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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

off-premises ordering

Squarespace Acquires Hospitality Management Platform Tock for $400M

E-commerce platform Squarespace announced today it has acquired Tock, an online platform for managing reservations, tables, takeout, and more, for $400 million. The deal is a mix of cash and stock, according to a press release from Squarespace.

Chicago, Illinois-based Tock’s extensive feature list includes reservation, waitlist, and table management, event management, and, more recently, pickup and delivery order management and contactless ordering and payments features. Tock’s sell to restaurants and other foodservice businesses is that establishments can view and manage all these moving parts from a single dashboard. The system integrates with third-party POS platforms, not to mention a boat-load of other technologies, from social media platforms to third-party delivery services.

That Squarespace would want to acquire the company is not that surprising. Squarespace, which privately filed to go public in January of this year, has built a business on providing DIY(ish) website and e-commerce building tools for businesses. Right now, thanks to the pandemic, there are a lot of restaurants in need of digital properties (websites, apps, etc.) that can accommodate the industry-wide shift towards to go orders and more digital forms of ordering and payments. These are all features Tock has in its arsenal, and which Squarespace will now be able to offer to potential customers in the hospitality business. 

In a statement today, Squarespace CEO Anthony Casalena called e-commerce “a large and growing market opportunity” in the restaurant business. “We believe that together we will continue building on their success, bringing Tock’s capabilities to our all-in-one product suite in service of our customers in the hospitality industry and beyond,” he said.

To date, Tock has raised $27.5 million in funding.

Report: Restaurant Spending Has Increased for Many U.S. States

Overall restaurant spending in the U.S. is only down 1 percent from from where it was in January 2020, according to new numbers from TOP Data and Zenreach that were emailed to The Spoon.

That increase varies widely, however, with some states spending more at restaurants than they were in January 2020 and some spending less. Washington, Utah, and South Dakota are the top three states spending more, with increases of 26 percent, 24 percent, and 20 percent, respectively. Others experiencing increases include Alaska (19 percent), Alabama (18 percent), and Nebraska (18 percent).

On the other hand, several states are spending significantly less at restaurants than they were at the beginning of the year. Idaho is spending 47 percent less, followed by Massachusetts (41 percent), Rhode Island (34 percent), and California (29 percent).

In many cases (but not all of them), less spending lines up with stricter regulations for restaurants throughout the year. California for example, has had to shut down indoor dining once again in several counties, including LA County and San Francisco. By contrast, South Dakota has imposed far lighter restrictions on restaurants throughout the pandemic, so the spending increase in the state doesn’t surprise.

How these numbers change over the next few months depends a lot on the trajectory of the pandemic. A vaccine may be on the near horizon, but restaurants have much work to do in terms of establishing trust with customers around the safety of eating inside their dining rooms.

“If you can create a safe dining environment, effectively target your best customers, and maintain (or even boost) your marketing spend, the more likely you are to successfully drive customers into your locations and sustain your restaurant business during this challenging time,” noted John Kelly, CEO of Zenreach, in today’s email.

At the same time, some customers now prefer off-premises formats like takeout and delivery, and so restaurants will have to continue developing those channels in order to see more customers spending as we head into 2021.

Finally, overall restaurant spending may be up, but not enough to keep tens of thousands of restaurants — many of them smaller, independent establishments — from shutting down. These are businesses that may not have extra budget to spend on marketing or intricate tech solutions to make delivery more efficient. In order to change this, restaurant spending over the next few months will need to increase at these establishments, not mainstream chains.

HungerRush Acquires OrdrAI for its Text-to-Order Tech

HungerRush announced today via an email that it has acquired OrdrAI, adding text-to-order capabilities to HungerRush’s restaurant tech stack. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

HungerRush (formerly known as Revention) offer s a full suite of restaurant management software. In June of this year, the company launched a number of new features geared towards helping restaurants fulfill off-premises orders like delivery and takeout. Those new features included messaging capabilities for curbside pickup, the ability to track delivery drivers, and more integrations with third-party delivery services.

