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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Business of Food

Wendy’s to Launch 700 Ghost Kitchens Via Reef Partnership

Wendy’s announced this week it will expand its number of delivery-only kitchens via a partnership with ghost/mobile kitchen provider Reef. With the deal, Wendy’s plans to open 700 more of these kitchens over the next five years in the U.S., Canada, and the United Kingdom.

Wendy’s and Reef first announced their partnership in 2020, when the two started testing delivery-only kitchens in Canada. The partnership is part of Wendy’s ongoing strategy to be operating 7,000 units globally by the end of the year, according to the company’s earnings call this past week. The QSR chain plans to have 30 percent of all its new units come from nontraditional locations.  

Reef’s mobile kitchens certainly count as “nontraditional” when it comes to QSR formats. The company, which raised $700 million last year, houses ghost kitchens in mobile trailers that can be parked more or less anywhere there is underutilized real estate and demand for restaurant food. Right now, the company partners with existing restaurant chains that want to boost the number of delivery-only orders they fulfill. Saladworks, Wow Bao, and BurgerFi are just a few names using Reef’s mobile kitchen infrastructure. 

“We are still very early in our nontraditional development journey, but we are encouraged by the results that we’ve seen with Reef, and we’ll continue learning alongside them throughout this partnership as we grow our brand,” Wendy’s CEO Todd Penegor said on the earnings call.

Partnering with Reef on mobile kitchens allows Wendy’s to expand its new build-outs faster, since there’s less development time needed compared to a traditional QSR location with a dining room attached. Wendy’s decision to go the mobile kitchen route differs from other QSRs like Burger King, McDonald’s, and Taco Bell, all of whom have recently announced new store prototypes that emphasize digital ordering and delivery. In those cases, however, the units are stationary and have yet to be built out en masse.

Revenue in the online food delivery segment in the U.S. is expected to reach $32 billion in 2021, which is about 15 percent of the total U.S. fast food market today. That suggests a long-term trend towards non-dine-in formats for QSRs and more focus on the “hub-and-spoke” model where the kitchen is the central piece of the restaurant serving multiple different sales channels. QSRs, in particular, are well suited to the non-dine-in format because customers aren’t typically going to these establishments for the ambiance or experience one expects in a dining room setting.

For their part, Wendy’s and REEF expect to open approximately 50 delivery kitchens in 2021, with the remainder launched by 2025. 

5 Ways the Restaurant Biz Will Change In the Next 5 Years

If the last year and a half was about how restaurants could survive, this next stretch will be all about how they are and will continue to adapt to all the changes they’ve absorbed in the recent past. 

A lot of those changes have been around tech. In fact many would argue the restaurant biz made 10 years’ worth of technological evolution in the span of a few months because of the havoc the COVID-19 pandemic brought. Over the last year, online ordering has become table stakes, restaurants of all sizes have opened virtual, delivery-only concepts, and customer data has grown even more important for businesses to keep tabs on.

What do changes like these mean for the restaurant over the next five years? We’ll discuss that next week at The Spoon’s upcoming Restaurant Tech Summit. The virtual event takes place August 17, and you can still nab a ticket to it.

In preparation for the event, we’ve been publishing Q&As with restaurants, tech companies, analysts, and others who will be participating in the Summit. Below are some highlights from these individuals on where they see the restaurant biz headed over the next five years. 

Michael Schaefer, Head of Beverages and Foodservice Research, Euromonitor

“In the next five years, restaurants will become less synonymous with prepared food. Prepared meals will remain the primary business for restaurants, of course, and dining in restaurants will not be going away. However, the range of operators, concepts and venues for obtaining prepared meals and solving for daily meal occasions will continue to expand. Rather than a strict separation of restaurants and prepared meals on one end and grocers and packaged food and drinks on the other, we’ll see more of a spectrum, with a range of different approaches to prepared food and drinks, generally ordered via an app and often fulfilled by third-party delivery.”

Read Full Q&A

Allison Page, Founder, Sevenrooms

“We’re at the early innings of a data revolution for the hospitality industry. Over the next five years, hospitality experiences are only going to become more personalized and tailored to the wants and needs of guests – to the levels we see on an everyday basis from the likes of Amazon and Spotify today. The restaurant industry has been through a lot over the past year, but it’s one of the most inspiring industries to work in and be a part of every day and I’m excited to see what the next five years hold.” 

