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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

delivery

Grubhub Launches Its Own Tech Platform for Restaurant Pickup Orders

Grubhub today announced the launch of its own proprietary tech platform for pickup orders. According to a press release, the system connects the front and back of house to give diners and restaurant staff real-time views on their order status. It also integrates all ordering channels into a single ticket stream.

Dubbed Ultimate, the platform is a hardware-software combination is made up of four main components: A POS system that integrates directly into the Grubhub website and app; a customer-facing display system that shows an order status throughout its different stages; a kitchen display system; and in-store self-service kiosks.

For now, Ultimate is focused specifically on pickup orders. Once a users places an order — whether with a cashier, online, or via one of the kiosks — they can see their order status in a digital queue displayed in the app and on the digital boards in the front of house. Delivery drivers pickup up orders can also utilize the queue to better time when they pick up their customers’ orders. According to the press release, the back-of-house displays show the exact same queue.

“Most people do not want to order in person or by calling if they have an alternative, and by integrating pickup with delivery orders our restaurant partners have a complete picture to more efficiently manage their operations,” Grubhub’s CEO Matt Maloney said in a statement.

Integrating the front and back of house and streamlining the order process for customers are huge priorities right now for restaurants right now. Tech platforms like Brightloom, who recently inked a massive deal with Starbucks, have already been pushing solutions to restaurants that address faster, more accurate digital ordering. Grubhub, however, is the first delivery company to bring its own system to market instead of licensing tech from a third party.

Importantly, the press release mentions the role this technology could play in non-restaurant settings like food halls and stadiums: “Instead of standing in never-ending lines, sports fans and concert-goers can order ahead directly from their seat via Grubhub, watching their place from the in-app queue for the exact moment the order is ready.” That’s something Grubhub rival Postmates is already trying, as is a company called WaitTime, which uses cameras and AI to basically function like the Waze for concession stands. 

While there are no baseball or football stadiums on its roster yet, Ultimate is already on the market. The system is currently in pilot stage at over 100 locations across NYC and Grubhub’s hometown Chicago. 

The Halal Guys Is Aggressively Expanding Its Ghost Kitchen Strategy for Franchisees

The Halal Guys announced this week it is expanding its ghost kitchen strategy in the U.S., using the concept to make delivery more widely and cost effectively available to its franchisees, according to a press release. The fast-casual chain, which specializes in Middle Eastern dishes and ethically sourced Halal Meats, is working with franchise development company Fransmart to identify new locations in the U.S. where ghost kitchens would be successful.

With the market for online restaurant food delivery expected to reach $200 billion by 2025, restaurants large and small must now offer it to stay competitive. But opening additional full-scale brick-and-mortar locations to accommodate the uptick in orders brought on by delivery is an expensive, time-consuming process most franchisees — even those of well-known national brands — can’t afford.

Ghost kitchens, which are kitchen facilities with no dining room that restaurants typically use to fulfill off-premises orders, are one way for franchisees to include delivery services without opening new locations or overburdening staff at existing ones. “The small footprint and flexibility of cloud kitchens enables franchisees to unlock opportunities in desirable markets, while avoiding typical barriers like high rent or infrastructure costs,” Dan Rowe, CEO of Fransmart, said in a statement. 

The Halal Guys is no stranger to ghost kitchens, as it already operates one out of Kitchen United’s Pasadena, CA facility as well as its own kitchen in Long Island City, NY. It was also one of the initial four restaurants to launch ghost kitchens at DoorDash Kitchens when that facility opened in October 2029. 

The chain was also something of an early adopter of delivery and off-premises orders, launching its mobile app in 2017 and negotiating contracts with third-party services like Grubhub and DoorDash before using those services was the norm. The chain moved into Kitchen United’s Pasadena space in March of 2019 to accommodate more delivery orders and expand the number of potential customers it could reach in Southern California. It launched its own ghost kitchen on the East Coast in the same year.

Working with Fransmart, The Halal guy says it currently has 400 new locations “in the pipeline,” many of which will be delivery-only concepts fulfilled in ghost kitchens. 

