Close Ad

The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

food delivery

DoorDash Acquiring Caviar from Square for $410M

Food delivery startup DoorDash announced today that it has entered into an agreement to purchase Caviar from its parent company, Square, for $410 million dollars in a combination of cash and preferred stock.

The press release laid out the rationale for the deal, stating:

The acquisition underscores both DoorDash and Caviar’s strategic commitment to merchant selection. The addition of Caviar’s premium restaurants, with whom DoorDash will work closely to drive their growth, will enable the combined organization to cater to every food preference and occasion. Caviar’s complementary geographic footprint provides DoorDash with a significant number of new and unique customers, who will benefit from an even broader set of merchants.

Square acquired Caviar in 2014 for a reported $90 million, and reportedly tried to sell it just two years later but couldn’t find a buyer at the price the company wanted. A little more than a year ago Square acquired the assets of Zesty in a bid to bolster its corporate catering services.

But ultimately Square is in the business of transactions, not delivering the food itself, so offloading Caviar makes sense. Not having to deal with Caviar will help Square focus on the restaurant point of sale software platform that it launched last year that helped streamline orders from third-party services like DoorDash.

For its part, DoorDash has been making headlines all yearL raising a billion dollars in funding, becoming the first third-party food delivery startup to service all fifty states, and sticking by, and then ultimately caving in and changing a controversial tipping policy for its delivery drivers.

DoorDash’s deal to acquire Caviar is expected to close by the end of this year.

Report: Amazon Planning Launch of Restaurant Delivery Service in India

Amazon is aiming to launch a restaurant delivery service in India this year according to a report out yesterday in Reuters. While not confirmed yet, if true it would mark another global move in the food delivery space for Bezos’ behemoth.

Reuters writes:

The Seattle-based company is working with local partner Catamaran, founded by IT industrialist Narayana Murthy, and has begun hiring staff for the new operation, the sources said, declining to be named because the plans had yet to be made public.

The story goes on to say that Amazon wants to launch the service in time for India’s month-long festive season, which kicks off in September.

Reuters’ story came on the same day that Business Standard reported Amazon was in talks to buy Uber Eats in India. None of the parties for either deal provided a comment to Reuters.

Though we don’t have a lot to work on with these reports, the potential news caught our eye because if either/both of them do pan out, it would mark another major international investment in food delivery for Amazon.

In May, Amazon announced it was part of a $575 million investment round in U.K. based food delivery startup Deliveroo (though U.K. regulators have slowed that deal down). Amazon had shut down its restaurant delivery service in the U.K. last year, and went on to shutter its restaurant delivery here in the U.S. last month, which wasn’t surprising given how far it trailed competitors like GrubHub and DoorDash.

With the global market for online food delivery projected to hit more than $160 billion by 2023, it’s no wonder Amazon wants a piece of that pie. But it will face tough competition in India as companies like Swiggy ($1.5 billion raised) and Zomato ($755 million raised) are well established.

Squishy Tires and Delivery Sweet Spots: More on Refraction AI’s Three-Wheeled Delivery Bot

When Refraction AI came out of stealth a couple weeks back, the company provided a fair amount of detail about its REV-1 autonomous delivery robot. The REV-1 has three wheels, can ride in a bike lane and ditched LIDAR in favor of on-board cameras for its navigation.

But we still had a few questions about Refraction AI’s robot and its approach to autonomous delivery, so I got on the phone with Refraction co-founder and CEO Matthew Johnson-Roberson this week to find out more.

One of the REV-1 launch’s biggest messages was that the robot was built to handle more inclement weather, but early coverage didn’t spell out exactly how. Right now a lot of autonomous vehicle testing happens in sunny places like Phoenix, Houston and the Bay Area. Clear skies and lots of light make it easier for robots to “see” things like lines on the road as they navigate.