Read Full Q&A

Trish Paterson, CEO, Copper Branch

“There will be a surge in closings once the subsidies end — restauranteurs are focused on considering drive through and mobile pick up spaces for guests. There will be a stronger focus on touch-free technology (menus etc.). Due to labour shortages, there will be more focus on technology (robotics) for back of house and front of house, including self-serve kiosks, order from QR code at the table, etc.”

Read Full Q&A

Adam Brotman, CEO, Brightloom

“I predict we’ll see a couple of notable shifts. 

First, digital is here to stay and will only increase. Customers crave frictionless experiences. The accelerated shift to digital menus and mobile ordering and payment during the pandemic illuminated a new standard of customer convenience. If I can order ahead and arrange for curbside delivery with a few clicks on my phone, why would I ever return to waiting in line to order and pick up my food?

Second, we’ll see a rebalanced focus on customer retention relative to customer acquisition. It’s commonplace that loyal customers are almost always more profitable. Instead of over indexing on customer acquisition, restaurants will recalibrate their focus on driving sustainable revenue with existing customers based on historical transaction data.”

Read Full Q&A

Andy Wiederhorn, CEO, Fat Brands

“Five years from now, I think restaurants will be built upon the internet of things. Your POS talks to your grill, who talks to your fryer, who talks to your walk-in fridge, who makes an order to your potato supplier without a manager or cook having to lift a finger.” 

Read Full Q&A

You can hear all of these leaders at next week’s Restaurant Tech Summit on August 17th. Get your ticket today.

More Headlines

Ono Food Rebrands as Hyphen, Launches Makeline Food Assembly Robot to Work in Tandem with Humans – Hyphen just launched its Makeline assembly robot, which is meant to help fast casual restaurants quickly and accurately make meals for pick-up and delivery without taking up any additional space. 

Bite Ninja Raises $675,000 in Pre-Seed Funding to Virtually Staff Restaurants – The service allows restaurant workers to take drive-thru and counter orders remotely without interrupting the order process for consumers.

Kiwibot and Sodexo Bringing Delivery Robots to Three Colleges – Kiwibots will be rolling out to New Mexico State University, Loyola Marymount University in California, and Gonzaga University in Washington state.

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Taco Bell to Launch New Drive-Thru-Centric Store Prototype

Via a partnership with longtime franchisee Border Foods, Taco Bell is set to launch a new store design the QSR chain says will “simplify drive-thru time significantly,” according to a press release sent to The Spoon. Dubbed Taco Bell Defy, the initiative was first announced at the beginning of 2021, when the store prototype surfaced.

Border Foods enlisted Minneapolis-based design firm Vertical Works to assist with conceptualizing the new building, which will be restaurant number 230 for Taco Bell and Border Foods, and the pair’s 82nd new build.

Speed of service via digital means is the emphasis here. The Defy location will include four drive-thru lanes, three of which will be dedicated to mobile orders and pickups for delivery. (One lane will function like a traditional drive-thru lane.) For these mobile-order lanes, customers will check in and order via QR code, then retrieve their food from a lift system that eradicates the human-to-human touchpoint during a traditional food handoff. The kitchen itself, meanwhile, will be elevated above the drive-thru lanes and staff able to communicate with customers via audio and video features.  

Aspects of the Defy location are reminiscent of store design plans from another major QSR, Burger King. The Home of the Whopper unveiled a store prototype last year that also featured suspended kitchens, multiple drive-thru lanes, and a conveyor belt system that would deliver food to customers without an actual human-to-human interaction. 

Other chains, including McDonald’s, have announced various initiatives over the last several months aimed at digitizing more of the drive-thru operation and in the process speeding up service times. Wait times at the drive-thru have progressively increased over the last several years, and the latest data shows that total wait time in 2020 was about 30 seconds longer than 2019 across the QSR sector. 

So far, only the designs themselves have surfaced for these various store concepts. We have yet to see how these ideas function in real time, in real life, and just how widespread they wind up being in terms of the population’s QSR experience.

Taco Bell breaks ground this month in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, with plans to open by summer 2022.

