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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

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With Delivery and Drive-Thru, Chipotle Is Aiming to Make Digital a $1 Billion Business

Chipotle’s is “knocking on the door of digital becoming $1 billion business,” CEO Brian Niccol said on a the company’s Q3 2019 earnings call today.

Digital sales for the fast-casual chain grew 88 percent year-over-year during the quarter, to $257 million, representing 18.3% of sales for the quarter, he said.

As expected, Niccol noted that delivery remains a major driver for digital growth for the company. Since 2018, Chipotle has had a partnership with DoorDash that includes integrated delivery — where orders made on the DoorDash platform go directly to Chipotle’s in-house POS system — to speed up service. The company was also one of the early adopters of the increasingly popular hybrid delivery strategy, where restaurants can use a combination of in-house and third-party functionality to built out a delivery operation that best suits their individual businesses.

Delivery may have been front and center for Chipotle this past quarter, but the company’s efforts around the drive-thru are also becoming a major part of its digital strategy. Once known as a chain that rejected the idea of the drive-thru, Chipotle has since begun adding these so-called “Chipotlanes,” which are drive-thru lanes dedicated to mobile orders. On the earnings call today, Chipotle CFO Jack Hartung said that “based on the early success of Chipotlanes, we shifted our real estate strategy to seek more sites that can accommodate a Chipotlane.” Chipotle currently has more than 80 restaurants under construction, he said, and about half of those will have a Chipotlane, bringing the company’s total of them to 60 by the end of 2019.

Drive-thru lanes across the QSR industry have gotten slower over the last decade as menus get more complicated and restaurants struggle to keep up with changing consumer expectations around technology and digital capabilities. Adding more dedicated lanes for mobile orders will help, but the real technology to keep an eye on in the drive-thru will be AI. On that front, Chipotle isn’t completely silent. The company has been “quietly” introducing AI into stores over the last several months in the form of AI-powered voice assistants for phone orders. If Chipotle wants to realize its ambitions of digital becoming a billion-dollar business, it will need to double-down on these efforts and others in the AI realm in the coming months.

Uber Eats Makes Pickup Feature Available Nationwide, Launches Food Guides

Today, Uber Eats announced that the Pickup feature on its on-demand restaurant food app is now available to customers nationwide. According to an article this morning in USA Today, the company has been testing the feature in San Diego, Phoenix, and Austin and has now made it available to all customers in the U.S.

Pickup is just as it sounds: Uber Eats customers order their food through the app as usual. Then, instead of paying a delivery fee and waiting for someone to drop the food at their door, they go to the restaurant and collect it themselves.

While hardly a new concept, having a pickup option for food seems a necessary step when it comes to appealing to certain parts of the population, particularly in dense urban areas where the restaurant of choice might be on the next block and the $5 delivery fee is not justifiable on such an order. Other major on-demand food competitors — Grubhub, DoorDash, and Postmates — already offer the pickup option to customers. Why Uber Eats has waited so long to unveil its own version of pickup remains a mystery, but with both off-premises orders and competition among third-party aggregators increasing, the service needs every tool it can possibly utilize to entice more diners.

Speaking of which: Simultaneous to the nationwide rollout of Pickup, Eats also launched its Uber Eats Pickup Guides Powered by JUMP. The guides, run by Uber’s JUMP electric bike and scooter program, trace the most efficient route between different local restaurants that offer Uber Eats. While definitely more of a gimmick than anything else, it’s at least a nicely designed one. If you’re visiting a city, it’s also a convenient way to scoot around exploring the different food options — all, of course, while staying well contained inside the Uber Ecosystem.

The Pickup Guides are available for Austin, Washington, DC, Denver, Los Angeles, Miami, and Sacramento.

These new features come on the heels of news that Uber is laying off 1 percent of its workforce, including some Uber Eats staff. The company continues to struggle with financial losses, and Eats, in particular, isn’t likely to become a profitable business for some time. Alas, a pickup feature and a handy city guide aren’t likely to change those facts.

Wendy’s Ramps Up Its Digital Order and Delivery Strategy

Wendy’s is intensifying its efforts around digital order and delivery, announcing at an Investor Day call last Friday that it is aiming to make digital sales 10 percent of all orders by 2024. Right now, digital sales account for 2 percent of orders.