Johnson-Roberson said that Refraction AI combines software and hardware to battle bad weather. First is the environmental scanning provided by a 12-camera setup as well as ultrasound and radar sensors on the REV-1. To make the robot less expensive, the REV-1 foregoes the LIDAR systems popular with other autonomous robots. And according to Johnson-Roberson, Refraction AI’s camera rig also allows the robot to track things not on the ground like buildings and cars to navigate even when road lines are not visible. The other way the REV-1 takes on bad weather is rather low tech. “We’re using fat bike tires a low PSI so they are squishy,” said Johnson-Roberson. “They can run in snow and rain.”

While the REV-1 is autonomous, there are still human tele-operators who can take over should the vehicle get stuck at, say, a complex intersection with a mix of cars and pedestrians.

The REV-1 is about the same size and speed as a bike, making its form factor kind of like a Goldilocks. It’s not big, like a full-sized car, and not small, like a rover robot. But that means it is free from the limitations of those other form factors. Full-sized self-driving cars may go faster and farther, but they also require a safety driver on-board, which pushes up the price of operation. Rover bots are cheaper, but they are slower and can’t hold as much food.

So what is the best environment for this in-between vehicle?

“Suburban LA is not a good idea,” said Johnson-Roberson, “We can go half a mile to 2.5 miles. That’s the sweet spot for what we’re trying to do.” So more dense urban areas are better for the REV-1. Refraction AI is eyeing Boston, Madison, WI and Austin, TX as potential rollout cities.

Right now, the company is working with two restaurants in the Ann Arbor, Mich. area. Johnson-Roberson didn’t provide many details about business models, but said that as the company expands, it will work directly with restaurants, providing them REV-1s and charging a per-delivery fee that “Is better than [what] Uber Eats is charging.”

Once a restaurant gets an order, it will use a tablet provided by Refraction to tell the REV-1 where to go. A code is texted to the customer who uses it to unlock the REV-1 when it arrives with the food.

While it’s working directly with restaurants right now, Johnson-Roberson said that his company is open to working with third-party delivery services.

Refraction AI is definitely a company to watch in the emerging delivery space. Self-driving delivery isn’t a zero sum game, but the REV-1’s unique form factor should make it appealing because of its combination of size and speed.

DoorDash CEO’s Tweet-a-Culpa: Says Delivery Company Changing its Much-Maligned Tipping Policy

Facing a growing backlash over how it treats tips for delivery drivers, DoorDash’s CEO indicated on Twitter today that the company is looking to change its controversial wage structure.

In a tweet thread last night, DoorDash CEO and Co-Founder Tony Xu wrote:

After a year of research and conversations with thousands of Dashers, we built a pay model to prioritize transparency, consistency of earnings, and to ensure all customers get their food as fast as possible.

But it’s clear from recent feedback that we didn’t strike the right balance. We thought we were doing the right thing by making Dashers whole when a customer left no tip. What we missed was that some customers who *did* tip would feel like their tip did not matter.

We did not launch our current model to pay Dashers less. In fact, when we moved to it, our average contribution to Dashers stayed the same.

Going forward, we’re changing our model – the new model will ensure that Dashers’ earnings will increase by the exact amount a customer tips on every order. We’ll have specific details in the coming days.

Customer obsession and getting 1% better everyday are core values at DoorDash. These beliefs have led us to improvements in the past and they serve as our guide for the future.

DoorDash had been facing a mountain of bad press over the past couple of months over the way it used tips left for its delivery drivers. Where a person placing the order might have thought that tips they left went straight to the Dasher’s pocket, they were, instead, being used by DoorDash to fill in pay gaps in order to ensure a guaranteed fee for the job. So it wasn’t extra for a job well done.

Xu’s thread was obviously light on details, but he must have seen things in DoorDash’s data that showed that keeping this odious policy was bad for business. Not helping was the fact that it came to light earlier this week that Uber is testing out a $25 a month subscription plan that includes free Uber Eats delivery. In the cutthroat battle for delivery dollars, continuing to mislead customers is a bad idea.

Here’s a tip for DoorDash and every delivery service: treat the people building your business fairly.

Kiwi Expanding its Robot Delivery to Sacramento in September

Kiwi continues to roll out its diminutive li’l food delivery robots to more cities, with plans to begin operations in Sacramento, CA in September.