With the OrdrAI acquisition, HungerRush will offer text-to-order capabilities to its toolkit. The OrdrAI system uses standard SMS and natural language processing to allow customers to order meals almost as if they were texting with a friend. The benefit of text-to-order is that SMS is a ubiquitous feature on just about every phone, so there is no new app or website that a customer needs to install or visit to place an order.

With the pandemic continuing unabated throughout most of the country, restaurants have had to shift from dine-in operations to prioritize off-premises ordering, takeout and delivery. So it makes sense that HungerRush would want to add a tool like text-to-order to its arsenal. As restaurants move towards digital orders, they want to make placing those digital orders as easy as possible for anyone.

But OrdrAi is also part of a broader movement in the restaurant biz towards adding natural language processing and conversational ordering to their tech stack. Last month Kea raised $10 million for its natural language voice assistant that can take orders for restaurants. Google’s Duplex AI assistant can place restaurant reservations on behalf of real people. And Clinc’s tech brings conversational ordering to the drive-thru.

In the U.S., text-to-order capabilities get far less airtime than sophisticated mobile apps (though ordering via SMS is common in other parts of the world). But as mentioned above, the pandemic has forced both restaurants and their customers into digital ordering, and not every customer can or wants to download a fancy mobile app to place an order for fries. Having a simpler, more ubiquitous interface available could widen a restaurant’s potential customer base at a time when finding new ways for digital outreach is paramount. Text-to-order might never replace the mobile app, but as the industry continues to navigate its current fallout, the function is another useful tool to complement the restaurant tech stack.

Jennifer Marston contributed to this article.

Report: Restaurant Tech Company Toast Is Now Valued at $8B, Could IPO in 2021

Months after laying off half its staff, Toast has reached an $8 billion valuation, according to a new report from CNBC.

That new valuation, up from $4.9 billion in February of this year, is the result of a secondary sale Toast closed out last week. Through that deal, both current and former employees could sell up to 25 percent of their vested shares for $75 each. Toast said the deal was for up to 800,000 shares, totaling $60 million. 

It’s a big change from April, when the company cut 50 percent of its staff. In a letter to employees, CEO Chris Comparato said the layoffs were in response to “massive disruption” caused by COVID-19 that “hit the industry virtually overnight.” The move also called into question the value of restaurant tech in general, which runs the gamut in terms of providing businesses with products that deliver on ROI and those that are, as a friend of mine likes to say, solutions in search of problems. 

Toast has sat squarely in the middle of those two extremes for a long time. Once offering just a humble POS system, the company has over the years  added payroll and team management, email marketing capabilities, and a massive list of third-party integrations. There were plenty of valuable uses for the Toast ecosystem, but that seemed to be part of the problem, too. One glance at the company’s sight shows how easily overwhelmed a restaurant owner or manager could get by the number of available options. 

Toast, however, seemed to grasp the idea that too many bells and whistles can be no good thing, and more recently (since the pandemic hit), the company’s new features have been focused on the most important area of the restaurant biz right now: making off-premises orders more efficient, faster, and of better quality. The company released a platform to process delivery orders in April. It has since also launched a “contactless” suite of products for ordering and payments. Nowadays, a restaurant could easily run an entire off-premises business using Toast’s platform. With more restaurants than ever adopting digital ordering and off-premises channels like drive-thru, curbside, and ghost kitchens, Toast’s recent focus on the to-go world could wind up being very fruitful for the company. Hence the $8 billion valuation.

CNBC noted that Toast’s rebound “has been so rapid” that investors on the secondary market have recently put in bids above the $8 billion valuation. People familiar with the matter who spoke to CNBC also said the company “is viewed as a potential 2021 IPO candidate.”  

NPD: Restaurant Digital Orders Declined in August

Digital orders at restaurants dropped 17 percent in August, down from 20 percent in April of this year, according to NPD CREST’s latest monthly update.