Earlier this year, the Dublin, OH-based chain said it was investing an incremental $25 million into building “a stronger foundation” across its digital platforms. So far, that move to play catch up to its competitors appears to be paying off. At Investor Day this past Friday, Wendy’s Chief Digital Experience Officer Laura Titas noted in a presentation that check sizes are now 20 percent larger with mobile orders. For delivery specifically, the chain now sees check sizes 50 to 60 percent larger.

Titas’ presentation also suggested delivery will be key towards helping Wendy’s reach its 2024 goal for digital sales. To that end, she outlined multiple initiatives around improving the delivery experience.

For starters, it’s adding more delivery services. Wendy’s has partnered with DoorDash since 2017. Next year, the chain will expand its reach with third-party delivery to include Uber Eats and Grubhub, too.

And as is the case with many chain restaurants, QSR or otherwise, Wendy’s isn’t focusing its delivery strategy solely on those third-party partnerships. Instead, it will also launch what Titas called “in-app delivery,” where, thanks to a POS integration, Wendy’s can also process orders directly through its own app. While she didn’t give too many details, Titas said she expects this direct integration to knock three to five minutes off the delivery process. Meanwhile, the arrangement will also allow Wendy’s to track customer data more precisely.

Geolocation capabilities, to improve delivery and help ensure that customers are ordering from the right (i.e., the closest) Wendy’s, voice-order via Google Assistant, and a long-needed loyalty program were all announced at the Investor Day event as well.

Wendy’s certainly has its work cut out when it comes to evolving into a tech-forward restaurant company. Between Burger King’s many publicity stunts to drive mobile orders and McDonald’s turning itself into a tech company, competition is only growing fiercer when it comes to retaining customer loyalty. But with 60 percent of all restaurant orders now off-premises, there’s also a lot of room for growth and new audiences to grasp for those who can make their reach wide enough.

DoorDash Launches Its First Ghost Kitchen Facility for To-Go Restaurant Concepts

With more and more restaurants, food entrepreneurs, and delivery services using ghost kitchens, it seemed only a matter of time before DoorDash built one of its own. So it’s not too surprising that today, the San Francisco-based company announced the launch of its first ever shared commissary kitchen, dubbed DoorDash Kitchens, which will house multiple to-go restaurant concepts under a single roof, according to an email sent to The Spoon.

DoorDash customers can now order from a handful of chain restaurants and either pick up food right at the commissary or have it delivered. This first location of DoorDash Kitchens, located in Redwood City, CA, will serve several cities in the California Peninsula area, including Menlo Park, Palo Alto, and Woodside, among others.

DoorDash has partnered with four restaurant chains for this first run of DoorDash Kitchens: Nation’s Giant Hamburgers, Rooster & Rice, Humphry Slocombe, and The Halal Guys.

The biggest benefit for those merchants, as well as any others that might come onboard in the future is geographic reach. “Over time we’ve heard that our partners have been looking for new ways to grow their business,” Fuad Hannon, Head of New Business Verticals for DoorDash, said to me over the phone. “Launching new geographies is one of the most clear ways that we can help.”

It’s also a cheaper option for a restaurant than building a new location from the ground up, or even retrofitting an existing building. “For merchants, it means reaching new audiences without bearing the high costs of building out more brick-and-mortar locations,” Hannon said of the Kitchens concept.

So, for example, Nation’s Giant Hamburgers has no brick-and-mortar locations currently in Palo Alto. However, operating out of a commissary kitchen nearby allows the chain to reach customers in that area without incurring costs around building infrastructure, permits and licenses, or maintaining a dining room setup. Hannon said DoorDash provides the restaurants with kitchen space and proper equipment, and also handles things like permitting and last-mile logistics for the businesses. “It’s really quite turnkey for our partners,” he said.

A little less clear is how many of these kitchens DoorDash plans to build around the U.S. in future. Hannon wouldn’t say if more locations are already planned. But according to recent numbers, 60 percent of all restaurant orders are now off-premises, and ghost kitchens help restaurants fulfill much of this demand. Just look at Kitchen United’s growing empire, the amount of work Starbucks is putting into the concept, and even efforts from DoorDash competitors like Uber Eats and Grubhub.

All of which is to say that ghost kitchens are starting to become table stakes for restaurants, and it would be more surprising if we didn’t see additional locations from DoorDash in future.

