What is it like to run a restaurant reservations platform during a pandemic, Food on Demand Editor Tom Kaiser asked the founder of Tock to kick off today’s virtual FOD conference. “It took work that was interesting, and made it important,” replied Nick Kokonas in a pragmatic and hopeful discussion about third-party delivery and the survival of restaurants. Kokonas launched Tock in 2015 as an “elevated” reservation service, added Tock To Go in March amid COVID-19 and in May raised $10 million from a Starbucks-backed venture fund to bolster the […]
Bastian Lehmann, CEO and co-founder of Postmates, was man of the hour as his keynote address kicked off the third annual Food on Demand Conference today, for the first time in all-virtual format. That’s because Uber is set to buy Postmates, which is a distant fourth in market share at 8 percent but nonetheless mighty, Lehmann maintains, especially as a third-party delivery pioneer.
Philadelphia is the latest major U.S. city capping fees and placing new restrictions on third-party delivery services. Signed by Mayor Jim Kenney and effective immediately, the new bill limits delivery fees, mandates that fees must be transparent to customers and that third-party providers can no longer list restaurants on their platform without explicit, written consent. Philadelphia’s Bill No. 200344 contains five explicit restrictions on delivery providers operating within the sixth largest U.S. city, with a population of more than 1.5 million people inside its municipal boundaries. It was signed into […]
In a brief report looking at the top 50 metro areas in the U.S., Square, a payment processing tool for online ordering, highlights which cities have seen the biggest percent increase in new sellers moving online in response to the pandemic. The list is headlined by Albuquerque, New Mexico; Durham, North Carolina; Portland, Oregon; Minneapolis and Richmond, Virginia—all cool kid cities by any measure. The study defined adoption by the percent increase in sellers who took their first payment using Square’s online store during the period, which included January and […]
Amazon’s major investment in the U.K. delivery firm Deliveroo has been approved by regulators. As CNBC reported, it was an unusually contentious look at the deal by country regulators that underscored the caution they were taking around this massive shift in the restaurant industry by similarly massive players. “Today’s final decision is the result of a thorough examination of this deal and the markets in which Amazon and Deliveroo operate,” said Stuart McIntosh, who led the inquiry for the Competition and Markets Authority. The approval came a year and change […]
Grubhub (NYSE: GRUB) reported strong second-quarter results and gave a few updates on the Just Eat Takeaway.com (JET) transaction. The company released the results without an earnings call as the company has chosen not to hold calls until the close of the JET acquisition. Revenue and user growth continued on the solid trajectory seen in the first quarter, but there were some weak spots. Revenues hit $459.3 million, a 41 percent increase from 2019. Net income, however, sank to negative $45.4 million, a sharp decrease from $1.3 million in income […]
Now that meal delivery has expanded far beyond the urban markets that fueled the industry’s growth the last decade, some delivery providers are differentiating themselves with a more selective roster of restaurants. First came Slice, which focuses exclusively on pizza restaurants, and now Chowbus, which just received a $33 million investment to bring its curated roster of Asian-only restaurants to new cities in the U.S. With a pleasing interface similar to other national delivery apps, Chowbus presents users with a list of trending restaurants and individual menu items, restaurants only […]
New York-based ghost kitchen operator, Zuul Kitchens, has secured $9 million in fresh funding to expand its ghost-kitchen operation throughout New York City. Zuul opened its first multi-tenant kitchen facility in 2019 and temporarily closed it at the start of the pandemic, as many restaurants struggled in the midtown and downtown business districts of Manhattan. The company currently operates its flagship location at 30 Vandam Street, and services brands that deliver to both residential and commercial customers throughout downtown Manhattan. Zuul will deploy its new capital to expand its footprint […]
As two off-premises giants have already demonstrated, whether it’s internal or third-party, delivery is the place to be during the volatile COVID-19 pandemic. The two companies showed some exceptional results in their respective second-quarter earnings. Domino’s reported 16.1 percent same-store sales growth, while Wingstop reported a 31.9 percent jump in same-store sales. Compared to the backdrop of -18.7 percent same-store sales (as measured by Black Box Intelligence in June), that would be shocking if it weren’t just another quarter of wild diversion from the mean for these companies. “The second […]
FreshDirect, an online grocery delivery provider based in New York City, is expanding southward along the Acela corridor into the Washington, D.C. metro area through a partnership with micro-fulfillment brand Fabric. Launching in late 2020, this will enable two-hour, on-demand grocery delivery “of a wide selection of FreshDirect’s assortment” to customers in the nation’s capital. With a hub-and-spoke operational structure, with its primary facility remaining at its Bronx, NY-headquarters, FreshDirect has positioned the geographic expansion as a blueprint for future service upgrades and expansion into other parts of the country. […]