While that’s not an enormous drop, it does suggest many people still prefer eating at restaurants to ordering ahead and picking the food up or having it delivered.

The slight downturn in digital sales coincides with the fact that in many cities, some form of dine-in service has been available for a few months now. “As the summer progressed and mandated restrictions were lifted, an increasing number of consumers became more comfortable dining out based on the safety protocols restaurants put in place,” says author and NPD food industry advisor David Portalatin.

Along those lines, NPD notes that on-premises service, whether in the dining room or with outdoor seating, have “improved every month since April” and that August trends reflect a restaurant industry operating with far fewer restrictions than were in place at the height of the pandemic.

Not that it hasn’t been a tough road for most restaurants over the last six months. Dine-in service may be available, but it’s with capacity restrictions almost everywhere. Meanwhile, many restaurant owners still struggle to pay rent, and there are questions around the fate of dine-in service once the weather grows cold enough to make outdoor dining an unlikely choice for many consumers (though creative solutions to this problem are emerging).

Some states are just now about to increase their capacity numbers inside restaurants, while others are on the cusp of reopening indoor dining for the first time since shutdowns began. At the same time, reports of rising COVID-19 cases are multiplying. How the pandemic’s trajectory travels for the next few months will most certainly impact what on-premises dining sales look like with NPD CREST’s next report. If extreme measures have to be taken again, digital orders could experience another surge.

El Pollo Loco Revamps Digital Rewards, Launches GPS-Enables Curbside Pickup

Hopping onboard two major trends in the increasingly digital restaurant biz, chicken chain El Pollo Loco this week announced it is finally launching curbside pickup and a nationwide rewards program via its mobile app. A press release sent to The Spoon notes that the loyalty program officially launched Thursday and the curbside pickup will be available from September 28.

The rewards program revamp, which offers members one point for every $1 spent, comes at a time when restaurants are encouraged to build out their digital properties as off-premises orders continue to be the main lifeline for business. Mobile apps are also a way for chains to keep more of the delivery process, including customer data, under their own roof instead of handing it over to third-party delivery. El Pollo Loco has partnerships with Postmates, DoorDash, and other major third-party delivery services. But it can also, in certain markets, accept and process orders via its own app and website. A stronger loyalty program would potentially drive more customer traffic directly to the chain’s own digital storefront.

Baked into that digital storefront is El Pollo Loco’s new curbside pickup feature, which is GPS enabled. Using the app, customers can order ahead. When they arrive at the restaurant, they get an automatic a notification to check in via the app. A staff member then brings out the order.

Curbside pickup is common nowadays thanks to more off-premises orders and the expectation for restaurants to go as “contactless” as possible. Few, however, offer a tech-enabled approach that truly speeds up the process. For most, customer must still call a phone number to let the restaurant know they’ve arrived. El Pollo Loco’s GPS-equipped system sits somewhere in between said phone call and the more sophisticated approach of Panera, which uses geofencing technology to automatically check a customer in when they arrive.

Both the revamped rewards program and curbside pickup are clearly a play by El Pollo Loco to increase digital sales in the future. Anymore for restaurants, high digital sales are becoming as much of a mandate as social distancing measures, so this is just the start of what we’ll see from El Pollo Loco as it revamps its restaurant experience.

Grocery Chain H-E-B Opens a Food Hall Offering Takeout and Delivery Meals

Grocery retailer H-E-B further dissolved the boundaries between groceries and restaurants this week when it opened a food hall at one of its Austin, TX stores. Dubbed Main Streat, the venue has five restaurants and a full-service bar.

Given the current state of the foodservice industry, now would seem an odd time to open a public space dedicated to restaurant fare. In most states, restaurant dining rooms must operate a reduced capacity. Many businesses are either mandated or choosing to stick to outdoor patio seating, though that will change once colder weather arrives.