Q&A: Fat Brands’ Andy Wiederhorn Talks Virtual Dining, Delivery Adoption, and the Biggest Challenge for Restaurants Right Now

Fat Brands, parent company of Fatburger, Hurricane Grill & Wings, and others, was something of an early mover in the world of delivery-only and virtual restaurant concepts. The SoCal-based company, which owns several restaurant brands, was one of the first to trial delivery via third-party services. And when the pandemic hit last year and shut down dining rooms, Fat Brands was quick to respond by launching virtual concepts in its existing restaurant locations.

Since that time, the company has acquired the Johnny Rockets brand and completed merger with Fog Cutter Capital Group, among other milestones from the last year and a half. 

Fat Brands CEO Andy Wiederhorn will share his thoughts on digitizing a restaurant company in the pandemic era at The Spoon’s upcoming Restaurant Tech Summit on August 17. As a teaser, we recently got some high-level thoughts from him around the future of virtual restaurants, ghost kitchens, restaurant tech, and more. Full Q&A is below. And if you haven’t already, grab a ticket to the virtual show here.

This Q&A has been lightly edited for clarity.

The Spoon: What problem does FAT Brands solve for restaurants/the restaurant industry as a franchisor?

Andy Wiederhorn: One thing that’s especially exciting in today’s landscape is our multi-concept offerings. We make it efficient for franchisees to be able to operate a variety of concepts under the same umbrella under one franchisor. As a result, our franchisees are able to offer things like virtual restaurants out the back door of their anchor brand. Under other franchisors, this wouldn’t be permissible. 

What is the biggest change in terms of the restaurant industry’s approach towards technology as a result of the pandemic?

Delivery adoption has far exceeded what was an already impressive growth trajectory. The shift to online ordering also accelerated dramatically. This led to innovative changes in tamper-proof packaging, POS and more. There is still so much more to come regarding increasing speed of service, labor crisis relief, and overall margin improvement thanks to rising wages.  

Is the restaurant dining room going away for fast casual/QSR formats?

No. Are they evolving to accommodate digital users? Yes. These formats also need to evolve to accommodate virtual restaurant capabilities. At the end of the day, people want to go out to eat and, more specifically, want to eat and socialize in a dining room. If you look at restaurant sales today, it’s abundantly clear there is a strong demand for people to eat and socialize in restaurants. 

What is the biggest challenge for restaurants right now when it comes to digitization?

The biggest challenge for restaurants starts with finding the right POS system. Outdated POS makes it very difficult to implement exciting new technology as they don’t have robust systems to tap into API. New cloud-based systems allow for quick and easy pivots that lead to a comprehensive ecosystem encompassing delivery, loyalty, mobile payments, apps and more software solutions. 

What are you most excited about when it comes to the impact of restaurant technology?

I’m excited about restaurant technology enhancing dining experiences. I don’t think people want robots to replace good servers, but there are exciting opportunities to improve everything from speed of service to overall efficiency.  

What do you think the restaurant industry will look like in five years?

Five years from now, I think restaurants will be built upon the internet of things. Your POS talks to your grill, who talks to your fryer, who talks to your walk-in fridge, who makes an order to your potato supplier without a manager or cook having to lift a finger. 

Shiok Meats Acquires Gaia Foods, Will Add Beef to Its Cultured Meat Lineup

Shiok Meats, a company best known for its developments in cultured seafood, has acquired a 90 percent steak in Gaia Foods, according to Tech in Asia, which broke the news. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Through the deal, Singapore’s Shiok Meats will add “a variety of red meat products” to its roster, since the company will be able to draw on Gaia Foods expertise in developing cultured beef. Gaia, also based in Singapore is also developing cultured pork and mutton.

Both companies are targeting markets in Asia, including Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, China, Japan, Taiwan, India, and South Korea. Shiok Meats hopes to blend cultured beef and shrimp in order to create a product that can be used in a variety of dishes, from dumplings and noodles to spring rolls.

Shiok raised an undisclosed round of bridge funding last month that will go towards building out a production facility in Singapore. The company said at the time of the funding that it plans to launch commercially in that market by 2023 at the latest. Speaking to Tech in Asia today, company CEO Sandhya Sriram said Shiok Meats is ready to “power through to commercialization.”

Singapore is currently the only country in the world that has granted regulatory approval to sell cultured meat, and to just one company, Eat Just. Gaining its own approval — in Singapore and elsewhere — will be a major next step for Shiok on its path to commercialization. 