Week in Restaurant Tech: Burger King’s Silent Drive-thru, Customers Fear Data Breaches

Another year another Smart Kitchen Summit, which happened this week and included much discourse on the connected kitchen, food as medicine, and, of course, how tech is changing the restaurant world. And while the event is over, there’s still plenty of news from the week to catch up on. Here are a few more tidbits of what went on in restaurants:

Burger King Launches Silent Drive-Thru

Burger King is up to its PR stunts again, this time capitalizing on the stereotype that people in Finland hate small talk. The resulting Silent Drive-thru option is exactly as it sounds: You order via the BK mobile app, select the “Silent Drive-thru” option, then wait in a dedicated parking space until an employee drops your food off with nary a “hello” exchanged. While Burger King has admitted the promotion — originally meant to boost mobile app orders — is “a bit of an exaggeration,” it has also doubled sales via the app and sped up orders by 7 to 8 minutes, according to Adweek. No word on whether you still have to make eye contact with the person dropping off your Whopper.

Image via Qu.

POS Company Qu Launches New Platform

Maryland-based POS company Qu introduced a bundle of new features this week as part of a new “data-centric platform” meant to improve the POS experience for restaurants. Among the new offerings are the ability to directly integrate orders from third-party sources directly into the POS system, a unified menu management system, and greater ability to add dynamic pricing options to items. The idea behind these new features is to end some of the fragmentation that’s entered the restaurant industry of late thanks to new sales channels and multiple versions of menus floating around.

Image via Unsplash.

Over Half of QSR Customers Worry About Data Breaches

Digital security company Sift released new research this week that suggests data breaches are a major concern for QSR diners. Over half — 62 percent — of survey respondents said they are concerned their digital interactions with QSRs will lead to fraud like stolen payment information, hijacked accounts, and fake reviews. Meanwhile, 49 percent said they would hold the restaurant responsible for any fraudulent activity. While Sift’s report is obviously a little biased in urging companies to prioritize security of their digital properties, there’s nonetheless plenty of truth to the idea. Just ask DoorDash.

DoorDash Now Holds 35 Percent of Consumer Spend in Third-Party Delivery

DoorDash’s growth continues outpacing its competitors in the third-party delivery space, according to a new report. This week Edison Trends released data on the third-party delivery market that shows DoorDash leads the competition with 35 percent market share of consumer spend, followed by Uber Eats (25 percent) and Grubhub (23 percent).

The lead DoorDash currently enjoys is not surprise, as it’s been a big year for the San Francisco-based service. The company now offers delivery in all 50 U.S. states and was the first to do so. Its $410 million acquisition of Caviar in August gave the service an even wider reach, and over the last 12 months DoorDash has been scoring deals a plenty with major restaurant chains as well as expanding service to other continents.

Right now, DoorDash’s lead is a small one, though. As Edison points out, the company shared “approximately the same market share of consumer spend” with Grubhub and Uber Eats at the beginning of 2019, so a small lead now doesn’t necessarily mean total dominance for the foreseeable future. All of these companies are still looking for ways to boost user loyalty to their specific platforms, not to mention reach some level of profitability.

What’s interesting about DoorDash is that, as a service, it doesn’t tend to dabble in many initiatives outside of partnering with restaurants and acquiring companies that will help deliver food faster. By contrast, Uber Eats seems forever unrolling new features on and off its app, and Grubhub is of late fixed on launching digital-only concept restaurants. Postmates, meanwhile, appears to be turning its attention to large-scale venues like baseball stadiums.

It’s possible part of DoorDash’s lead is due to its simpler-is-better approach, which focuses primarily (though not exclusively) on expanding service and increasing restaurant choice. Whether this is the winning strategy remains anything but certain.

The Week in Restaurant Tech: It Was Mostly About McDonald’s

McDonald’s grabbed multiple headlines this week, and honestly if the chain keeps adding tech-forward initiatives at its current hell-bent pace, I’m gonna have to rename this column “The Week in McDonald’s Tech.”

As we covered earlier in the week, the company broke its longstanding silence on plant-based burgers by announcing the soon-to-launch P.L.T. (“plant,” “lettuce,” “tomato”) sandwich for menus in Canada.

But the possibly ill-named patty wasn’t the only bit of news to come out of the mega-chain’s headquarters. Lately McDonald’s seems to be taking a page from Domino’s playbook; which is to say, the chain is fast becoming as known for its tech initiatives as it is for its burgers.

Image via McDonald’s.