P.F. Chang’s Joins the Growing Pack of Restaurants Opening To-Go Focused Locations

P.F. Changs’s China Bistro — better known as simply P.F. Chang’s — is joining other major restaurant brands in opening express locations of their full-service restaurants that focus on takeout and delivery orders. The chain plans to open the first of multiple P.F. Chang’s To Go locations in Chicago in February, according to an article from the Chicago Sun-Times.

The first location is set to open February 3, following the closure of a 20-year-old traditional P.F. Chang’s location in the same area. That closure, which happened January 14, is said to be one of the main catalysts for the chain choosing to open an express location, according to the Sun-Times.

Chris Demery, P.F. Chang’s senior vice president of off-premises dining, told the paper that customers “want their food faster and more readily available than ever before” and that “the business of eating off-site is growing at two to three times the pace of the business of eating in restaurants.”

P.F. Chang’s To Go will offer guests roughly 80 percent of the usual menu items found in traditional sit-down locations of P.F. Chang’s. Customers will be able to order delivery via both the P.F. Chang’s app as well as those of third-party services including Uber Eats, DoorDash, Postmates, and Grubhub.

P.F. Chang’s is just the latest of many brands offering slimmed down, off-premises-focused versions of their traditional sit-down restaurants. Fast-casual chain IHOP unveiled a sister chain for express orders called Flip’d in 2019. Restaurants like The Cheesecake Factory and Famous Dave’s have also launched their own quick-service concepts.

Even quick-service chains, where fast order fulfillment is a core part of the business model, are experimenting with ways to make the express concept even speedier. Shake Shack opened a NYC location with minimal seating and separate entrances for delivery and takeout orders. Starbucks is testing off-premises-focused locations in China and New York. KFC is trying to expedite the drive-thru, and those are just a few names on the steadily lengthening list. With off-premises ordering expected to drive the bulk of restaurant sales for the next decade (at least), that list is going to keep growing.

For its part, P.F. Chang’s has To Go locations planned for NYC, Washington, D.C., and Houston, in addition to more stores in Chicago.

DishDivvy Partners with DoorDash to Deliver Home-Cooked Meals

Today DishDivvy, an online marketplace for home-cooked meals, officially announced its integration with DoorDash to facilitate food deliveries. Previously, hungry folks who had purchased a meal from a home cook over DishDivvy’s platform had to go and pick up their homemade lasagna/spanikopita/pad thai themselves. Now they have the option to pay a mileage-based delivery fee to have it delivered directly to their door.

DishDivvy may have just officially announced the news, but CEO Ani Torosyan wrote to me today that the startup had been making deliveries with DoorDash since 2019. “We held off on announcing because we wanted to test the integration and really understand delivery when it comes to home kitchen operations,” she wrote. Since then she said that they have iterated on their integration, but wouldn’t reveal exact details.

The official news comes just a couple weeks after DishDivvy announced it would be expanding from its home state of California into Utah. Torosyan said that they hadn’t tested DoorDash delivery in all of Utah yet, but that as of now there is some coverage in the state. She added that third-party delivery of home-cooked food is completely legal in both California and Utah.

DoorDash’s costs for the home-cooked food are a bit pricey: $6 for delivery within a 3-mile radius. That might seem excessive when you could just zip over and pick it up for free. However, adding the delivery option allows DoorDash to reach a wider audience: those extremely strapped for time, people without access to a car, anyone who is mobility-challenged, or doesn’t want to leave the house, etc. etc.

It may seem like a relatively small step, but integrating with delivery shows that DishDivvy is serious about making the cottage food marketplace a legitimate food option available to all — not just a niche audience. Well, at least in those states that allow the sale of home-cooked food.