CBS13 first reported the story last week. While CBS13 didn’t provide many details around the Sacramento program, what caught our eye about the report is that Kiwi is working on this latest expansion directly with the city, which wants to become an urban technology lab. Most of Kiwi’s expansion so far has been through universities. Kiwi started out at the University of California in Berkeley and announced plans to be in a dozen more schools starting this fall including Stanford, UC Davis, Purdue, Cornell, and NYU.

Starting with universities makes sense for the nascent technology as campuses provide a sizeable population in a limited geographic area. Typically campuses have or are surrounded by plenty of restaurants to feed hungry students and faculties, and using a robot could make delivering those meals more convenient. Going the campus route is a strategy also employed by Starship for its delivery robot and Robby’s mobile commerce robot.

For Kiwi, going through schools also provides an infrastructure for running delivery operations, as students will be running operations at each school. We don’t have a ton of details on those programs (like how any money is split) but students will be responsible for robot maintenance and deployments. We reached out to Kiwi to find out more information about how the Sacramento program will work and will update when we hear back.

Kiwi’s robots are “semi-autonomous,” as they still have human operators who monitor a robot’s route and drop GPS waypoints for the robot to follow. I used Kiwi earlier this year at Berkeley and it felt like ordering food from the future. Aside from one glitch, it was pretty amazing to whip out my phone, order a burrito, have a robot fetch my lunch and bring it to my location.

Kiwi will begin testing in Sacramento this fall and hopes to have a fleet of 50 robots running around the streets of the city at some point.

Call for Grubhub Antitrust Investigation Suggests Deep Scrutiny of Third-Party Delivery Is On the Way

DoorDash may have knocked Grubhub out of the top spot overall for U.S. market share of third-party food delivery, but in NYC, the latter is still king. And a growing number of parties are starting to take issue with that. Case in point: Grubhub took another blow at the end of last week when a New York City council member called for an antitrust investigation into the company.

In a letter dated July 2 and obtained by the New York Post, Mark Gjonaj, head of the City Council’s Committee on Small Business, asked New York Attorney General Letitia James to open the investigation and revisit the 2013 settlement agreement that allowed Grubhub to purchase Seamless.

“While I am not accusing any entity of committing unlawful acts, I do believe that Grubhub’s outsized market share and heavy-handed tactics could lead to artificially reduced competition which in turn may drive up the commissions paid by struggling locally owned restaurants,” Gjonaj wrote.

Currently, Grubhub controls 69 percent of the food delivery market in NYC, according to Gregory Frank, an antitrust lawyer who testified at the June oversight hearing in NYC that addressed concerns over the commission fee Grubhub and other third-party delivery services charge restaurants.

The call for an antitrust investigation comes on the heels of a report that Grubhub has been buying website domains by the thousands and creating so-called shadow sites without those restaurants’ knowledge. At the same time the New York State Liquor Authority is creating new rules that could cap the fees Grubhub can charge its participating restaurants to 10 percent. Currently, those fees range anywhere from 15 to 30 percent. Grubhub has denied those accusations.

Grubhub isn’t the only player in the third-party delivery space currently under scrutiny. Earlier this month, the UK government’s Competition and Markets Authority put the brakes on Amazon’s minority investment in Deliveroo while it investigates potential breaches of competition rules.

Third-party food delivery apps were recently predicted to have 44 million U.S. users by 2020. More lawmakers are stepping in to regulate the market, combined with others questioning the economics of third-party food delivery, and still others urging brands to pull their delivery programs back in house suggest the honeymoon period for third-party is over. Massive players like Grubhub aren’t going anywhere anytime soon, but they’ll likely be operating under far more scrutiny from government bodies and civilians alike going forward.

Domino’s Is Testing Cashless Payments in Australia as Debate Over the Model Rages On

While the battle over cashless payments is still heating up in the U.S., with companies like Sweetgreen and Amazon backpedaling from the model, other parts of the world tell a different story. Case in point: mega pizza chain Domino’s is testing cashless payments in Australia with a new program called “Tap & Take.”