Beyond regulatory approval, Shiok Meats and every other company developing cultivated meat has a host of challenges to contend with before consumers can buy their products en masse at restaurants and grocery stores. Those challenges span everything from making cell lines more available to finding cheaper, less ethically hazy growth mediums, and educating the average consumer about what cultured meat actually is and why we need to consider it as a protein source in the first place.  

Gaia founders Vinayaka Srinivas and Hung Nguyen will lead the Shiok Meats technical team’s development process for cultured red meat products for the company moving forward. Meanwhile, Sriram told Tech in Asia that deals like this one will become “priorities” in the near-term future for the company.

WoodSpoon Raises $14M to Expand its Home Chef Marketplace

WoodSpoon, the New York City-based online marketplace where home chefs can make their food available for ordering and on-demand delivery, announced today that it has raised a $14 million Series A round of funding. Restaurant Brands International (RBI) led the round with participation from World Trade Ventures, Victor Lazarte and other individual investors. This brings the total amount of funding raised by WoodSpoon to $16 million.

WoodSpoon is part of a slowly but steadily rising movement of startups such as DishDivvy and Shef that enable home cooks to sell their wares online. WoodSpoon vets potential home cooks for safety, sanitation and food quality before admitting them on to the platform. Once a chef is onboarded, WoodSpoon takes care of the logistics like insurance and delivery, and even helps with things like food photos and videos to better tell chefs’ stories. WoodSpoon currently operates in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens in New York City, where users download the WoodSpoon app or visit the website, order a meal and have it delivered in 30 to 40 minutes.

Oren Saar, Co-Founder and CEO of WoodSpoon told me during a video chat last week that the company currently has 150 active home chefs on its platform (“active” means they’ve cooked meals for sale two times in the past month). Saar also said that 35 percent of customers who buy their first meal on WoodSpoon buy an additional three meals on the service within 17 days.

Selling home-cooked meals is still very much a new idea, and regulations are still being worked out on a state-by-state basis. Because of this, Saar said that WoodSpoon puts a lot of effort into educating potential customers about the idea of buying your neighbor’s home cooked meals. Part of that process, Saar said, was putting the chefs front and center, highlighting the home cooks themselves and the kitchens where meals are made. “You can read everything about the chef making your food,” Saar said, “That should reduce the automatic bias.”

WoodSpoon’s funding is the second big raise we’ve seen from a home cook marketplace this summer, as Shef raised $20 million in June. Shef is a little different from WoodSpoon however, as Shef isn’t on-demand. It delivers prepared meals cold that are then heated up by the customer.

With its new capital, Saar said that WoodSpoon will expand to cover all of New York City before moving on to be in up to 15 different markets across the U.S. Worth noting about this funding round is that it’s led by RBI, which owns the famous QSR brands Burger King, Popeye’s and Tim Horton’s. RBI’s involvement could possibly help accelerate regulatory clarity and acceptance of legalized home cooking across the country, and perhaps it could even help create mini home cook moguls go from neighborhood business to national brand.

AeroFarms Partners With Nokia to Build Out Drone Control and Other Indoor Ag Tech

Vertical farming company AeroFarms announced today an official partnership with Nokia Bell Labs to further develop the technology capabilities of its industrial-scale indoor ag operation. 

Currently, New Jersey-based AeroFarms uses a proprietary system that combines machine vision and machine learning technologies with the company’s agSTACK software, custom lighting, and aeroponics. The goal is to create an indoor farming environment where temperature, humidity levels, and other environmental factors are fully controlled, and where automation can take over some of the tasks around the farm.

According to today’s press release,  Nokia Bell Labs, which is the research arm of Nokia, will contribute its autonomous drone control and orchestration systems to the partnership as well as imaging and sensor tech and new AI capabilities.

These drones fly over the crops and autonomously image each plant to collect more data on overall plant health. AeroFarms CTO Roger Buelow said in a statement today that scientists and engineers have been working for two years to train these systems in plant biology.

From the press release:

“Nokia Bell Labs’ machine vision technology has enabled the most precise data capture yet, down to the level of individual plants, using leaf size segmentation, quantification, and pixel-based scanning to identify consistency and variation. Going beyond what even the human eye can perceive, this state-of-the art imaging technology enables the gathering of immense insights about a plant including its leaf size, stem length, coloration, curvature, spotting, and tearing.“

The end goal of all of this is to improve plant quality, nutritional profile, and taste, as well as crop yield.