3 Predictions for the Ghost Kitchen in 2020

In 2019, the idea of a restaurant kitchen with no dining room that would exist solely for the purpose of fulfilling off-premises orders was an intriguing but little-known concept. Fast forward 12 months, and ghost kitchens are now a major talking point in the discussion around how to meet customer demand for delivery and takeout orders. And it’s not just restaurants getting involved. Third-party delivery services like DoorDash have opened their own ghost kitchen facilities, companies like Kitchen United, who provide kitchen infrastructure to other brands, are expanding across the globe, and even non-restaurant food brands are capitalizing on the craze.

It’s still early days for the ghost kitchen concept, and as I noted with The Spoon’s most recent market map, this is a part of the restaurant industry that will change rapidly over the next year as it becomes more commonplace among both restaurants and consumers.

Here are a few things we expect to see happen in 2020.

Ghost kitchens will become the norm for large restaurant chains. 
Last year around this time, I wrote that “where the [ghost kitchen] concept could really shine in 2019 is by taking on delivery orders for existing businesses, so the brick-and-mortar locations of those restaurants don’t have to shoulder the entire burden.”

Without a shadow of a doubt, that began to happen in 2019. In 2020, it will become the norm. Many early adopters of the ghost kitchen concept in 2019 were national or international chain restaurants with the kind of reach and influence that will compel other establishments to take similar steps. Chick-fil-A already rents space from DoorDash’s ghost kitchen facility. Starbucks has teamed up with Alibaba’s Heme supermarkets in China to run ghost kitchens out of the latter’s stores. The coffee giant is also building out its own express stores that will function largely as ghost kitchens for delivery orders. Fat Brands is using its own kitchens to double as ghost kitchens for sister brands.

All of which is to say, many brands will create many iterations of the ghost kitchen concept in 2020. As we move though the next 12 months, which types of ghost kitchens (commissary, in-house, etc.) make the most sense for which brands will become clearer. 

Restaurant brands will compete with their kitchen providers.
Both large chains and virtual restaurant concepts will quite possibly find a new competitor in 2020: the folks renting out the kitchen space they use.

Much like grocery stores display their own brand of pasta on the shelves along side CPG brands (or, for a more web-friendly parallel, Amazon has its own Amazon Basics brand), ghost kitchen providers will start to use their facilities to house their own virtual restaurant concepts that compete with those of their tenants. 

This is already happening. Travis Kalanick’s CloudKitchens startup, which operates a network of ghost kitchen facilities, provides space for brands like Sweetgreen to fulfill off-premises orders. It also houses its own virtual brands like Excuse My French Toast and B*tch Don’t Grill My Cheese. 

Not all kitchen providers will take this route. For example, Kitchen United said recently it did not want to be a restaurant itself.

But for many kitchen providers, offering their own virtual restaurants allows them to own yet-another piece of the restaurant stack and therefore more revenue and the all-important customer data. And as more and more non-restaurant food brands, from diets to celebrity chefs, try out virtual concepts, launching a virtual restaurant will (in theory, at least) get simpler for these kitchen providers to do without incurring much additional overhead. No, B*tch Don’t Grill My Cheese won’t stand a chance against a big brand like Chick-fil-A if a customer is really craving those waffle fries, but in the future, the two entities won’t be working out of the same ghost kitchen facility anyway.

Which leads us to our next point.

Third-party delivery services will open more kitchens. Big brands will follow.
Remember above when I said we’ll see an explosion of big-name restaurant brands adopting the ghost kitchen model? At some point in the future, most of them will be doing it out of kitchens run by third-party delivery services like DoorDash and Uber Eats. That’s not because providers like Kitchen United don’t offer delivery options (they do), but because the delivery companies themselves are approaching the restaurant chains.

DoorDash is a case in point. When the third-party delivery service opened the doors on its own ghost kitchen facility in Redwood City, CA this year, it had four existing restaurant chains onboard — all of whom it approached because the company had user data that said people were looking for that type of food in the California Peninsula area. Chick-fil-A soon signed a lease for exactly the same reason.

This is almost a no-brainer. Restaurants already working with delivery companies use these services for things like marketing, technical fulfillment, and last-mile logistics. Adding kitchen space to the stack seems almost a foregone conclusion.

