PPB April 2019

SELLING POINT Fresh Out Of The Oven—OrThe Truck Bed Want your favorite dish delivered fast? There’s more than one app for that. If you work with clients in the restaurant or food industries, whether it’s meals, snacks or tasty treats for corporate gifting, the way that food is delivered is undergoing significant changes. This ongoing trend started with the burst of smartphone food-delivery applications, like Uber Eats, DoorDash, Postmates and GrubHub, which allow qualifying applicants to deliver food orders to customers without being employed by the eatery in question. These services replace the need for companies to hire their own delivery people, while broadening participating restaurants’ range of accessibility. In larger metropolitan areas, applicants are even able to deliver food via foot, scooter or bicycle if a vehicle is unavailable, providing jobs to those without personal transportation. This has resulted in a staggering rise in food deliveries based on convenience and a growing preference for dining at home. According to Restaurant Business , 86 percent of consumers use food-delivery service apps on a monthly basis, while 33 percent are using these apps more than they did last year. According to Bloomberg , the number of food-delivery app downloads is up 380 percent compared to three years ago, and restaurant delivery sales are predicted to increase 48 percent over the next four years, generating $76 billion in revenue. The most sought-after delights? In a survey of 1,500 American diners conducted by USA Today , 28 percent said hamburgers, followed by chicken wings (27 percent), Mexican food (21 percent), barbecue (14 percent) and, of course, dessert (11 percent). But just as these tools are easing the process for consumers, they are stiffening competition among restaurants and delivery services. This year expect to see more businesses develop their own apps and delivery programs, as Panera Bread has done, which uses designated employees to deliver food. (In 2018, Panera doubled its digital sales to $2 billion, up from $1 billion in 2017, through its delivery app.) And although restaurant-specific apps could drive sales for eateries, it could lead to information overload because of the need to download apps unique to every venue. So, despite the technological infiltration and streamlining of food delivery, the process could revert to the traditional delivery service, only it’s facilitated by an app used to track food orders. Some companies are also experimenting with presentation. Last year Dominos—a leader in innovative, forward-focused campaigns—and Ford partnered to launch self-driving pizza delivery cars in Las Vegas. Pizza Hut and Toyota raised the bar even higher, partnering to develop a prototype vehicle complete with a kitchen, allowing food to be prepared in transit. But no talk about delivery services would be complete without mention of drones—and they’re here. In 2016, Just Eat, a food-delivery app created in the UK, partnered with San Francisco, California-based Starship Technologies to develop a trial run for self- driving robots. So far, these machines have been used to deliver donuts and coffee to workers in California’s Silicon Valley and at universities nationwide. Uber is also slated to introduce delivery drones in 2021, but the technology is already underway in Reykjavik, Iceland, where the world’s first- | APRIL 2019 | 65 THINK by Danielle Renda