To what extent drone imaging can help with that remains to be seen. So far, few indoor ag companies employ drones for any tasks on the farm, Finland’s iFarm being a notable exception. Earlier this year, the company announced a partnership with Sadarah Partners to build an indoor farm in Qatar that will include drone tech. 

AeroFarms and Nokia have worked together since 2020, testing the technologies with some of AeroFarms’ crops. As of today, the tech capabilities are “ready to scale” to all of AeroFarms’ crops as well as to the company’s forthcoming farms in Danville, Virginia and the Abu Dhabi in United Arab Emirates. 

 

Brightloom’s Adam Brotman Wants to Better Educate Restaurants on How to Use Their Data

One thing the restaurant industry has in abundance right now is data, and as more of the front and back of house get digitized, the amount of data will only grow. But unless you happen to be Starbucks, with deep pockets and lots of resources, making sense of all that data is, in Brightloom CEO Adam Brotman’s words, “a herculean feat” that most restaurants simply can’t afford right now.

Brightloom’s data-science-as-a-service platform aims to help restaurants including small- to medium-sized ones, make more sense of their data and get better insights from it via the company’s customer growth platform. With it, restaurants can organize their data to answer questions about who their customers are, how many customers they even have, what they’re buying, and how frequently they’re doing it, among others.

Brotman will be talking more about the importance of restaurant data at The Spoon’s upcoming Restaurant Tech Summit on August 17. As a teaser, we recently got some high-level thoughts from him around why data is important to the future of the restaurant and how businesses can better leverage it. Full Q&A is below. And if you haven’t already, grab a ticket to the virtual show here.

This Q&A has been lightly edited for clarity.

The Spoon: What problem does Brightloom solve for restaurants/the restaurant industry?

Adam Brotman: Brightloom provides restaurants of all sizes with the ability to develop an effective growth marketing strategy using the customer data they already have. At its essence, it is an intelligent marketing platform built around customer transaction data and powered by measurement and predictive modeling.

The Brightloom Customer Growth Platform (CGP) makes the secret sauce previously available only to giants like Amazon and Starbucks — data science and continuous optimization — available as a simple and affordable service to the huge segment of the market for whom the “build-your-own” option just isn’t a reality, especially now. With the CGP, restaurants can deliver personalized, relevant, and rewarding experiences to their customers that drive higher customer engagement and measurable business results.

We start with a brand’s existing data, we run it through our proprietary ML models and then the CGP provides insights and analytics around the brand’s digital customer base and digital business. Next, the CGP delivers smart segmentation that allows a brand to easily run a series of personalized marketing campaigns on their own channels.

What is the biggest change in terms of the restaurant industry’s approach towards technology as a result of the pandemic?

Last year, COVID-19 forced retailers and restaurants to digitize their operations seemingly overnight, and in turn, brands digitized a majority of their customer relationships. In fact, The Boston Consulting Group found that one-third of restaurants’ digital customers ordered online for the first time during the pandemic. With vaccine distribution well underway, signs of economic relief, and regional restrictions loosening, it’s paramount for restaurants to leverage technology in order to maintain these new digital relationships and drive sustainable revenue.

In the years leading up to the pandemic, brands have competed on customer experience. Now, the battlefront is moving squarely towards digital and omnichannel experiences. Restaurants have an opportunity to convert their new digital customer relationships into a highly effective customer growth strategy. 

What will happen to restaurants that don’t use this time to learn how to better leverage their data?

In short, they are going to be left behind. Restaurants are still reeling from last year’s disruptions, and we saw the pandemic force 100,000 restaurant closures in six months. The good news is there’s tremendous upside and potential for those who are able to adapt and take advantage of newly digitized customer relationships. The QSR, fast-casual, and casual restaurant segments have seen an uptick in purchase frequency for digital customers compared to non-digital customers. Relatedly, recent research found that more than 90% of customers who are fully vaccinated plan to continue to order online at least as often as they do now. Restaurants are sitting on a gold mine of first-party, transactional customer data. The key now is for them to harness it in a way that drives customer retention and sustainable revenue. 

What is the biggest challenge for restaurants right now when it comes to digitization? 

One of the largest challenges we see restaurants struggle with is how to best collate customer data and in turn take action on it. The reason it’s so difficult is because it requires brands to perform a couple of herculean tasks in sequence.

