Trending: Food Delivery

Remember George Jetson’s maid, Rosie the Robot? Back in the day, consumers wanted their own Rosie who could press a button and a delicious dinner was on the table faster than they could open a cookbook. Now, thanks to the new wave of delivery sites, Rosie is the phone in your pocket that can get dinner on the table faster than you can stream a Jetson’s episode.

Here are some new offerings and some familiar faces bringing groceries and restaurant meals to the consumers’ doors.

Restaurant Delivery

Caviar – Rustling up only the best restaurants a metropolitan city has to offer, Caviar has teamed up with a heady roster of clients and conscientious courier services ready to zip a temperature managed meal to trend loving consumers. Square, Inc., the popular point of sale software company, acquired Caviar with the idea of improving and upscaling the food delivery model. In Chicago, Caviar customers can order up offerings from trendy Summer House Santa Monica right from the couch.

Order Healthy – Promising the healthiest food from over 10,000 restaurants, the app, OrderHealthy, grades dishes by red, yellow and green to alert consumers to the healthiest options before ordering. The service then coordinates delivery of the guiltless meal right to the consumer’s home.

McDonald’s – When that late-night craving for a Quarter Pounder with Cheese strikes (because everybody knows it’s the best on the menu), no need to get in the car. McDonald’s has struck a deal with UberEats bringing the glory of the golden arches to consumers all with a couple of swipes on a smart phone. Will the famous fries travel well? That remains to be seen as the service just launched in June.

Pizza Hut – With plans to bring on more than 14,000 new drivers by the end of 2017, Pizza Hut, already an expert on getting hot food to customers quickly, is capitalizing on the hotness of the delivery market by improving service quality. Using improved mapping and location services technology, Pizza Hut plans to invest $130 million through 2019 to get hot pizzas faster and more efficiently to hungry consumers.¹

Meal Service

Vyne Life – The time has never been better for a plant-based meal delivery service. Vyne Life is all about helping consumers eat less meat, one meal at a time. Consumers choose from breakfast, snack and main course options that can be delivered to the home or picked up at the local gym. Vyne Life claims that “in a world of empty promises, empty calories, and empty chatter, we stand for full. And we’re not being full of it.”²

Grocery Delivery

It’s no secret that the grocery arena is changing due to more and more options for ordering groceries online. Some experts, like Peapod President Tony Stallone, think that grocery retailers will be solution centers for consumers and should be everywhere their consumers are.³ Consumers care about their food and where it’s sourced and they want to learn how to prepare it. E-commerce is giving more consumers access to food quicker.  Take Hy-Vee for example, its newest location in Des Moines, Iowa allows customers to order groceries online and then they can pick them up at lockers outside the store.

Power Duos Redefine Grocery Retailing

The recent acquisition of Whole Foods by Amazon definitely has set grocery retailing on its ear. With almost 2/3 of Millennials shopping online for health and beauty aids weekly, expect to see more consumers following suit for groceries as Amazon helps make Whole Foods more accessible and wallet-friendly.⁴ Amazon’s recent price cutting of some Whole Food staples is only the first step in making this happen.

Not to be left out of the e-commerce boom, Google product, Google Express, gave consumers the access to easily shop for some of their favorite goods from stores like Costco, Joanne Fabrics, Ace Hardware, Pier 1, Kohl’s, retail giant Wal-Mart and more. Consumers can expect to get hundreds of thousands of Wal-Mart items on Google Express via the mobile site, website or voice shopping on Google Assistant.

Finally, smaller but rapidly growing Aldi is partnering with Instacart to get in on the action. All of these power duos will not just impact grocers but will impact meal delivery service companies and eventually restaurants as it becomes easier and more cost-effective for consumers to prepare meals, entertain, and eat at home.

Watch for more news on grocery delivery and its impact on the retail space. This is just the beginning, but we believe that great food always starts with real food ingredients. We’d love to deliver you a sample or two…get out your “Rosie” and pick a few.

Source:

1. Food Business News: Pizza Hut doubling down on delivery, July 18, 2017.
2. com
3. Food Business News: Summer Fancy Food exclusive: The future of food retailing, June 30, 2017.
4. http://www.chainstoreage.com/article/study-majority-millennials-shop-online-groceries