We are past that moment where we feel astonished by the fact that the on-demand food delivery industry is fueling revenue with each passing day. Users, especially the millennials are just not too inclined on cooking each meal by themselves. Well, this becomes an exciting opportunity for new food businesses to join the game.
Statista predicted the revenue generation of on-demand food delivery by 94 billion USD in 2019. In addition to this a CAGR of 9.3 % (2019-2023), that would result in a market volume of 134 billion USD by 2023. The food delivery services account for about 58 billion USD this year – the largest segment out of all the on-demand services.
Digital orders have been increasing at a rate of 23 % every year since 2013 and are predicted to triple by the end of 2020. What’s more interesting is that out of those orders, around 60% are through a mobile app. Also, the total number of on-demand food delivery app users will exceed 1200 million by the end of 2020.
The latest trends and technological advancements have immensely contributed to the success of food delivery players like Grubhub, Just Eat, Deliveroo, and Uber Eats to capture huge markets. The online food delivery market has observed unpredictable growth and some of the top trends or reasons that’ve helped it reach this feat are mentioned below. So, let’s get to it.
Millennials – The Targeted Niche:
Millennials have become the targeted niche for online food delivery apps as they contribute to the highest share of their budgets as compared to other generations. Generation Y is more prone to order online and as per Technomic’s Generational report, in 3 out of 5 cases, millennials order online or opt for take-out.
Millennials are attracted to the conveniences like simple ordering, instant delivery, plenty of payment options, offers, and discounts, and much more. To make the ordering process much faster and convenient the online platforms have introduced various ways to order food and introduced innovative delivery options.
New Ordering Techniques:
Due to the increasing competition in the online food delivery sector, the competitors are always in search of new ways that can make the ordering process quicker. A few of them are mentioned below.
- Ordering Through A Tweet
- Ordering Through A Smartwatch
- Order Using A Virtual Assistant
- Order From Your Car
- Order From Your Eyes
- Order With A Smart Tv
The preceding methods are the latest techniques that’ve been introduced to add convenience and speed to the ordering methods. Let’s understand a few in brief.
Ordering Through A Tweet. Domino’s was the first food chain to introduce this convenience for their users. One has to make a “pizza profile” on Domino’s online delivery platform and then with the use of emoji they can order their favorite pizza. Did you find this interesting? Then wait for more.
Ordering Through A Virtual Assistant. Grubhub has developed skills with Alexa (Amazon’s Virtual Assistant), that allows customers to reorder from their last 3 purchases. Also, when a customer tells Alexa to order, Alexa places the order and shares the estimated delivery time.
Order From Your Car. Accenture and Pizza Hut have partnered to create an in-car pizza ordering system that allows one to order food while they’re on the wheel.
Innovative Delivery Options:
With the innovative increase in the number of ways one can order food from online platforms, companies have also found innovative ways to deliver food. Let’s understand them in brief.
Deliver Using Robots. Starship technologies and Just Eat have developed 6 wheeled droids that deliver at a speed of 4 miles per hour over a 10-mile radius. The droid makes optimum use of cameras and GPS but as a security measure, the user has to enter a code as the droid arrives at the destination.
Deliver Through Drones. Tacocopter initiated the drone delivery process in the San Francisco area. The successful drone delivery was conducted by Domino’s in 2016. After conducting trials, temperature tests, and negotiating with the government, two pizzas were delivered to a couple via drone in just 5 minutes in the year 2016.
Delivery With Parachute. Do you know anything about Jafflechutes? You have to visit Melbourne if you want to order Jaffles – a toasted sandwich that is delivered using a parachute.
Serve New Niches:
Food delivery chains have bought a lot of competition with them. Due to the same restaurant owners have come up with new, innovative, and focused approaches to target small but specific niches. This helps the users find a permanent spot for their favorite food item while also helping delivery startups survive the initial competition.
Virtual or Ghost Kitchens:
The concept of ghost kitchens is a fairly new and cost-effective way to prepare and deliver food in the quickest possible time. Uber spotted this problem that restaurants were facing while opening new physical spaces and other order management issues that dine-in restaurants faced trying to cope up with online orders.
This gave rise to ghost kitchens or virtual kitchens that are designed specially to make online food delivery processes faster and convenient for restaurant partners.
There are many more factors that contribute to the growth of the online food delivery sector. The future years hold a plethora of opportunities for businesses to take a leap of faith and invest in food businesses. But as we take a glance at the numbers one must hurry as the competition is on an exponential rise.
Author Bio:
Mr. Sanjay Rajpurohit has always been a venturer. An engineer who became an early aged entrepreneur. He shares his time between his On Demand App Development and other ventures named Technource, Eminent Academy, and Tuitment and is still exploring the world of software technologies.
