Restaurant delivery is a sub-category of the Delivery sector. See all definitions of FoodTech and its categories here.

The “restaurant delivery” FoodTech category regroups startups enabling their customers to order meals and get delivered from nearby restaurants.

The restaurant delivery ecosystem is facing a decisive question: owning your delivery or being a marketplace?

This ecosystem is an evolution from platforms such as Just Eat / Takeaway. They were marketplaces connecting consumers to restaurants operating their own deliveries whereas today there are new services that also MANAGE the delivery (such as Deliveroo). While both types of platforms now do both, the distribution of the activities is not the same (70/30 versus 30/70). 

Operating a “mere marketplace” by partnering with restaurants that master their deliveries (and integrate them in their costs and pricing) is much more profitable than also managing the deliveries. Hence, we can wonder what the future of this ecosystem is, at least in terms of delivery integration, notably as more and more governments are putting restrictions on the ability to use independent workers.

Key startups to consider

This sector is composed of many unicorns:

• Just Eat – Takeaway, based in the Netherlands
• Delivery Hero, the German company which owns several brands
• Deliveroo, from the UK
• Uber Eats, the food delivery subsidiary of Uber
• Rappi in Colombia
• Doordash in the US
• iFood in Brazil
• Zomato in India

DigitalFoodLab’s additional insights

• 31/08/2021 – Food delivery startups face big challenges: fee caps & employment regulations
• 15/06/2021 – The future of the restaurant
• 03/09/2020 – Delivery Hero keeps growing through acquisitions as it enter the DAX
• 27/04/2020 – Restaurant delivery startups slash their fees (willingly or not)
• 18/03/2020 – FoodTech recap: will delivery startups benefit from coronavirus? + Impossible Foods raises $500M
• 07/02/2020 – FoodTech recap: Food delivery startups are betting on profitability
• 31/01/2020 – Delivery startups push for profitability
• 30/12/2020 – Doordash’s IPO: $3 billion raised and a valuation quadrupled in 6 months
• 23/12/2020 – Zomato to acquire Uber Eats assets in India
• 23/09/2019 – Exclusive new report on food delivery
• 19/09/2019 – Zomato gold – testing the limits of a food delivery platform with restaurants
• 09/07/2018 – Delivery models are merging – DFInsights July 18 #1