Grocerant Fresh Food Delivery Developing Smart Curated Menus Works

Foodservice Solutions® Grocerant Guru® Steven Johnson stated “Grocerant niche Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat fresh prepared food for delivery is expanding rapidly, elevating industry delivery standards, while reducing cost to the customer. Fresh prepared food for delivery is creating a platform for non-traditional fresh food retailers to extend their brands with customer relevance.”

Delivery companies are transporting meals in all sorts of ways, from cars to scooters and bicycles, but a few companies are tapping into a network of drivers already on the road to connect people with their food as regular readers of this blog know both UberEats and AmazonPrimeNow are currently doing.

In a recent report from Technomic we learned that “Food delivery is most popular among millennials, and delivery meals represent about one-fifth of the demographics foodservice occasions, compared with a tenth of occasions for Baby Boomers.”

Today Millennials are the largest customer segment for on-demand ride apps, with younger millennials being the heaviest users, according to a Skift survey. Utilizing the growing network of on-demand drivers-for-hire to deliver meals was a logical next step for Uber, which launched its UberFresh delivery service in California in 2014. Now called UberEats, the delivery service is available in 22 cities worldwide and is constantly adding new markets.

AmazonPrimeNow has a curated fresh food delivery service of its own and Delivery.com has partnered with the taxi cab commission in Washington, D.C., to expand its network of delivery drivers. Remember the book The World is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman?

Jason Droege, head of UberEverything, said during a discussion the NRA Show in May 2016  “There’s never been a company...where you have a driver ready to do a job at a few minutes notice with such penetration. So we said, ‘if Uber can bring you a car in a few minutes, what are the other benefits of that sort of logistics network?’ Uber’s experience in the on-demand ride business and large network of drivers allows the company to keep delivery times consistent, even at busy times of night.”

Droege continued “there’s a lot more to UberEats than simply putting food in cars. The company works with all of its restaurant partners to help them give customers the best experience possible by developing curated menus, strategically choosing delivery areas and helping them select the best type of packaging for different dishes. Only those dishes that will keep their integrity during the average delivery time of 35 minutes are selected for the UberEats menu, and some restaurants offer special dishes or combinations designed especially for delivery. Once food is packaged and ready to go, it travels to the customer inside an insulated bag plugged into the Uber vehicle.”

Developing smart curated menus works and it’s not just for a smart thing for restaurants to do.  Many non-traditional locations the ilk of Green Zebra Grocery, Pinkies Liquor stores, Everytable can all benefit from the incremental business of fresh food delivery and many non-traditional retailers are doing so according to our own Grocerant Guru®.

Since 1991 retail food consultancy Foodservice Solutions® of Tacoma, WA has been the global leader in the Grocerant niche for more on Foodservice Solutions® or for a Grocerant Scorecard visit http://www.linkedin.com/in/grocerant, www.FoodserviceSolutions.us  Email: Steve@FoodserviceSoltuions.us