After years of speculation about how the U.S. restaurant delivery scene will change with anticipated consolidation among the four largest third-party delivery services, the landscape has dramatically shifted with the news that Uber is in the process of buying Postmates, just weeks after Europe’s Just Eat Takeaway.com announced plans to purchase Grubhub. Just after the Independence Day weekend, on July 6th, Uber announced an agreement to acquire Postmates for approximately $2.65 billion in an all-stock transaction that will narrow the list of large-scale national delivery providers down to the “big […]
Waitr, the Louisiana-based company that acquired Bite Squad and went public in 2018, shared some strong results ahead of its quarterly release after several difficult, money-losing quarters. According to Carl Grimstad, Waitr’s chairman and CEO, the strong performance is part COVID-19 and part sweeping changes the company undertook in late 2019 and early 2020. Those changes included a new CEO and numerous layoffs. “We are pleased to present a preliminary look at our second quarter results and we are excited to deliver strong revenue growth and profitability, driven, in part, […]
After ponying up an all-stock offer of $4.9 billion to acquire Grubhub back in May, multiple reports suggest Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi is swapping in some lighter tackle to land Postmates, the fourth largest U.S. restaurant delivery service, for a less biting $2.6 billion. Possibly playing hard to get, Reuters also reports that Postmates has revived its plans for an initial public offering, all suggesting the U.S. delivery scene will remain hotly contested moving into the dog days of summer. Much smaller than Uber Eats, Grubhub and market leader DoorDash, […]
By now, most of us have had an experience where something that used to be totally normal is now disconcerting—like being handed a bag of takeout from somebody not wearing a mask or being bumped into by a stranger at the grocery store. Now that any human closeness or public physical contact is best avoided, CardFree is helping restaurants implement contactless ordering and payments to keep guests and staffers safe, secure and no less than an arm’s length away. Founded by Jon Squire, who has a deep background in the […]
Target is diving deeper into online groceries with news that the Minneapolis-based retailer is bringing its fresh grocery pickup service national after successful pilots in the Twin Cities and Kansas City markets. Starting last week, Target’s expanded in-store order pickup and drive-up services are now available at an additional 400 stores in the Midwest, with a goal of reaching more than 1,500 stores by Christmas. The assortment now includes 750 items across produce, dairy, bakery, meat and frozen categories, in addition to the more than 250,000 items already available for […]
A unique app that connects home cooks to their local community has gotten some real traction during the COVID-19 pandemic. WoodSpoon was founded a little over a year ago by two Israeli entrepreneurs living in New York. It was a labor of love for Jacnun, the flaky Israeli pastry co-founders Oren Saar and Merav Kalish Rozengarten couldn’t find anywhere. “We just missed our home food, the Middle Eastern dishes,” said Rozengarten. “We thought to ourselves, ‘How come there is nothing around us that helps us find our Israeli neighbors that […]
A new report identifies five key things to watch for in the delivery space over the next few years. As outlined by financial analytics firm Canaccord Genuity, the report points to some ongoing trends, but also attempts to quantify the shift in the space due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The big macro theme: the online shift is accelerating. That’s the real push the industry has seen from the pandemic, a major influx of new diners to delivery platforms. That continues a trend that the firm’s authors said was growing steadily […]
Continuing its long-standing goal of becoming a top-10 global restaurant brand, Wingstop has been one of the best performing restaurants during the pandemic as it looks to open its first delivery-only kitchens in the United States after opening ghost kitchen locations in London. As the COVID-19 crisis temporarily disrupted real estate operations from local government inspections to negotiations with brokers and landlords, the Dallas-based wing chain is resuming its efforts to reach 6,000 locations, which will include a mix of traditional locations with dining rooms, delivery-only facilities in key neighborhoods […]
Taking a page from the Foodsby business model, Boston-based ezCater is launching a new service called Relish that it’s billing as a “new way to feed offices of any size” in response to the ongoing pandemic that has decimated the traditional catering market. In describing the new offering, ezCater says Relish “gives employees safe, convenient access to their choice of meals from a rotating list of local restaurants. Individually packaged meals arrive in a single delivery at a designated place and time, so there is less traffic in and out […]
Square, the popular point-of-sale platform for restaurants and retailers, has announced a new On-Demand Delivery service giving merchants the ability to accept and fulfill delivery orders that come through native platforms. As part of this new service’s launch, Square has partnered with Postmates, with assurances that additional delivery partners are coming soon. Wally Sadat, CMO of The Kebab Shop, a local chain of restaurants in California and Texas, has been using Square’s On-Demand Delivery during beta testing. “This new feature helped us keep our doors open and continue serving our […]