With the program, Domino’s customers ordering both takeout and delivery will only be able to use their card or contactless payments like Apple Pay to purchase their pie. Domino’s is testing this program out in five locations around Australia, with plans for further expansion down the line.

The company cited reduced wait times in lines and employee safety as key reasons for kickstarting such a program. The safety issue in particular is one of the biggest arguments in favor of cashless business models. After all, you can’t successfully rob a store that doesn’t keep cash on the premises.

To be sure, certain parts of the world are moving closer to a cashless business model. In Canada, the value of cash payment transactions has decreased by 21 percent since 2012, according to recent reports. China steadily marches towards becoming a cashless society, with a heavy focus on mobile payments and technology over bank notes and even debit cards. And there’s Sweden, where according to a recent survey only 13 percent of the country uses cash to pay for transactions.

Elsewhere, though, and especially in the U.S., the cashless business model has received so much backlash it’s been banned in whole cities and forced Amazon to overhaul its entire Amazon Go store concept. The main beef against the cashless model is that it discriminates against underbanked and unbanked populations, who don’t always have a bank account and who rely on cash to make day-to-day purchases. There are also people in the world who still simply prefer to pay for goods in cash as a matter of principle.

A Domino’s spokesperson acknowledged as much when speaking to the New Zealand Herald this week, saying “We’ve certainly considered that some people prefer to use cash, which is why we are running this on a trial basis and welcome feedback from customers, especially regarding how seamless and convenient they find this makes their Domino’s experience.”

Domino’s, anyway, dabbles in everything from chatbots to driverless pizza delivery to location-based technology to deliver pizzas faster and more efficiently. It’s not so surprising the company would pursue a tech-driven payment model as another means of accomplishing the same goal. Doubtful the “Tap & Take” program will reach the U.S. anytime soon, but it’s entirely plausible someplace like Sweden or Canada could be next on the pizza-turned-tech-company’s list, should the trial program in Australia prove successful.

ShiftPixy’s Delivery Tech Promises Restaurant Chains More Brand Control

If the last year was was all about restaurants realizing they must do delivery, the next 12 months will be about how they’re doing it, and this question in particular: Do you go with a third-party service à la Uber Eats, or go it alone?

Those in favor of third-party delivery cite increased visibility, lower costs (you don’t have to hire your own driver fleet), and fewer technical responsibilities. Others say they will never use it because of the lack of control over service and brand integrity that happens when one signs on with a third-party service.

Over the phone last week, ShiftPixy cofounder and CEO Scott Absher seemed to agree with the latter argument: “How could a brand that has spent maybe billions of dollars over decades or generations to curate their brand suddenly surrender that brand and their customer experience and data to a kid in a red golf shirt and cap?” he asks.

He went into detail with me about how a restaurant’s choices no longer have to be the kid in the golf shirt or no delivery program at all. There’s a new middle ground afoot, and ShiftPixy is helping to establish it.

The Irvine, CA-based company makes a software stack for restaurants that was originally designed to help businesses combat high employee turnover. According to demos shared by ShiftPixy, when a restaurant signs up with the company, they are given access to a network of workers, called “Shifters.” The ShiftPixy app uses AI to rigorously onboard these Shifters, who undergo the same vetting any job candidate would, including background checks and providing proof of citizenship, driving records, and other details. Once approved, these Shifters become W-2 employees not of the restaurant but of ShiftPixy. When the restaurant needs to fill a shift, they can notify their network of nearby Shifters, who pick up work in much the same way Uber drivers pick up people to drive to the airport.

But Absher, who helped found the company in 2015, says ShiftPixy quickly became acquainted with what he calls the “dark side” of third-party food delivery: incorrect food orders, cold or poor-quality food, orders never arriving, and angry customers galore, to name a few. More importantly, users were getting frustrated with the brands themselves, though none of the ordering or fulfillment took place within a restaurant chain’s ecosystem.

“All of that anger was rolling back on those multi-unit operators,” he says, referring largely to national chains. But, he adds, these chains, “didn’t even know when a customer [was] angry so they could fix it.”