The other thing ghost kitchens are likely to encounter at some point in 2020 is a reality check. At the moment, optimism is flowing into the sector alongside the millions in capital companies are raising. Soon enough, though, the questions will start pouring in. Who gets to own the customer data? Can ghost kitchens become sustainable or will they just pile more trash into the ocean via takeout boxes? Is the model actually profitable, and for whom? Expect these and many other questions to surface in the next year as the ghost kitchen goes mainstream. 

Chipotle Unveils a New Restaurant Design to Support Delivery, Digital Ordering

Chipotle today announced it is testing a design prototype for its stores aimed at further growing the chain’s billion-dollar digital business.

According to a Chipotle press release, the new digital-centric store design will be trialed in the following different Chipotle store formats: an urban storefront, a standalone restaurant with a Chipotlane, and an endcap restaurant with a Chipotlane. So far, the chain has stores in Chicago, IL, Cincinnati, OH, and Phoenix, AZ set to test the new design. It will also retrofit two existing stores in California.

“By better suiting our restaurants to accommodate the digital business, we’re able to finalize orders more effectively and provide a better overall experience for our guests,” Curt Garner, Chief Technology Officer, said in a statement.

The new store model will integrate longtime pieces of existing layouts, such as an open views of make-lines in the kitchen, with more recent changes the chain has made to accommodate the uptick in digital and delivery orders. That includes dedicated pickup shelves for digital orders, second make-lines meant to fulfill meals for delivery, and more Chipotlanes. 

In case you hadn’t guessed, Chipotlanes are a big part of that strategy. Unlike traditional drive-thru operations, those of Chipotle are designed specifically for digital orders. You cannot simply drive up to a menu board and order on the spot from a Chipotlane. Instead, customers order ahead via mobile and only use the window to pick up their food. Third-party delivery drivers can use this feature as well, saving themselves the trouble of having to walk into the store and locate their order. 

On Chipotle’s Q3 earnings call this past October, CEO Brian Niccol said the chain expects a total of 60 Chipotlanes by the end of 2019, though some of these new openings may shift into Q1 of 2020. Additionally, of the 150 to 165 new restaurants Chipotle plans to open in 2020, about half will include a Chipotlane. 

Whether by drive-thru, pickup shelves, or some other method, restaurant chains giving their stores makeovers for the digital-ordering era is a major strategy right now. Just yesterday, we wrote that Shake Shack is opening a new NYC location that will emphasize digital ordering and delivery. Starbucks, Krispy Kreme, and a boatload of others have already made similar moves.

As to how widespread Chipotle’s new design prototype will expand, the chain said in the press release it will asses the performance of each of the four new locations before deciding when and where to roll the concepts out nationally. 

McDonald’s Partners With Adyen to Launch Mobile Payments Tech Worldwide

McDonald’s has struck a deal with international payments platform Adyen NV, which will receive and process payments made in the chain’s mobile app, according to a press release from Adyen.

The agreement will make Adyen’s payment platform available to McDonald’s locations starting in the U.K. in early 2020, with plans to expand internationally in the future.

Adyen’s claim to fame is that its system makes running and implementing mobile payments easy for businesses. Using what Adyen calls its “unified commerce experience,” businesses can more easily accept any type of digital payment across sales channels (e.g., mobile app, kiosk, etc.), add new ones, and create a consistent order and pay experience for customers across regions. In other words, ordering via the McDonald’s mobile app in China would look, feel, and function much the same as in the U.K., with the system automatically adjusting features like language, currency, and country-specific payment methods. 

Adyen counts a number of high-profile clients on its roster, including Spotify, Uber, and Bonobos. In the food world, the company’s portfolio of restaurant companies is growing, too, with Domino’s, Dunkin’, and Deliveroo all using the Adyen system. 