H-E-B has clearly considered all of this, as Main Streat caters to the off-premises customer as much as it does the one who wants a patio table. The company said meals from the venue’s five restaurants are available for pickup and delivery (the latter through local third-party delivery service Favor) along with limited seating inside the food hall and on the patio.The to-go format even applies to alcoholic beverages from the aforementioned full-service bar.

Less than a year ago, starting a foodservice business with a built-in off-premises strategy would have been an anomaly. Catering to takeout and delivery formats was certainly becoming an important strategy for these businesses, but that transition was meant to unfold over a longer period of time, say, five years. The pandemic changed all of that, and H-E-B’s to-go-centric food court is one example of something that will become table stakes very soon for restaurants: opening a business with multiple formats from the start.

Main Streat also underscores how our definition of the word “restaurant” is quickly changing, and how the grocery store is a part of that transition. In the last several months, we’ve seen QSRs selling groceries at the drive-thru, third-party delivery services like DoorDash peddling grocery and convenience store items, and the rise of services like Good Egg selling restaurant meals and supplies via e-commerce. All of which is to say, both restaurants and grocery stores seem to be redefining the word “experience” these days, and often doing so together. The common denominator? Off, premises, obviously. 

From Wiz Khalifa to Tyga, Are Celebrity Ghost Kitchens the Next Big Thing?

Throughout the latter half of 2019, a prediction that came up repeatedly here at The Spoon was celebrity chefs launching their own virtual restaurant concepts. What we didn’t anticipate was just plain ol’ celebrities getting onboard the trend, but that’s exactly what’s happening now.

An announcement this week from delivery integrator Ordermark added more momentum to the celebrity-as-virtual restauranteur trend: rapper Wiz Khalifa forthcoming Hotbox concept.

Wiz Khalifa’s Hotbox restaurant, which is slated to open October 1, will feature a “top-shelf munchie menu” curated by the rapper and powered by Ordermark. The full menu is not available yet, though a couple featured items — the “Taylor Gang Turkey Burger” and “Blazed Ends” dishes — give a pretty good idea of what to expect once the restaurant launches.

Restaurant owners wanting to cook and deliver the forthcoming Hotbox menu from their own kitchens can do so by becoming a fulfillment partner via Nextbite, the delivery-only restaurant company owned by Ordermark. In other words, your local mom-and-pop can now become a ghost kitchen for the Wiz Khalifa brand. That in turn could provide restaurants with some much-needed incremental revenue that might keep some from completely going under during this strange and challenging time for restaurants. 

Cooking someone else’s menu from your own restaurant kitchen isn’t a brand-new concept. As I said, it’s a form of a ghost kitchen that’s employed by the likes of well-known chains like Fatburger and Wow Bao. Tacking a celebrity name to the concept is an intriguing twist on this. A virtual Wiz Khalifa restaurant will generate a certain amount of interest inherently because of the rapper’s status. And if the food winds up being tasty and affordable, there’s potential for restaurants to tap into a Khalifa’s huge fanbase. 

The celebrity-turned-restauranteur thing isn’t brand-new, either, though it’s only been in the last several months we’ve seen this concept go virtual. Rapper Tyga operates a delivery-only restaurant featuring chicken bites. Steve Aoki has a virtual pizza joint called Pizzaoki. Rachel Ray, launched a limited-time virtual restaurant with Uber Eats last year.

And with off-premises orders still the main sales channel for restaurants, delivery companies looking to diversify, and ghost kitchens becoming the norm, the above examples are just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. 

Survey: Restaurants Should Expect to Serve 4 Types of Customers in the Coming Months

Roughly one in three Americans look forward to dining in restaurants again over the next three months, but different customers have different standards for what the new era of eating out should look like. So says restaurant tech company Sevenrooms, which today released a new survey entitled “Restaurant Reckoning: Dynamic Diner.”