So ShiftPixy built a delivery component for its technology. For restaurants that use it, the ShiftPixy architecture works behind the scenes of a restaurant’s consumer-facing app to notify drivers of potential orders. This isn’t terribly different from the way any other third party operates the last mile of food delivery. It’s still a kid in a golf shirt picking your food up and dropping it at the door.

What is different is the slew of potential benefits restaurants — larger chains and their franchisees in particular — could reap from this arrangement. Through the deal they set with ShiftPixy, they’re not paying a fee on each and every delivery transaction made on a given day the way they would with Grubhub or Uber Eats. Most big-brand franchisees are locked into certain pricing structures and policies — having to choose a specific food distributor, for example — they can’t just dump to offset the cost of those fees. So a system that does away with them entirely could mean these restaurant operators reap the benefits of delivery without incurring the financial setbacks of working with traditional third-party services.

And while restaurants still can’t control what happens to the food when the driver picks it up, they can at least control the brand, and be aware of potential issues. When a restaurant uses ShiftPixy, customers don’t leave the brand ecosystem to order and pay for their meal, or to leave feedback or contact customer service. It all happens within the restaurant’s own mobile app, with ShiftPixy in the background, powering the last-mile logistics aspect. This, Absher reasons, could go a long way towards helping brands with their image. “The issue is brand integrity and the customer experience. As soon as that order goes out the door you’ve surrendered your customer experience,” he says.

This is a larger trend we’ll start to hear more about as delivery becomes, pardon the pun, baked into daily restaurant operations and more companies come to market with solutions aimed at national brands and their franchisees. Olo, whom Absher references during our talk, is another such company looking to help restaurants drive more delivery orders through their own in-house ecosystems and maintain more brand integrity in the process.

Absher can’t yet name these larger brands ShiftPixy is currently in talks with, though Denny’s and Carl’s Junior come up in conversation. He also says the company is “getting a lot of viral introductions” as franchisees jump onboard and encourage other nearby franchisees from the same brand to do likewise.

“When you talk to the operators, that’s where it really gets interesting,” he says. “There are a lot of mixed opinions about third party [delivery]. It’s a very confusing landscape. It looks to me like we’re entering the market at the right time in the midst of confusion. We’re hopefully being a source of help and clarity.”

British Regulators Eye Amazon’s Investment in Deliveroo

There is a certain level of irony in the fact that as America wrapped up celebrating its independence from Great Britain, British regulators were clamping down on one of America’s most influential companies.

The Guardian reports that Amazon’s recent minority investment in UK-based food delivery service, Deliveroo, is now being scrutinized by the UK government’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA).

There were “reasonable grounds,” according to the CMA, to suspect that Amazon and Deliveroo could “cease to be distinct.” The CMA has ordered that any further integration between the two companies must be paused as the government investigates whether any competition rules were broken and determines whether it will launch a full merger inquiry.

Amazon was part of a $575 million Series G round of investment in Deliveroo earlier this year. The investment came after Amazon failed to gain any traction for its Amazon Restaurants delivery service in Britain, and shut it down.

With the CMA order, Deliveroo is prohibited from engaging in activity that “could lead to its integration into Amazon’s business while the regulator makes its decision,” reports The Guardian. This includes changes to big contracts or senior management without permission from the CMA.

The CMA’s move is part of a larger backlash growing against Amazon, whose massive size and influence has spooked state and city regulators here in the U.S. In May, under growing pressure from multiple city governments, Amazon dropped its no-cash accepted policy at its nascent chain of Go stores. And at the beginning of the year, Amazon decided to abandon plans to build a second HQ in New York after facing protests from lawmakers and activists there.

In another bit of irony, while the CMA’s move against Amazon serves to protect competition in the UK, we at The Spoon saw Amazon’s investment in Deliveroo actually as a way for the two companies to meaningfully break into the U.S. market.

Teriyaki Madness Expands Delivery Through Olo Partnership, Doubles-Down on In-House App

Fast-casual chain Teriyaki Madness announced this morning it has expanded its delivery program to include most major third-party services. The Denver, CO-based company has also inked a deal with Olo, whose technology makes working with multiple third-party delivery services easier, not to mention cheaper, for restaurants to handle.