The benefit for McDonald’s here is scale. Because Adyen’s technology makes it easy to add payment methods and onboard franchisees, McDonald’s can, in theory at least, more quickly roll out a consistent order and pay experience across the globe. That frictionless experience for customers will be important for McDonald’s, who expects delivery to drive $4 billion of global system-wide sales in the future. Already, the chain has invested in plenty of technologies to help meet this demand. In March, the chain acquired AI company Dynamic Yield to improve menu personalization. More recently, in September of 2019, McDonald’s acquired voice-tech startup Apprente. Former CEO Steve Easterbrook — who many saw as the driving force behind all this tech — departed from the company in November, but that hasn’t slowed down any of McDonald’s tech ambitions.

Meanwhile, Adyen’s Chief Operating Officer Kamran Zaki hopes to eventually expand the new partnership to more than just mobile payments. Adyen currently offers a number of other payment platforms, including in-store kiosks, and mobile POS systems.

Shake Shack’s Newest NYC Location Will Focus on Takeout, Delivery Orders

Shake Shack is set to open a new location in Midtown Manhattan, one that will focus specifically on delivery and takeout orders, according to Restaurant Dive.

The new location will have two separate entrances, one for delivery and takeout orders, including those made via the Shake Shack mobile app, and one that traditional dine-in customers can use. The latter will have very limited seating options, though there will be an outdoor patio. The store will also feature self-service kiosks, which Shake Shack has been testing for some time, with varying degrees of success.

The news makes the NYC-based burger chain the latest QSR to jump onboard the trend of opening stores either dedicated to or heavily focused on to go orders. Trend might be an understatement, though. The National Restaurant Association predicts that off-premises orders will drive the bulk of restaurant sales over the next 10 years. QSRs in particular — are responding to the demand by increasing delivery services (either their own or with a third party), building out digital order strategies, and in some cases, Shake Shack included, literally redesigning store layouts.

Locations dedicated to off-premises orders is another tactic becoming commonplace. In 2019, Starbucks opened its first express location in Beijing, China, and followed up that move with plans to launch a similar shop in NYC next year. Last week, IHOP announced a new standalone restaurant chain called Flip’d that will cater to delivery and takeout orders. The list goes on: Krispy Kreme, Sweetgreen, KFC, Chopt . . .

Spoiler alert: the rise in popularity of ghost kitchens is only going to increase the number of to-go-focused locations restaurant chains open. Some of these locations will become ghost kitchens themselves, fulfilling delivery and takeout orders for not just that location but all of a brand’s surrounding stores. This is how Starbucks’s express store in Beijing currently functions, with to-go orders from surrounding Starbucks cafes funneled to the express store, speeding up fulfillment times and allowing traditional locations to focus on in-store customers.  

Shake Shack plans to open a few of these to-go focused locations in the future.

Newsletter: What Comes Next for Ghost Kitchens? Plus, Third-party Delivery and At-home Agtech

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I’m not gonna lie: putting together our market map on ghost kitchens was hard. The concept as we know it is relatively new, and the lines between the different categories of ghost kitchen might be easy enough to draw in a graphic but are never as solid in real life. For example, CloudKitchens provides kitchen space but it’s also a network of virtual restaurants. Starbucks runs its own kitchens but relies on Alibaba’s Heme supermarkets to provide the space. Grubhub, Uber Eats, and DoorDash deliver food but also operate in other areas of the stack.

That overlap, though, is a big part of what makes this area of the restaurant industry such an interesting one to watch. Not only is the 2019 ghost kitchen redefining the restaurant experience as we know it, it’s also redefining the way restaurants operate, the technology they use to do that, and even what their menus offer in any given area. Fat Brands, for example, uses Fatburger locations on the West Coast to also fulfill delivery-only orders for sister brands that would normally only be available to customers in the East. 

As we head into the next year, we can expect the overlap of companies and categories to increase as more multi-unit chains try their hand at ghost kitchens, more kitchen infrastructure providers try out their own virtual restaurants, and literal mobility (kitchens on wheels) becomes more commonplace. 

Head over to The Spoon for more predictions on what comes next for ghost kitchens (RIP POS?) and to download the map. And since this is such a nascent market that changes weekly, expect more iterations of this map to hit your inbox in the future.

