Bite Squad, which was founded in Minneapolis and acquired by Louisiana-based Waitr, has added breakfast service for individual and small group orders in its home market. Breakfast will be delivered every day starting at 8 a.m. The expanding morning delivery services, launched on Tuesday, April 16, and it’s the second Bite Squad market in the country to offer this new option. “We see breakfast delivery as a considerable growth opportunity,” said Liz Sniegocki, a Bite Squad spokeswoman. “Following a successful beta in Gainesville earlier this month, we’re planning a phase […]
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Fresh off a healthy haul of $100 million in investor cash last fall and continued European expansion after acquiring GoCater, ezCater just landed another $150 million in fun money and acquired the Monkey Group, a Canadian software and training provider that’s the developer of Monkey, a cloud-based platform for takeout, delivery and catering. With a snazzy $1.25 billion valuation making waves, the Boston-based catering providers growth options have widened. After characterizing the company’s bank account as “quite lovely” last fall, ezCater Founder Stefania Mallett said in a phone interview that […]
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Postmates revealed one of its largest restaurant partnerships to date with a newly announced tie-up with Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen to offer third-party delivery at more than 2,000 of the chicken chain’s locations across the U.S. To juice initial orders, Postmates is waiving delivery fees on orders with a promo code. Popeyes and Postmates have worked together for several years. Together, they have already completed “hundreds of thousands” of deliveries, and the new agreement is intended to increase volume at participating locations. Postmates offers delivery from more than 500,000 restaurants, grocery […]
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The Uber IPO documents are finally here, and the much anticipated tech giant’s emergence into the public sphere shows just how competitive the delivery industry is for the third-party delivery firms —and for restaurants and retailers. Ahead of the ride-sharing and logistics giant’s likely May IPO, Uber opened up the books and showed how much potential exists and how competitive delivery really is. Outlining the industry for Uber Eats in a pre-IPO filing called an S-1, Uber pegged the overall off-premises addressable market (including home delivery, takeaway and drive-thru worldwide) […]
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Not a company to focus purely on something as minor as an IPO, Uber is rolling out a voucher program while the company prepares to go public. The voucher program (demonstrated to the right) plays on the core ridesharing in a novel way by allowing businesses to offer ride vouchers to customers. The service falls under Uber for business umbrella and has been in beta since late 2018. So far, there are a handful of big businesses and entertainment outlets using the vouchers, including Live Nation, MGM Resorts, and TGI […]
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Much is made of the perceived leverage third-party services have over the restaurants whose food they deliver, but in reality, “Operators have the real leverage because the third-party apps need you as much as you need them.” That was the conclusion from Eli Portnoy, founder and CEO of data insight firm Sense360, after he analyzed survey responses from 5,000 consumers, along with transaction data, to learn how they think about and use convenience-oriented services. “At the end of the day, fees are the No. 1 consideration” for customers, followed closely […]
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For anyone tired of success stories and positivity comes the other shoe dropping—the troublesome experience in delivery by Gino’s East Pizza of Chicago and Hell’s Kitchen in Minneapolis, both iconic restaurants in their respective cities. Cynthia Gerdes is CEO of Hell’s Kitchen with its 35-foot-long bloody Mary bar and sales topping $7 million. “Our costs also expanded,” she noted at the Food On Demand Conference, including $152K in payroll every two weeks and rising rent. “I got the brilliant idea and we turned to delivery for additional revenue.” By the […]
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There are two things restaurant operators want to know when it comes to delivery: Can I make any money at this and what are the real costs? The first question is still under discussion, but Spencer Manke, CFO of the ADF Restaurant Group, a franchisee of Pizza Hut, did break down the costs of a pizza delivery during the first of two franchise breakout session at the Food On Demand Conference in Chicago April 1. John Berg of Monroe Moxness Berg was the moderator. Figured into the cost per delivery […]
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Only 15 to 18 percent of restaurants today offer delivery, declared Alex Canter at the Food On Demand Conference, “which is a huge mismatch compared to 80 percent who are getting delivery. So if you’re not listed on any one of these platforms you don’t exist.” Canter, along with Elizabeth Tomlinson, served as “millennial operators” on the panel, as moderator Fred LeFranc, Results Thru Strategy, noted their youth and the audience delighted in their fresh insights. Canter has personal experience dragging a brick-and-mortar restaurant into the online ordering world. He […]
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Adam DeWitt, Grubhub’s president and chief financial officer, was recruited to the Chicago-based delivery player in part because he previously was CFO of a publicly held firm so knew the drill. In 2011 Grubhub had $20 million in revenue and in 2018 topped a billion—“so quite a ride,” as DeWitt puts it mildly. Despite Wall Street’s criticism after its most recent quarterly conference call, which is inevitable when a public company says it will slow down geographic expansion even a bit, DeWitt says being public is worth it, and even […]
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