For many restaurants — even national chains like Teriyaki Madness — the cost of doing delivery in house is too high to reach for now. Third-party services a la DoorDash, Postmates, and others may come with steep fees for restaurants and a certain amount of operational chaos, but they’re still the most economically viable delivery option at this point for many.

Dispatch, Olo’s main delivery product addresses some of those issues with third-party services by streamlining the order process. For one, it integrates all orders into a single ticket stream, regardless of where they come from. As we wrote in January, “Olo doesn’t compete with third-party delivery services; it more or less partners with them, so DoorDash or Grubhub orders placed via Olo go right into the regular queue of tickets, without an employee having to manually input them.”

For Teriyaki Madness, part of the reason behind the partnership with Olo is to drive more delivery orders through the chain’s website and in-house mobile app. As noted in the press release, by year’s end, the company would like to see an even split between orders placed in house and those placed with delivery services: “TMAD’s goal is to have 50 percent of digital orders come in through its app and the other 50 percent originate through third-party delivery vendors.”

In terms of realizing that goal, Olo is an appropriate match as a partner. In a blog post from March of 2019, Olo founder and CEO Noah Glass noted that his company’s goal “is to help our restaurants optimize for that future, and that means getting as many customers as they can to keep ordering directly through them, where they can have a profitable transaction.” That said, Olo isn’t the only restaurant-tech company working to make restaurant operators’ lives easier. Chowly, OrderOut, and Ordermark are all creating different versions of the same concept.

Olo’s system in particular also addresses those controversial commission fees third-party services charge restaurants. Rather than inking a direct deal with, say Uber Eats, then paying a fee per transaction, companies like Teriyaki Madness ink the deal with Olo, and costs owed to third parties are baked into to that deal. (It may slightly raise the delivery fee for the customer.) Teriyaki Madness noted that this process is especially good for franchisees: “The customer pays the delivery fee and the commission goes away, combatting profit erosion and ultimately protecting our franchisees’ bottom lines,” Michael Haith, CEO of Teriyaki Madness, said in the release.

Teriyaki Madness launched its mobile app in 2018 and has been rapidly expanding ever since. The chain has said it plans to double in size by the end of 2019, with delivery and pickup being a big part of those plans. Ensuring a more frictionless delivery process that’s also affordable for every unit in the chain, franchisees included, will be an important part of making that expansion a reality.

Taster Raises $8M in New Funding for Delivery-Only Brands to Europe

Taster, a French startup who creates restaurant brands made specifically for delivery, has raised $8 million in a new funding round. The round was led by Battery Ventures, with participation from existing investors Heartcore Capital, LocalGlobe, GFC and Marc Ménasé. This brings Taster’s total funding to $13.1 million.

The company currently owns and operates three “restaurants,” which it runs out of ghost kitchens in Paris, London, and Madrid. Out Fry is a Korean Fried Chicken concept, O Ke Kai specializes in Hawaiian food, and Mission Saigon makes Vietnamese fare.

Founder Anton Soulier got the idea for Taster after working at Deliveroo and becoming disenchanted with the quality of the food in the delivery realm. Taster, which he founded in 2017, works with Michelin Star chefs to keep the food as high-quality as possible, and locally sourced, too. The company works out of 12 different kitchens across Paris, London, and Madrid, though it doesn’t actually own the facilities. Instead, Taster partners with companies like Travis Kalanick’s CloudKitchens, who rent ghost kitchen space out to restaurants.

For the actual delivery part, Taster works with Deliveroo, Uber Eats, and Glovo, which means it doesn’t have to manage the logistics behind that part of the operation, and can instead focus on what goes on in the kitchen.

Taster is one of a few companies in Europe building a business off delivery-only restaurant concepts. Frichti is a fellow French startup, delivering pre-made meals customers heat up. It’s notable in particular for owning and operating the full delivery stack, from taking orders to making the food to cycling it over to your apartment.