The survey, conducted with third-party research firm YouGov PLC, polled 1,327 U.S. restaurant customers at the end of July. As its title suggests, the pandemic has created new types of diners with different sets of priorities. Sevenrooms has divvied these up into four categories:

  • “The Pick-Up Patron:” More than one in four survey respondents, or 27 percent, said they will not feel comfortable eating in a restaurant dining room until a vaccine for COVID-19 is found. Nearly one in four, 23 percent, will stick to takeout orders for the rest of 2020. 
  • “The Safety-Savvy Consumer:” More than one in five, or 22 percent, of those surveyed want a detailed outline of a restaurant’s safety protocols, including physical barriers between tables, at-table hand sanitizer, and having their food covered when brought to the table.
  • “The Tech-Conscious Contactless Diner:” A smaller percentage, 13 percent, said they would only dine in a restaurant that uses contactless dining solutions like virtual waitlists, QR code-enabled order and payments, and contact tracing technology.
  • “The Carefree Guest:” Despite nationwide restrictions around indoor dining, a healthy number of respondents, 29 percent, said they are comfortable with the format. Another 42 percent said they are comfortable with outdoor dining.

The outdoor dining stat, though, is an important reminder of a situation most restaurants around the U.S. will soon face: winter is on its way, and once it arrives, outdoor dining will be uncomfortable in some locations, impossible in many more. It may very well be that colder weather will mean the Pick-Up Patron category gets a lot larger and the number of “carefree” guests lowers alongside the temperature.

The survey also recommends that restaurants double-down on collecting customer data that can better tell them which of the above customer types they serve most. That directive makes sense, given that Sevenrooms is a guest management platform that emphasizes the value of restaurant customer data. But it brings up a good point: with the restaurant experience going more and more digital, it’s time for restaurants to rethink their relationship to customer data.

Speaking in today’s press release, Sevenrooms CEO Joel Montaniel also suggested that agility is crucial for restaurant operators right now: “Our research has made one thing clear: operators need to be flexible,” he said. “Whether it’s in regard to outdoor dining, virtual waitlists or contactless order and pay – every guest has different needs.”

With colder temperatures and a lot of uncertainty around both the pandemic and the future of the restaurant industry, that flexibility will remain a must-have for restaurants for the foreseeable future. The good news is, since restaurants were allowed to slowly reopen their dining rooms, we’ve seen no end of creativity when it comes to serving guests while keeping them socially distanced. No doubt we’ll see even more of that as the restaurant industry transitions into a new season.

Can Ghost Kitchens Save the Vanishing Restaurant Biz?

“Perhaps we should stop using the term ghost kitchen. Ghosts are rarely seen, but ghost kitchens? Well, they are popping up everywhere.”

Spoon Editor Chris Albrecht was half-kidding when he wrote that line earlier this week, but he might have been onto something. Ghost kitchens, a concept that only really started turning heads one year ago, are practically unavoidable these days in a conversation about the restaurant industry. 

In the past few weeks alone:

  • Foodservice distribution giant US Foods launched its own ghost kitchen service that will provide restaurants “guidance and resources” to open their own kitchens.
  • Gig economy engagement platform ShiftPixy unveiled a ghost kitchen incubator that connects restaurants with physical kitchen space and the tech to run a ghost kitchen.
  • Dubai-based iKcon, raised $5 million to expand its kitchen network and the proprietary tech stack that goes with it.
  • Fat Brands announced that Johnny Rockets, a brand it intends to purchase for $25 million, will expand via ghost kitchens, many of them inside the kitchens of other Fat Brands restaurants.
  • Sweetgreen said it is testing the ghost kitchen concept out by working from a Zuul kitchen in NYC.

And those are just the highlights.

What’s noteworthy here is not that a bunch more restaurants and food industry companies have hopped aboard the ghost kitchen train. It’s that there are a fast-growing number of options when it comes to where and how a restaurant can open a ghost kitchen. With a company like iKcon, for example, a restaurant’s ghost kitchen essentially becomes a franchisee. Renting space from Zuul or another third-party kitchen provider is another way. Operating one brand out of the kitchen of a sister brand is perhaps the most intriguing concept on this list, and one we’ll see a lot more of in the future.

