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BringMe

December 27, 2016

The Year in Food Delivery

Despite a distinct cooling off of investment in the food delivery space this year, some big names like Uber, Google, and David Chang threw their hats in the ring.

That’s because the online food delivery market is estimated around $210 billion, with companies like FreshDirect raising $189 million in the past 12 months. It’s become such a pervasive part of our way of life that Google even added a food-delivery shortcut to Maps. And there are plenty of food-delivery crowdfunding projects to go around.

But enough with the numbers. Here are the highlights in this space over the past 12 months.

More Big Players Joined the Party

This year everyone wanted a piece of the pie. Google started to ship fresh food to customers in California through Google Express. Instacart and the Food Network launched a meal-kit delivery service, and Square acquired startup Maine Line Delivery in Philadelphia to boost Caviar. Meanwhile Facebook and Foursquare made it easier to order food from within their apps through Delivery.com.

NYC darling chef David Chang decided to blow up the entire idea of a nice restaurant by launching Ando, a restaurant that only does deliveries, and he raised the bar on delivery food everywhere by launching Maple, his own delivery service that promises a daily delicious menu.

Plus, where would the year be without a few gimmicks? Taco Bell and Whole Foods both came up with ChatBots that help you order food or suggest recipes, respectively, solely through the power of emojis. And Domino’s will now let you order pizza with one tap on your Apple Watch.

The Year of UberEats

So far I haven’t mentioned the biggest player, though: Uber. The company has had quite the year in food delivery. It shut down Instant Delivery in New York City, then launched UberEats in both the U.S. and London. Next UberEats drivers staged protests over the way the pay structure has been changed, and in November a courier filed a lawsuit against the company for missing food delivery tips. Yikes.

All of this commotion from big names and turmoil within UberEats suggest that the food delivery space is still young enough that no one has solved some of the primary problems within it. Companies are grabbing on to any stronghold they see (emojis! self-driving trucks! drones! more drones!), without regard to the longevity of the solution. Uber has faced the brunt of this fast-paced growth, but we expect to see more struggles in the coming years for other players as well.

Eat Local

This year the quest to eat healthily expanded even more into food delivery. Whole Foods hinted at a “meal solution spectrum” with some sort of delivery component in the future. Good Eggs, which many thought was defunct by this point, rose from the ashes with a $15 million round of funding to help it deliver local, quality food.

And Amazon, never one to be shown up, expanded its Amazon Fresh program to Boston, among other major cities. The difference here is that Boston customers can shop from local markets, a feature that we imagine will be implemented elsewhere if it’s successful in Beantown.

You Say Potato, I Say Share Economy

In such a young and moneyed space, different business models are flying around faster than those drones I mentioned earlier.

Some want to deliver fresh ingredients to customers to help simplify cooking at home. Juicero, for example, delivers prepackaged ingredients for green juice, made in its blender that doesn’t even require cleaning. Similarly, Raised Real wants to deliver ingredients for homemade baby food, thereby making it that much easier to make your baby’s food from scratch (sounds ambitious to me).

Speaking of raising babies and tapping new markets, Drizly raised $15 million for its liquor delivery service, among other parts of its ecommerce model. And DoorDash added alcohol to its food delivery options in California (what about the rest of us?!).

Meanwhile Foodhini calls itself a “for profit social enterprise” and delivers ethnic food made by immigrant chefs: Foodhini and the chefs each receive $2.50 from each meal, after costs.

And BringMe wants to out-Uber Uber by combining delivery with the share economy in Fairfax, VA, enlisting regular folks to deliver food as “bringers.” There are already a few models out there like this, such as Favor in Texas and Tennessee, and we expect to see more too.

Of course, while all of these business models are innovative and interesting, none of them beat the ultimate and original delivery food: pizza.

October 24, 2016

BringMe Combines Food Delivery And The Sharing Economy

Food delivery is a hot sector right now – from meal kits to grocery delivery and everything in between, the market still garners the most investment dollars in food tech despite a dip in 2016 from the previous year. But the convenience and ubiquity of food delivery have a long way to go. In most areas, outside of large cities, grocery delivery is monopolized by one or two major grocers, limited choices and options for consumers and third-party delivery apps don’t work with just anyone. The problem is mostly scale – startups and major companies start in larger markets to prove their concept and grow and then they’re able to spread.

But one startup may have a more grassroots, sharing economy-minded solution to the food delivery model. BringMe was founded by a group of students in Fairfax, VA who wanted to pair people’s wants and needs with other people’s desire to make quick and easy money. If you’re someone who wants something delivered, you place a request in the app for the thing you need. It might be your order at the Thai restaurant a few miles away or items from the grocery store. You pay for the items via the app and you list what you’re willing to tip.

Anyone who’s interested in becoming a deliverer can respond to your request, and upon delivery, get paid via the app. Sound familiar? It’s a version of the Uber model – give people an easy platform on which to connect, and let them negotiate the details. There is even less oversight with BringMe, who doesn’t seem to set minimum tipping although it does make suggestions. And if you want to be a “Bringer” as the company calls them, you do have to fill out an application which requires you have a smartphone, some mode of transportation and a “clean record.” And although it seems like the model Uber Foods is working towards, in some ways removing the regulatory and political challenges Uber faces in the transportation sector, BringMe has some advantages.

Right now, the model is secluded to the Fairfax area, where the students reside, but it has the potential to expand giving the grassroots nature of the infrastructure. And the delivery isn’t limited to food – though it’s possibly the largest use case – and BringMe says the only things it *won’t* deliver are illegal or restricted items like drugs, alcohol and prescriptions. You could imagine a strong use case for adoption across college campuses and in suburban areas where public transit is weak and the need for more convenience are high. The company says it has Bringers on hand to deliver 24/7, providing that the place you’re ordering from is also open during those hours.

Ben & Jerry’s delivery at 1 am from the local convenience store anyone?

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