First, they must access and organize their customer data to create customer segments. That alone isn’t difficult, but when you look at it from another dimension — e.g., what product offer should I send this customer — it becomes exponentially more complicated. Virtually no business could afford the human-hours required to do it manually. Instead, brands must use an algorithm and predictive modeling to understand product offers by customer segments instantly across multiple dimensions. Building this algorithm takes data engineers, data scientists, and digital product experts, and most brands don’t have the teams or resources to build it in-house. 

What are you most excited about when it comes to the impact of restaurant technology?

For too long digital leaders have been misled with the notion of a golden customer record. The attitude that more data is better is false. Marketers spend more time collecting and cleaning data than acting on it.

We’ve now reached a pivotal tipping point that will redefine the future of digital experiences and how brands engage with their customers. The digitization of restaurants and the explosion of data and analytics around what customers want has opened seemingly endless possible avenues for digital marketers to explore, ideate, and create. From intuitive payment to streamlined ordering to tailored loyalty programs, I’m excited to see how restaurants will continue to elevate the dining experience for their customers.

What do you think the restaurant industry will look like in five years?

I predict we’ll see a couple of notable shifts. 

First, digital is here to stay and will only increase. Customers crave frictionless experiences. The accelerated shift to digital menus and mobile ordering and payment during the pandemic illuminated a new standard of customer convenience. If I can order ahead and arrange for curbside delivery with a few clicks on my phone, why would I ever return to waiting in line to order and pick up my food?

Second, we’ll see a rebalanced focus on customer retention relative to customer acquisition. It’s commonplace that loyal customers are almost always more profitable. Instead of over indexing on customer acquisition, restaurants will recalibrate their focus on driving sustainable revenue with existing customers based on historical transaction data.

Let’s Unpack the Possible DoorDash + Gorillas Deal

Last week the Financial Times reported that third-party delivery giant DoorDash was in talks to buy a stake in German speedy grocery delivery startup Gorillas. While there weren’t a ton of details, such as how big any such stake would be, a follow-up story from Axios said the deal could give DoorDash the option to acquire a controlling interest in Gorillas eventually.

This could actually be a good deal for DoorDash for a number of reasons.

The sudden rise of speedy grocery delivery has been one of the big food tech stories of 2021. These fast delivery services operate a network of smaller dark stores that carry a small inventory and deliver goods to a limited radius in as short a time span as 10 minutes.

Europe in particular has been a hotbed of activity in the speedy delivery space, with startups such as Getir, Glovo and Gorillas each raising hundreds of millions of dollars a piece to expand their operations. Here in the U.S., speedy delivery is currently centered in New York City where Fridge No More, 1520, JOKR and Buyk operate, though we are seeing services like Food Rocket in San Francisco.

In terms of fundraising, Gopuff has left players on both sides of the pond in the dust, having raised $2.5 billion in just this past six months and $3.4 billion in total. Gopuff is a little different from other players in that it does not promise super fast delivery, opting instead for the comparatively sluggish half-hour delivery times (though the service delivers around the clock). But it’s enough of a comp to be included among the new wave of startups shaking up grocery delivery.

Gopuff’s now-sizable warchest has probably spurred DoorDash to get moving on speedy delivery. DoorDash has been steadily moving beyond just restaurant delivery and into the convenience store and grocery categories, and last year DoorDash launched DashMart, the company’s own chain of delivery-only c-stores. But Gopuff is aggressively expanding its operations across the U.S. and now operates 450 delivery facilities in 850 U.S. cities. Additionally, Gopuff is starting to encroach on DoorDash’s core restaurant turf with the addition of Gopuff ghost kitchens that offer hot meals like pizza, pasta and more for delivery. In other words, DoorDash can probably feel Gopuff nipping at its heels.

This brings us back to Gorillas. The Financial Times speculated that DoorDash investing in Gorillas was a play for European expansion. But there seems to be plenty of value right here in the U.S. Though it’s based in Germany, Gorillas expanded into the U.S. with its launch in New York City in May of this year. Since then, it’s been the first speedy delivery service to set up operations on both coasts as it hires out teams in San Francisco and Los Angeles. (It’s also moving into Chicago.)

