expanding its delivery program to include DoorDash, Grubhub and Uber Eats. Panera’s own employees will still be responsible for handling the deliveries that come through the third-party channel. Roping in the loyal customer networks of the major third-party delivery providers is yet another unique delivery strategy from a mega-restaurant brand. A leader in delivery, Panera already has a huge number of its customers enrolled in its loyalty program. After […]
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There are a lot of players in the fast-growing delivery software integrator space, and almost all of them are growing quickly. California-based Omnivore is sprinting in lockstep, having tripled the size of the company in the last 12 months. It is forecasting another big wave of growth after partnering with one of its primary competitors and inking a big-deal partnership with Coca-Cola to provide delivery integration to the beverage giant’s massive network of restaurant operators. Addressing Coke’s newfound interest in delivery, Omnivore Chief Marketing Officer Shane Wheatland likened the brand’s […]
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As Dunkin’s new director of catering and delivery, Brandy Blackwell has her work cut out to improve convenience in a system with close to 9,500 locations in the U.S. With millions of Americans living above or adjacent to a Dunkin’ or, at the least, passing one on their commute, it’s an interesting experiment to make a brand that’s nearly ubiquitous even more accessible. Given its massive footprint, Dunkin’ signing with Grubhub to bring delivery to 400 NYC locations was a big deal for both parties. Blackwell said she feels the […]
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In the fourth installment of its food delivery survey, Wells Fargo surveyors asked 575 delivery customers what would drive them back into a restaurant for an in-store visit. The somewhat hilarious answer? Lower menu prices and free menu items. Yes, that ought to do it. How about free vodka tonics? OK, while it’s easy to paint with a broad brush and laugh at that one, Wells Fargo analysts Jon Tower and William Miller were specifically asking about exclusive, in-restaurant-only menu items that came in as the second most prevalent response […]
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The joyous sound of flying hamburgers is about to be heard in the city of Hope Springs, North Carolina. Under an approved proposal, drone company Flytrex and drone services company Causey Aviation Unmanned will soon begin food deliveries. The program is part of the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) UAS Integration Pilot Program and comes after Flytrex got some important safety approval. A key part of that approval from the Northeast UAS Airspace Integration Research (NUAIR) [so many acronyms] was a self-triggered parachute system that would slow the descent of a […]
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When we order food in the office via one of the third-party apps, it’s not hard, but it’s also not easy. Generally, whoever had the great idea to get food delivered has to glean everyone’s order from our office messaging app Slack and plug them in or wander around the office sharing his or her phone for every person’s order. In short, it’s clunky. Waitr revamped its group ordering to make that easier along with a few other quality-of-life perks in its new app. According to Waitr Product Manager Coco […]
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