Third-party delivery is staying put. Sort of.
It’s no secret that consumer appetite for delivery is driving the growth of off-premises orders. And while they may be controversial, third-party services like DoorDash and Postmates are a big part of this growth.

The biggest part, by some accounts. This week, CBRE Group noted in a new report that 70 percent of delivery orders will come from third parties by 2022. That’s a no-brainer. These services provide the tech infrastructure, logistics, and actual drivers that are often too expensive for restaurants to operate on their own. Third-party delivery may be expensive for restaurants and paddling through a sea of bad press lately, but it is in many ways necessary for businesses who want (need, actually) to offer off-premises ordering for customers. 

Like ghost kitchens, this is a messy, fast-changing market whose model will continue to evolve as restaurants adopt hybrid strategies and new laws are passed regulating how these companies do business.  

At-home vertical farms: Big convenience or big expense?
If you still prefer the old-fashioned method of actually cooking food for yourself, Miele’s latest news will be of some interest. As my colleague Chris Albrecht reported this week, the German appliance-maker known for everything from washing machines to coffee systems has acquired Agrilution, a Munich, Germany-based agtech startup known for its Plantcube indoor vertical farm. 

As Chris notes, the Plantcube looks like one of those at-home wine fridges, and like any vertical farm uses software to regulate temperature, climate, water levels, and nutrient delivery to crops. The system grows a variety of leafy greens and fits right inside your existing kitchen infrastructure. 

Question is, Do people want vertical farms built into their kitchens?

Potentially.

No, setting up a grow system in your home is not as convenient as buying a bag of kale from the store. For those so inclined, though, an at-home vertical farm like Agrilution’s means being able to pick fresh, better tasting ones right out of their own cabinetry. Those living in dense urban areas, where the fire escape is the closest thing to outdoor space, could have an actual at-home garden.

First, though, we have to get over the cost hurdle. Right now, price points of various at-home vertical farming systems go for anywhere between roughly $500 (Ponix Systems) and $3,000-plus (Miele). What we don’t have is abundant data on how much these farms cost consumers in terms of electricity, water, or repairs if the system breaks down. There is also the issue of space. Agrilution’s Plantcube may fit nicely into the under-counter space of a single-family home in Nashville. Your average New York apartment, on the other hand, would be hard-pressed to accommodate one.

Still, it’s a great sign that a major appliance-maker like Miele is showing interest in getting cabinet-to-table greens to more homes in the future.

Until next time,

Jenn

IHOP Plans to Launch Flip’d, a Fast-Casual Concept Focused on To-Go, Delivery Orders

Casual dining chain IHOP will venture into fast-casual territory in 2020 with a new concept called Flip’d. The new standalone chain will focus heavily on to-go, delivery, and technology, according to a press release from IHOP.   

Like IHOP locations, Flip’d will serve three meals a day but keep a particular emphasis on breakfast. “The Flip’d by IHOP menu will borrow inspiration from iconic IHOP favorites – including the brand’s world-famous Buttermilk pancakes – but put a unique twist on flavors and portability in a way that only IHOP can,” the press release said. What that shakes out to in real life remains to be seen, but it will include a build-your-own pancake bar, made-to-order breakfast burritos and bowls, and grab-and-go salads and baked goods, among other items. 

Even more important than what’s on the menu is how you can order and retrieve those items. Customers will have the option to order either from a cashier at the counter or at a self-service kiosk. They can also order and pay online, then either pick the food up in a designated to-go area of the restaurant or have it delivered. It’s unclear yet if Flip’d will share IHOP’s exact same delivery strategy. Currently, IHOP customers can order delivery through the IHOP mobile app or website. The restaurant also works with DoorDash, Grubhub, Postmates, Uber Eats, and Uber Eats. Catering via ezCater is also available. 

The first Flip’d location is planned for Spring 2020 in Atlanta, with stores in NYC, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and Denver in the works.  

IHOP is just the latest restaurant brand to launch a fast-casual spinoff of its main business, following the likes of Famous Dave’s, which launched Clark Crew BBQ this year, and The Cheesecake Factory, which opened an Asian fast-casual concept earlier in 2019. In 2018, Buffalo Wild Wings started testing B-Dubs Express, which includes a sauce wall and self-service beer stations.