“Alexa, Get Me a McDonald’s Job” Is Now a Thing
This week, McDonald’s also announced it is working with Alexa to let potential new hires apply through a voice-initiated application process. Dubbed “McDonald’s Apply Thru,” the skill works on both Alexa- and Google Assistant-enabled devices. Users can simply say, “Alexa, help get me a job at McDonald’s” (or the Google equivalent of that statement) and answer a few basic questions via voice before getting sent a link to complete the application process.

It’s a neat trick . . . I guess. But you have to wonder if bolting voice capability to the front of the application procedure will actually make getting a job at McDonald’s faster and easier, or if it’s just tech for the sake of tech. Obviously it’s early days for these kinds of voice-activated initiatives. It’s not, as Restaurant Dive pointed out, a totally seamless process yet. McDonald’s will need to refine it if it wants to make the voice-enabled application process a long-term facet of its hiring process.

More Tension With McDonald’s Franchisees
But not everyone in McDonaldsland is thrilled about tech for the sake of tech, or the pace at which McDonald’s is aiming to overhaul its locations, of which there are more than 37,000 worldwide. This week, a Bloomberg article delved partly into some of the concerns and frustrations franchises face as its McBoss continues to mandate various tech initiatives.

You should read the full article, which is a fascinating look at how CEO Steve Easterbrook turned the company’s lagging sales around with tech. But franchisees are balking at the expectations around revamping their stores for this “Experience of the Future.” As Bloomberg noted, “They object to the enormous costs of the project, which, for owners of several locations, can run into tens of millions of dollars, even with McDonald’s offering to subsidize 55 percent of the capital for the remodels.”

This is not a new story. Friction between HQ and franchisees has been steadily growing for a while now. And with AI in drive-thrus and voice-recognition now part of the McDonald’s tech tool box, in all likelihood, the McSaga will get more intense in the coming months.

DoorDash Data Breach
DoorDash said in a blog post on Thursday that 4.9 million customers, merchants, and drivers had their information stolen by hackers. That includes names, email addresses, delivery addresses, passwords and, for some, the last four digits of their credit cards. DoorDash pointed out, in bold-faced type, that full payment info was not accessed and that “the information accessed is not sufficient to make fraudulent charges on your payment card.” The breach happened all the way back on May 4, 2019. DoorDash said customers, merchants and Dashers who joined after April 5, 2018 are not affected.

New Deals in Third-Party Delivery
Not that a hack enough to slow down the growth of restaurant delivery via third parties. This week, a few more chains announced deals with various delivery services. Postmates added two new partners, O’Charley’s and restaurant company Kahala Brands, who owns chains like Pinkberry and Blimpie. Meanwhile, Sweetgreen struck an exclusive deal with Uber Eats. That’s a win for the latter, who took a bit of a blow earlier this year when its exclusive contract ended with, yup, you guessed it, McDonald’s.

If you’re still reading and want to learn more about restaurant tech, join us in Seattle on Oct 7–8 for The Spoon’s annual Smart Kitchen Summit. Grab tickets here.

Outback Steakhouse Creates a Hybrid Delivery Strategy With Exclusive DoorDash Partnership

Restaurant company Bloomin’ Brands announced this week that its Outback Steakhouse brand has partnered with DoorDash for an exclusive delivery program. Not only does the deal make Outback the largest steakhouse available via the DoorDash platform, it also puts the chain on a growing list of restaurants applying a more hybrid approach to delivery, one that utilizes a combination of third-party services and in-house capabilities.

Bloomin’ has actually spent the last couple of years developing an in-house delivery program used by both Outback and another of its brands, Carrabba’s. With this program, customers place orders directly via the Outback or Carrabba’s apps and the company handles its own drivers to transport the food from the restaurant to the customer’s doorstep.

But on the company’s recent Q2 earnings call, Bloomin’ CEO Dave Deno noted that, “We recently came to terms of the national third-party delivery provider. This channel will complement our existing platform. Importantly this will help expand our reach to customers who are loyal to the third-party delivery companies.” 

It’s not a surprising conclusion for a company to draw, given that third-party delivery apps like those from DoorDash, Grubhub, and Uber Eats are expected to have upwards of 44 million users by 2020 in the U.S. alone.

The DoorDash partnership will act to complement, rather than replace, Bloomin’s existing in-house program. It also makes Outback and Bloomin’ the latest in a series of restaurant companies adopting a hybrid approach to delivery, where incoming orders come from both the restaurant’s in-house app as well as those of third-party delivery services. Panera, one of the most well-known chains to keep delivery operations in house, announced in August it was adding multiple third-party partners to its strategy.