Add to all that choices around location, technology, and figuring out if they even have enough demand to warrant a ghost kitchen, and restaurants have a lot to consider in today’s off-premises-centric world.

What’s more, those restaurants are being forced to consider their choices when it comes to ghost kitchens. The pandemic has decimated the dine-in business for both large restaurant chains and smaller independent businesses. Recovery from the fallout will be slow, and the idea of most customers returning to brick-and-mortar restaurants seems less possible each week. Given those factors, more restaurants will have to consider either supplementing their existing operations with ghost kitchens or pivoting their entire model to a virtual, delivery-only one.

I suspect this is just the beginning when it comes to types of ghost kitchens that rise out of the ashes of the on-premises restaurant experience. We’ve already seen restaurants employ countless amounts of creativity when it comes to running a restaurant during a pandemic and trying to create a concrete restaurant experience out of virtual tools. With the pandemic still very much a part of our lives, we will now see that creativity head for the ghost kitchen.

SipScience Raises Money to Reinvent the Bar

SipScience, a data analytics company specifically for the hospitality industry, is preparing to launch itself into the contactless payments realm by launching a new platform, Sip. 

According to a press release sent to The Spoon this week, there are two sides to Sip. The consumer-facing one comes in the form of an app that connects to a user’s digital wallet. The app lets said user find nearby bars and open a tab from their own mobile device, through which they can order and pay for drinks. When it launches, Sip will be available at participating bars and venues across the U.S. Bonus: those who sign up for a subscription will get half off their first 50 drinks ordered through the app.

For venues, such as bars and restaurants, the app is a new way to drive more traffic, and the accompanying SipSync analytics engine gives these places more data on in-venue customers. Brands, too, are provided with real-time purchasing data, which is not something a payments app normally provides.

The company said this week it had raised $1.3 million in SAFE notes. There is no official launch date yet for the app, which makes sense, given the state of in-person hospitality venues. Bars in many states remain closed, as to venues built to hold hundreds of people. 

Granted, no sane person would spend much time in a bar right now. But SipScience’s news suggests that folks start flocking back to their local watering holes, they’ll find a far more tech-driven experience waiting.

Restaurant Tech ‘Round the Web

Starbucks launched a digital traceability tool this week that lets customers learn more about their coffee, including where it came from and traveled, and the farmers and roasters involved in production.

Domino’s is hiring 20,000 more employees. That’s on top of the 10,000 the pizza chain said it was hiring right after the pandemic hit, and just goes to show you that the company’s delivery-centric business is alive and thriving. 

Grubhub has launched an online petition to commission fee caps and is reportedly going to run an ad campaign that calls the fee caps “food delivery taxes.” Grubhub says fee caps result in higher costs for consumers and ultimately hurt restaurants. 

This is the web version of our newsletter. Sign up today to get updates on the rapidly changing nature of the food tech industry.

ShiftPixy Launches Ghost Kitchen Incubator

Gig economy engagement platform ShiftPixy announced today the launch of its Ghost Kitchen Incubator Project, which will provide advice and infrastructure to restaurants wanting to launch and/or improve their off-premises strategies. 

The incubator is part of ShiftPixy’s new Labs offering, which is a suite of marketing and support services designed specifically for QSRs. ShiftPixy says that through it, restaurants can get insights and advice on what exactly they need to operate an off-premises business. Via the Incubator Project, that means access to physical kitchen space as well as ShiftPixy’s technology, which connects restaurants to delivery drivers and couriers.

ShiftPixy differentiates itself from third-party delivery services like DoorDash or Uber Eats by hiring these gig workers (“Shifters”) as W-2 employees and facilitating the connection between them and the restaurant. Meanwhile, ShiftPixy’s tech platform doesn’t act as a consumer-facing marketplace for food delivery. Rather, it powers the back end of restaurants’ native mobile apps.