Elsewhere, Berlin, Germay-based Keatz recently raised €12 million for its virtual kitchen network, which it uses to create in-house restaurant brands much like Taster.

To date, Taster says it employs 115 people, 100 of whom work in the kitchens. The company has already developed some tech that streamlines back-of-house operations like inventory management, supply chain, billing, and integrating delivery platforms. Taster says the new funds will go towards launching three new food brands by the end of 2019 and the company plans to hire more talent in tech and engineering, as well as supply chain and marketing.

Newsletter: Making the Convenience of Delivery More Convenient, Impractical Home Kitchen Gadgets

This is the web version of our weekly newsletter. Subscribe to get the latest food tech news in your inbox, and for content only available in the newsletter.

Talk to most individuals in today’s restaurant biz, and they’ll tell you that delivery is table stakes at this point. But a slew of news stories from the last week suggests some aren’t satisfied with simply inking a deal with a third-party service. Now, companies are adding haute cuisine, drones, and alternative locations to the list of things they can offer via delivery.

Yesterday, 7-Eleven joined these efforts by releasing 7NOW Pins, a feature that lets customers order via the convenience store chain’s 7NOW app and get their goods delivered to public places like parks, beaches, and sports stadiums. For 7-Eleven, delivering to these so-called hot spots makes a lot of sense, since drinking Slurpees is practically as common an outdoor activity as volleyball.

7-Eleven’s idea isn’t new. Domino’s launched a similar program in April of 2018 and has since been delivering pies to more than 200,000 of these public spaces around the country.

Domino’s, however, was focused more this past week on another delivery-related initiative: in-car ordering. Ever since it announced a partnership with Xevo, who makes in-car commerce technology, the pizza chain has been working to bring in-car ordering for delivery and pickup orders to more drivers around the U.S. As of last week, Chevrolet owners whose cars are equipped with the company’s Marketplace platform can order Domino’s while they’re still en route to home, and, because of the way Marketplace is configured, can do so without ever having to touch their smartphone.

Uber Eats Takes Haute Cuisine to New Heights
But maybe pizza and Slurpees aren’t your thing. No worries. Other companies are applying the convenience of delivery to more upscale foods, including Juniper & Ivy’s “In-N-Haute” burger, which Uber Eats will soon make available via drone in San Diego. While as of right now the drones will be dropping orders off with an Uber Eats driver who will finish the delivery, using them for even part of the process can save significant time, which means the $21 dollar hamburger would theoretically reach your door in a much fresher state.

Interestingly, Uber Eats’ other drone delivery test is with McDonald’s, the polar opposite of haute cuisine. But testing with two such extremes makes sense. As I wrote recently:

Whichever is more successful in terms of both quality of the food when it finally arrives at your door step as well as overall customer satisfaction with the experience, will tell Uber a lot about where to bet its hand in the upcoming drone delivery race.

Now if they could just figure out how to drone-drop haute burgers to my next beach trip . . .

The mycusini chocolate 3D printer

Impractical Cooking Fun for the Whole Family
Back in the world of at-home culinary devices, Mike Wolf dug into an impractical-but-so-cool activity for the kitchen: 3D printing chocolate.

The mycusini printer functions much like other 3D printers, only in this case it dispenses chocolate layer by layer. The device is expected to ship to backers by the end of 2019. Sadly for Mike and other U.S. fans of choco-printing, mycusini will only be available in Europe, Australia, and New Zealand initially.

Statesiders might instead look to McCormick’s new gimmick: a grill integrated with a DJ system that changes tracks based on what you’re cooking. As Catherine Lamb wrote this week, the SUMR HITS 5000 grill “links pre-recorded music and sounds to a weight-sensitive condiment tray and the grill itself. So when you pick up the hot sauce or flip your veggie burger, new sound bites play from a speaker presumably embedded somewhere inside the grill.”

While the SUMR HITS 5000 grill probably won’t be making it on checklists of any serious grillers, it could at the very least provide a few entertaining moments for upcoming summer BBQs this year. Throw in an order of delivery Slurpees, and you have yourself a legit party.

Until next time,

Jenn