An investment and potential controlling stake in Gorillas does a few things for DoorDash. First, there is probably some FOMO for DoorDash. While speedy grocery delivery services are new, they have the potential to upend the way we shop for groceries, as they turns the act of grocery shopping into something more like a utility — always there when you need it. Ten-minute delivery could become the new standard, and DoorDash doesn’t want to miss out.

But this is what makes the reported two-step investment structure of the Gorillas investment interesting. DoorDash, which is flush with its own IPO cash, can pony up some money right now and learn from Gorillas as it scales up both here and abroad. Speedy delivery startups have yet to prove if they can economically scale, and right now, they need to be in areas that are densely populated to make money. There’s still a good chance that Gorillas and the like could become the next Kozmo.com. If speedy delivery catches on, then DoorDash can swoop in, gobble up the rest of Gorillas and re-brand the entire operation as DoorDash. If Gorillas flames out, well, that’s a bummer, but DoorDash still has all of its other delivery businesses.

A smaller side story to watch with all this is whether any DoorDash investment in Gorillas would also translate into Gorillas getting Chowbotics food robots. DoorDash acquired Chowbotics earlier this year and is reportedly using the robots to create ready-to-eat salads and microwaveable meals for its DashMart stores. As I wrote last week, food robots could be a killer app for speedy grocery delivery because they create customized meals in a very small footprint.

Should DoorDash invest in Gorillas and wind up with a controlling stake, such a union would set up a bit of an existential question for DoorDash. For good and ill, DoorDash was built on the backs of contract labor. Part of the pitch from Gorillas and other speedy delivery services is that their delivery drivers are employees that receive a salary and benefits. Speedy grocers have explained to me over the past few months that having their own drivers means they can ensure faster delivery. Speedy delivery services know how many people to staff, when they are out on deliveries, when they will return, etc. DoorDash, on the other hand, has to send out delivery jobs to a network of contractors each time to find a delivery person. If speedy delivery is a game of minutes, then every second counts.

The Financial Times said that the deal is being finalized and could close at the end of this month. If the deal goes through, DoorDash could quickly become an 800 lbs gorilla in the speedy delivery space.

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More Headlines

John Deere Acquires Bear Flag Robotics for $250M – The autonomous tractor tech startup had only raised roughly $12 million.

DoorDash Users Can Now Add C-Store Items to Their Restaurant Orders – DoubleDash is currently available for 7-Eleven, Walgreens, Wawa, QuickChek, and The Ice Cream Shop. It is also available for orders placed at DoorDash’s DashMart.

JOKR and Too Good To Go Team Up to Help Eliminate Food Waste with Mystery Boxes – The so-called “Surprise” bags each feature $15 worth of groceries for $5.

Q&A: Tools for the Data-Driven Restaurant, According to Sevenrooms Founder Allison Page – Before her appearance at our upcoming Restaurant Tech Summit, Page gave us some high-level thoughts around the future of the data-driven restaurant. Grab a ticket to the show here.

Q&A: Copper Branch CEO Trish Discusses the Intersection of Technology and the Plant-based Food Movement

By some accounts, the QSR is headed towards a future where more of its menu is derived from plant-based alternatives to meat and dairy. Canada-based chain Copper Branch is one such chain leading that shift. 

The company’s franchise locations span Canada and are now making their way into the U.S. and other parts of the world. But bringing more plant-based food to QSRs is only part of the Copper Branch mission. Earlier this year, company CEO Trish Paterson talked about the company’s “triangular focus” when it comes to sustainability. The goal is to strike a balance between human health, animal welfare, and planetary health when it comes to food, packaging, operations, and everything else it takes to run a restaurant. 

Trish will join The Spoon at our upcoming Restaurant Tech Summit on August 17, where she and other panelists will discuss the current state of the restaurant industry and where it’s headed. As a teaser, we recently got some high-level thoughts from her around the future of the data-driven restaurant. Full Q&A is below. And if you haven’t already, grab a ticket to the virtual show here.

This Q&A has been lightly edited for clarity.

The Spoon: What problem does Copper Branch solve for restaurants/the restaurant industry?

Copper Branch: Our restaurant brand provides a 100% plant-based option to our guests in a fast casual format including takeout and delivery. We are also an incubator for new food innovators to launch their products in food service.

What is the biggest change in terms of the restaurant industry’s approach towards technology as a result of the pandemic?