For those restaurants, the benefits of a system like ShiftPixy’s is avoiding the high commission fees associated with other third-party services and retaining customer data because orders are coming through their own digital properties. 

The benefits of this alternative delivery model are attractive at a time when most restaurants have been forced into doing delivery and other off-premises formats as a means of survival. Ghost kitchens, too, are growing more popular thanks to the pandemic, which has shuttered many restaurants and is now making many rethink how important the dining room is to their overall livelihoods. 

In the QSR realm, ghost kitchens are becoming especially prevalent, with Starbucks, Fat Brands, The Halal Guys, Chick-fil-A, Wendy’s, and an ever-growing list of others either turning their own stores into ghost kitchens or renting space from third-party kitchen providers.

But, as we discussed at length in The Spoon’s recent report on ghost kitchens, not every QSR needs one. And of those that do, the specific requirements for equipment, location, menu items, and other factors will vary from one chain to the next. 

ShiftPixy will undoubtedly address these and other issues through its new Incubator. Company CEO Scott Absher said in today’s press release that “if operators want to survive, they need to re-think their business processes, customer engagement and their approach to real estate.”

ShiftPixy hasn’t yet given full details on the new facility or said if any specific QSRs have yet signed onto the Incubator program. The company says it will “continue to issue updates” in the coming days, so stay tuned. 

Survey: Safety Is Now a Top Concern for Restaurant Customers Ordering Off-Premises

A quality off-premises restaurant experience is no longer just about food arriving on time and fries not being soggy. According to restaurant tech company Toast’s latest report, attention to cleanliness and safety is one of the top three concerns for restaurant guests for both delivery and takeout orders.

The Toast report, which The Spoon received a copy of, surveyed over 700 restaurant guests around how their expectations have changed as a result of the pandemic and what they consider to be an ideal restaurant experience today.

Almost half, or 48 percent, of guests surveyed placed cleanliness/safety as the top third concern for delivery orders, behind quality of food and ease of ordering. Another 40 percent placed it as the second main concern for takeout orders.

Seeing as we’re in the middle of a global pandemic, it makes sense that safety has wound its way to the top of the list for restaurant consumers. (As a category, cleanliness and safety were much lower on the list of concerns when Toast published a similar guest survey in January.) But Toast’s report also found that guests are ordering takeout more frequently than delivery.

From the report:

“7% of guests reported ordering takeout through a third- party app multiple times a day. 9% of guests reported ordering takeout through a restaurant’s app or website once a day. 16% of guests reported ordering takeout through a restaurant’s app or website multiple times a week. And 20% of guests reported ordering takeout through a restaurant’s app or website once a week.”

Cost, of course, remains a big issue with third-party delivery apps. That’s especially true now, with many restaurants trying to offset the high commission fees these services charge by raising delivery prices. But given the pandemic we are in, safety is obviously a growing concern.

One reason takeout might be more popular right now than delivery is that food goes through more touchpoints when someone drops it at your house, since the meal has to be collected by a driver. Issues around delivery drivers tampering with food abounded even before the pandemic. In response, some chains now offer tamper-free packaging. But even setting that aside for a minute, customers still have to worry about the cleanliness of the driver’s vehicle, whether or not that person is sick, and if they are wearing protective gear. Toast noted in its report that, at least for now, customers “might prefer the level of control over cleanliness and safety they get when picking food orders up themselves.”

Toast recommends that restaurants communicate frequently and clearly with customers about steps they are taking to keep their businesses safe. However, it can be tough to guarantee safety if the food is leaving their hands and going to the customer via a third-party delivery service. There’s no quick fix for that, unfortunately, since most restaurants can’t afford to keep their own delivery fleet. For now, restaurants should continue prioritizing cleanliness on takeout orders and hope their third-party delivery counterparts are doing the same.