For Outback, the move to add third-party delivery is also in keeping with a trend highlighted in another report, Toast’s recent Restaurant Success in 2029 survey. That report noted the amount of variety today’s restaurant customers look for in terms of delivery options, and suggested large restaurant chains use a combination of both in-house functionality and third-party delivery apps.

However, the Toast report also said it was “extremely important for restaurants to be represented across multiple third-party delivery platforms.” In that sense, Outback is going against the tide in some respects by signing an exclusive deal with DoorDash. Even McDonald’s recently ended its longstanding exclusive deal with Uber Eats to add more third-party services.

This week’s press release noted that Bloomin’ chose DoorDash as its delivery partner “for the next phase of its omnichannel approach to delivery” for Outback. That could well mean the company plans to add more partners in future as it continues its navigating the phases of its delivery strategy.

Fatburger Is Turning Los Angeles Stores Into Ghost Kitchens for Its Sister Brand

Southern California QSR chain Fatburger is turning 15 of its Los Angeles locations into ghost kitchens for Hurricane Grill & Wings, one of its sister brands, according to a post this week from Nation’s Restaurant News. Both chains are owned by Los Angeles-based restaurant company FAT Brands.

Hurricane Grill & Wings has restaurant locations across Florida as well as in New York, New Jersey, and a handful of other states. A store for Chula Vista, CA is in the works, but at present, the chain has no locations in operation in the state of California. However, thanks to Fatburger’s newly launched ghost kitchens, customers in Los Angeles will be able to access the Hurricane menu when ordering for delivery.

The limited version of Hurricane’s menu will feature the chain’s wings as well as a few other items like onion rings, fries, and soft drinks. The menu will only be available for delivery customers who order via the usual suspects of third-party delivery: Grubhub, Uber Eats, Postmates, and DoorDash.

To be clear: The virtual Hurricane restaurants aren’t displacing those Fatburger locations. Rather, Fatburger’s kitchens will do double duty, with cooks trained to make food from both menus.

Like any other ghost kitchen, Hurricane’s will be a completely unseen operation. There’s no dining room involved — customers who eat in at Fatburger locations doubling as ghost kitchens will not be able to order off the Hurricane menu, which, as mentioned above, will be available solely through third-party delivery channels.

For a restaurant company trying to grow multiple brands at once, a move like FAT Brands’ is a smart play towards enticing new customers who might be fans of one restaurant chain but wouldn’t otherwise be exposed to another. Turning existing real estate into a ghost kitchen for another brand is a way to expose customers to more of those choices without incurring the high costs and thin margins of a full restaurant location that includes a dining room.

And in a restaurant business where delivery is becoming increasingly mandatory, enticing customers to try a new brand through delivery also potentially increases a business’s off-premise sales — something that would not only make investors happy during earnings calls, but could also give a brand more power negotiating commission fees with third-party delivery services.

According to NRN, FAT Brands wants to expand ghost kitchens for the Hurricane chain to 12 more Fatburger locations in the fourth quarter, and eventually apply the concept across its entire brand portfolio.

Postmates Raises $225M, Now Valued at $2.4B Ahead of IPO

Third-party delivery service Postmates has raised another $225 million in funding, TechCrunch reports. The round was led by GPI Capital and brings the service’s total amount of funding to roughly $1 billion. Postmates is now valued at $2.4 billion.

The San Francisco-based company confidentially filed for an IPO in February of this year. At last check, the company will make its IPO paperwork public this month and is expected to debut on the stock exchange at some point during the fiscal third quarter of 2019.

As TC writes:

. . . last-minute financings are critical for companies poised to run out of cash and in need of an infusion prior to hitting the public markets. The motives for Postmates last-minute financing are unclear, however, the company will certainly begin trading on the stock market at an interesting time.

Postmates would follow third-party delivery rivals Grubhub and Uber Eats into the public markets. Rival and current market leader DoorDash is also rumored to be going public.

But as we’ve written before, the long-term viability of third-party delivery is still in question. Postmates and DoorDash might be valued at massive sums right now, but as a model, third-party delivery has yet to become profitable.

It’s also an almost-constant source of controversy these days. From shady tipping policies to proposed caps on commission fees, these services have received endless headlines calling into question the ethics of the model. Meanwhile, California’s Assembly Bill 5, which was just signed into law, is a major blow to companies like Uber and DoorDash and will most likely have a ripple effect across other Democrat-led states.