Much more emphasis on third-party delivery apps and proprietary mobile app for geolocation and customer loyalty, and revamping of loyalty programs.

Can tech play a role in moving more people over to plant-based foods and a plant-based diet? If so, how?

By tracking and rewarding sustainability as part of loyalty program. Copper Branch is considering creating a leaderboard across the chain that will reward customers using algorithms to track sustainable metrics.

What is the biggest challenge for restaurants right now when it comes to digitization? 

Cost and maintenance of systems and technology.

What are you most excited about when it comes to the impact of restaurant technology?

Better data and rewarding guests for eco-friendly initiatives.

What do you think the restaurant industry will look like in five years?

There will be a surge in closings once the subsidies end — restauranteurs are focused on considering drive through and mobile pick up spaces for guests. There will be a stronger focus on touch-free technology (menus etc.). Due to labour shortages, there will be more focus on technology (robotics) for back of house and front of house, including self-serve kiosks, order from QR code at the table, etc.

Javits Center Opens Up Cashierless Cafe Powered by Amazon Tech

There’s a new cashierless checkout cafe opening at the Javits Center convention center in New York this weekend, and it’s going to be powered by Amazon’s Just Walk out technology.

According to press materials sent to The Spoon, the new Fresh and Fast cafe lets users swipe their credit card to gain entry, upon which they can grab the pre-packaged items they want and leave. There’s no need to checkout and the bill is automatically charged to their card.

More important than the actual opening of the cashierless store is the fact that Amazon is powering it. Amazon kicked off the whole cashierless store movement with the launch of its Amazon Go stores back in 2018. Since then, a number of startups such as Grabango, Trigo, Zippin and AiFi have sprung up to offer their own cashierless checkout services. This year in particular has seen a lot of activity in the cashierless checkout space with funding pouring in from investors and new cashierless stores opening.

But as all these companies duke it out with each other to win contracts to retrofit retailers’ stores, the looming threat in the background is Amazon licensing out its own cashierless solution. The opening of Fresh and Fast at Javits follows Hudson News opening up an Amazon-powered cashierless store at the Dallas Love Field Airport in March of this year. Much like IBM was to the business PC back in the 80s, could Amazon do the same with its cashierless checkout tech today? Will “you don’t get fired for buying IBM,” become “you don’t get fired for licensing Amazon’s cashierless checkout?”

The analogy is a little different because with its massive online business, Amazon takes revenue away from brick-and-mortar retailers. So real world store brands may not want to give Amazon more money by licensing its technology. But at the same time, Amazon’s technology has proven itself in public longer than its competitors. The sheer size and staying power of Amazon could actually be an incentive for retailers to pick Amazon’s cashierless checkout technology over younger startups. Retailers know Amazon’s technology works and that the company isn’t going to disappear overnight.

For those in NYC that want to check out Fresh and Fast, it’s located on the north concourse of the Javits Center.

DoorDash Users Can Now Add C-Store Items to Their Restaurant Orders

DoorDash this week launched a new feature, DoubleDash, that lets users bundle items from different businesses like convenience stores together into a single transaction. DoorDash customers can add c-store items to their original restaurant order and checkout with a single transaction and no extra delivery fees, according to a company blog post.

DoubleDash is currently available for 7-Eleven, Walgreens, Wawa, QuickChek, and The Ice Cream Shop. It is also available for orders placed at DoorDash’s DashMart convenience store operation.

Customers placing a restaurant order can look for the DoubleDash option to add items from these stores. Available stores are indicated on the app inside the DoorDash app. Theoretically, orders from these different stores and restaurants are supposed to arrive at the same time, though a line at the bottom of today’s blog post notes that “deliveries may arrive separately.”

In certain cities, DoorDash is also offering DoubleDash for local restaurants. In these markets, users can add “complimentary items” from other restaurants to their existing order. 

All of this is further evidence that DoorDash is very serious about becoming a go-to service for more than just restaurant food. Besides launching DashMart last year, the San Francisco-based company has also launched a grocery delivery service and has existing deals in place with some c-stores. As of this week, DoorDash is also said to be in talks to invest in Germany-based service Gorillas, which offers speedy grocery delivery from small “dark stores” located in dense residential areas.

At the end of last month, DoorDash also opened a new location of its ghost kitchen facility. For now, that operation only delivers restaurant food.