All of which to say, restaurants diversifying into concepts that emphasize speed, self-service, and off-premises orders is becoming an ever-more popular strategy. No one would call it off-premises-focused concepts table stakes yet, but with the continued demand for delivery and to-go orders, and the foregone conclusion that ghost kitchens will rule 2020, fast-casual concept brands from old-school restaurant chains is something we’ll see more of next year. 

Domino’s Expands GPS Tracking Tech Across U.S. Stores

Domino’s announced this week it will expand its GPS tracking technology to roughly a quarter of its U.S. stores by the end of 2019. The chain has been piloting this technology, dubbed Domino’s Tracker, in select locations throughout this year. According to a press release, Domino’s expects “a significant portion of stores” to use it in 2020.

For customers, the Domino’s Tracker offers a more precise time estimate of when their pie will arrive. After placing an order via the Domino’s app, they will be able to access an interactive map of their order and receive an estimated delivery time. Users can opt in to receive text message updates letting them know when their order is on the way, when it is two minutes away, and when it has arrived. 

Store managers, meanwhile, can view where drivers (Domino’s refers to them as “delivery experts”) are on the road. The idea is that by having more exact visibility into drivers’ locations, managers can better manage operational elements of the delivery process, such as route optimization and driver safety. 

GPS tracking technology isn’t new to the delivery world, and in fact, part of Domino’s motivation behind enhancing its own is to compete with third-party food delivery services like DoorDash and Uber Eats, who already have such capabilities in place. The move is one of many strategies Domino’s has in place to fight back against third-party delivery dominance.

That’s no small order in a restaurant industry where 70 percent of all delivery orders are expected to come from third-party delivery services by 2022.  Hence initiatives like the Domino’s Innovation Garage, a testing ground for new tech that opened in August, an e-bike program to speed up delivery in dense urban areas where cars are inefficient, and partnerships with location-tech companies to pinpoint hard-to-find street addresses. 

Earlier this year, Domino’s CEO Richard E. Allison noted that his company faces “headwinds related to aggressive activity from third-party delivery aggregators” and that he did not expect to see this change any time soon. He added the company will continue to invest in technology for the foreseeable future.

Domino’s GPS tracking technology is currently operating at stores in Phoenix, Houston, Salt Lake City, Miami, Las Vegas, Baltimore and Norfolk, Virginia.

Yumi Raises $8M for Weekly Baby Food Delivery Service

Today Yumi, the organic food delivery service for babies and kids, announced it has raised an $8 million strategic round from the founders and CEOs of Warby Parker, Sweetgreen, Uber, and more. This brings the L.A.-based startup’s total funding to $12.1 million.

Founded in 2017, Yumi delivers weekly subscription-based shipments of baby food tailored to meet each child’s specific growth stage and any special dietary needs. The company works with doctors, nutritionists and chefs to develop each of their 70 blended and solid baby foods. Additionally, Yumi sends parents educational info and tips tailored to each kid’s age and developmental stage, as well as previous food orders via the service. Customers can choose subscription plans for one, two or three meals a day, which shakes out to around $5 per meal. Meals are shipped nationwide every week and shipping is free.

Yumi will use its new capital to expand nationally and further develop its proprietary personalized meal planning software.

The average baby food found on supermarket shelves is unappetizing, shelf-stable mush, so it’s no surprise that Yumi is trying to shake up the space with fresh ingredients and D2C delivery. But they’re not alone. Little Spoon and Nurture Life also deliver personalized pre-made baby food. On the more DIY side, Raised Real and Thistle Baby deliver pre-prepped ingredients meant to be steamed and blended at home (though the latter is not currently accepting new customers).

I’m guessing that Yumi is hoping that its data-driven meal customization, as well as its supplementary educational content, is enough to help it stand (er, crawl) out from the crowd. Perhaps its new $8 million in funding will help them do so.