Recent numbers put third-party delivery app users at 44 million users in the U.S. by 2020. When Postmates lines up next to its rivals in the public market, it will also be joining the struggle to somehow turn a profit from those millions of users.

Week in Restaurant Tech: Ordermark Expands Kiwi Deal, Blaze Takes on Big Pizza

McDonald’s grabbed the main spotlight this week for its acquisition of voice-order tech company Apprente, which it says could make your future drive-thru experience faster and simpler. But while Mickey D’s continued its evolution from burger chain to tech company, plenty of other new developments unfolded in the restaurant space this week past week.

If you want to learn more about the latest in restaurant technology, be sure to head to Seattle this October 7–8 for The Spoon’s Smart Kitchen Summit. Grab your tickets here and come on down.

Panasonic Unveils Kiosk-as-a-Service Solution
Panasonic, which has over 11,000 kiosks deployed at QSRs around the country, introduced a new hardware-software offering this week that promises a one-stop-shop solution for restaurants when it comes to integrating kiosks into daily operations. Dubbed ClearConnect, the platform rolls hardware, the company’s iQtouch software, installation, integration with existing restaurant systems, and after-sales service into a single system restaurants pay a monthly fee for. The new solution also includes a suite of drive-thru technologies. No voice-order capabilities yet, but it’s only a matter of time before we see such a feature make its way to the kiosk.

Ordermark Expands Kiwi Partnership
Ordermark, who helps restaurants organize and streamline restaurant orders, said this week it has expanded its partnership with Kiwi, whose six-wheeled bots enable autonomous delivery service on a few different college campuses right now. According to the press release, the deal gives Kiwi access to Ordermark’s portfolio of restaurant customers, which will expand as the former rolls its bots out to other locations, including Sacramento and Palo Alto.

Image via Blaze Pizza.

Blaze Wants to Take on Big Pizza With Delivery Strategy
LeBron James-backed pizza chain Blaze unveiled two new initiatives this week: larger pies and an integrated delivery partnership with DoorDash. Up to now, Blaze has been known for its 11-inch personal pies loaded with customizable toppings that don’t exactly travel well. The addition of larger, more shareable 14-inch pizzas makes Blaze’s offerings better candidates for delivery. As with a growing number of integrated delivery options, customers can place orders directly through the Blaze website or app and still get food delivered via a DoorDash driver. (Customers can also order Blaze via DoorDash or Postmates.) Blaze also says it’s taking on Big Pizza with this new delivery partnership — though it will be some time before an upstart pizza brand has the same reach as a behemoth like Domino’s.

Chowly and DoorDash Partner on Expanded POS Integration

Today, Chowly, whose technology integrates third-party delivery orders with restaurant POS systems, announced a partnership with DoorDash to bring DoorDash Drive to restaurants, allowing them to utilize third-party delivery drivers while still taking orders in house.

DoorDash Drive lets a restaurant directly request a driver from DoorDash, allowing them to accept delivery orders via their own digital properties while still taking advantage of the delivery service’s actual couriers. Most Drive orders right now are for catering; the DoorDash-Chowly partnership will make the service available to all of Chowly’s restaurant clients.

With the new integration, when a restaurant accepts a delivery order via its own website, app, or even phone call, Chowly’s system will automatically dispatch a DoorDash driver (called “Dashers”). Previously, employees had to manually re-enter an in-house delivery order into a separate tablet to call a Dasher. The Chowly integration funnels all orders into restaurant’s main POS system and removes the manual input step from the process entirely.

The partnership is also a nod to the rising importance of restaurants being able to use third-party delivery services for their drivers but still accept orders via their own digital channels. According to a recent survey, 51 percent of restaurant guests said they had placed an order via a restaurant website in the past month compared to 38 percent who ordered via a third-party service. At the same time, a growing number of companies are starting to employ this hybrid approach to delivery. Some, like Panera, are even doing the inverse, where orders originate via third-party services and are then dispatched by Panera’s own drivers.

Other technologies, such as Ordermark, which just raised a Series B round, and Checkmate, which integrates with Toast’s POS system, also work to streamline and standardize third-party delivery orders into the restaurant’s main POS system. It wouldn’t be surprising to see these companies embarking on partnerships in the near future to test out their own versions of a hybrid delivery model.