restaurant delivery

September 6, 2018

Ordermark Raises $9.5 Million for its Online Order Management Tools

Ordermark, a startup that helps restaurants unify and organize online orders, today announced that it has closed a $9.5 million Series A led by Nosara Capital. This brings the total amount raised by the company to $12.6 million.

The boom in restaurant delivery has spawned a boom in companies who will deliver that food. Managing orders from the likes of GrubHub, UberEats, and DoorDash can cause chaos for restaurant staff because none of those systems talk to each other, and each require separate installations. Ordermark works to help streamline and simplify that process. As we wrote about the company back in March:

Ordermark works with restaurants to identify delivery services available in their geographic area. The company then onboards these platforms and integrates them into an Ordermark dashboard, which standardizes all incoming orders and funnels them through a single printer.

Since we last checked in with the company, Ordermark has grown quite a bit and now integrates with fifteen online ordering services. The company also has more than 500 restaurant brands including TGI Friday’s, Qdoba, Johnny Rockets and Sonic.

As Ordermark Founder and CEO, Alex Canter, told me earlier this year “Convenience isn’t going away, and it’s not a trend either.”

Ordermark’s business is akin to the old saw about the people who really made money off the gold rush were the ones who sold pick axes. The more delivery grows, the more restaurants will need consolidation tools like Ordermark’s.

With its new money, Canter said that Ordermark will be expanding its product offering into reporting tools, accounting and more.

Restaurants, especially ones that deliver, are data-generating machines. Everyone eats, and developing a deeper understanding of what people order, when they order it, where they live, etc. is a gold mine for restaurants who can then market to precise neighborhoods and demographics. Startups like Ordermark and Ingest.ai aren’t just streamlining order processes, they are helping restaurants create a deeper understanding of their business.

August 17, 2018

A Quick Tour of Kitchen United’s Virtual Kitchen Operation

When we first wrote about Kitchen United, a commercial kitchen space where restaurants can open delivery-only expansions, we thought the idea was a good one. Businesses like Kitchen United provide a way for eateries to capitalize on the growth of delivery, but don’t require a huge chunk of capital.

Since opening in downtown Pasadena on June 1, Kitchen United has built out its 12,000 square foot facility and now houses eight different restaurants including Pizza Plant, The Lost Cuban, Mama Musubi, Canter’s Deli and Barney’s Gourmet Burgers.

During my recent trip to Los Angeles I stopped by Kitchen United, where its Chief Culinary Officer, Massimo Noja De Marco, gave me a tour. I went during the day, so it wasn’t as busy, but there were enough cooks doing prep work to get a sense of how it all works.

Here’s what I saw:

Kitchen United is big, taking up a serious chunk of an entire city block. In addition to the rows of cooking spaces rented out by the restaurants, there is also cold and dry storage. Kitchen United offers its own staffers to take care of stuff like dishwashing and expediting orders, so restaurant workers can focus on making food.

Most of the restaurants are slotted into galley-style kitchen spaces. They have ovens, fryers and cooktops, but can bring in their own specialized equipment (like a particular pizza oven), which Kitchen United will help install.

There are also smaller, cubicle-like spaces for food entrepreneurs to experiment with their personal (or grandma’s secret) recipe. This took me a little by surprise. When I last talked with Kitchen United, the company was focused only on restaurant delivery. Perhaps there was enough demand or incremental revenue to open it up to smaller operations, who pay by the hour.

Kitchen United was built to accommodate a steady stream of delivery drivers coming and going throughout the day and night. As such, there are 62 parking spaces where drivers can pull up, run into the building and drive off without needing to circle the block for a spot or hold up traffic.

Once inside Kitchen United has big signs and screens up to help make sure the right drivers get the right order. Food is packaged up and brought out to a series of racks in the back where drivers can grab them and go quickly. There are also attendants on duty to help make sure the orders are fulfilled properly.

De Marco said that currently Kitchen United is fulfilling “hundreds” of orders each day, and that busy times can vary by restaurant (Pizza Plant, which serves a vegan pizza, is evidently busiest after 10 p.m. on weekends). Kitchen United only delivers within a 3 – 5 mile radius (that goes out to 20 miles for catering jobs).

The company has 12 more locations in the works across the country and is growing at a time when Pilotworks, another commercial kitchen on demand startup, closed two of its locations. However, companies like The Food Corridor, and former Uber CEO, Travis Kalanick’s cloud kitchen operation, offer similar services.

We should be able to get more information about the commercial kitchen and delivery space from Kitchen United CEO, Jim Collins, who will be speaking on the future of restaurants at our upcoming Smart Kitchen Summit in Seattle in October (get your ticket today!).

August 17, 2018

DoorDash Raises Another $250 Million

DoorDash, the restaurant delivery startup, announced yesterday that it has raised another $250 million in a “growth round” co-led by Coatue Management and DST Global. This new funds come just months after the company raised $535 million in March. This brings the total amount raised by DoorDash to $971.8 million and the company valuation to $4 billion.

In a press announcement, DoorDash said that since January it has doubled its geographic footprint to more than 1,000 cities across the U.S. and Canada, and will double that number by the end of this year. As we’ve reported, DoorDash has also been on a tear signing delivery partnerships with White Castle, Red Lobster, Chipotle, and more. The company said it has expanded its nascent grocery delivery for Walmart to nearly 300 stores in 20 states over the last four months.

Sales at restaurants have been booming in general and hit $61.6 billion in July. While delivery orders account for just 3 percent of all restaurant orders, research from NPD Group shows that delivery visits are up 10 percent and sales have grown by 20 percent since 2012.

With a market this big and growing, it’s not hard to see why DoorDash wanted to bulk up its war chest while it can as it battles the likes of Uber Eats and GrubHub for market share. Personally, I just hope they spend most of this new money on moonshots like robot or drone delivery.

We’ll be sure to ask DoorDash COO, Christopher Payne what the company is spending money on while he’s up here speaking at our Smart Kitchen Summit in October. (Or buy a ticket and ask him yourself!)

April 9, 2018

Uber Buys Jump. Will Its E-Bikes Power More Food Delivery?

Uber announced today that it has acquired Jump, which provides dockless, electric bike sharing services. While much of the talk surrounding the deal has been about adding a new mode of transport for people trying to get around town, it seems like this move could also be a vertically integrated shot in the arm for the company’s growing Uber Eats platform.

Food delivery has been wildly successful for Uber. The service was available in 200 cities around the world last year, achieving profitability in 45 of those markets. Uber is expanding to another 100 cities around the world over the next year.

Adding Jump to the Eats arsenal would make sense in densely populated cities like San Francisco (where Jump already is) and NY, where traffic can slow car-driven deliveries down. Using an e-bike would allow Uber Eats drivers to bypass congestion for faster deliveries. Since Jump’s bikes have electric assist, those making deliveries could do so without breaking (as much of) a sweat.

A direct Jump/Eats relationship would also give Uber more integration throughout its food delivery stack. Uber Eats already allows delivery drivers to use their own bicycles for delivery — why not give them the option to use the Jump bike instead (for a small fee, of course)? As noted, an e-bike could allow drivers to make more deliveries for less “work” to ideally make more money, without the up-front cost of buying what is an expensive mode of transportation.

Uber has already shown its interest in owning more of its food delivery biz. Earlier this year it acquired David Chang’s Ando, a virtual delivery-only restaurant. So it’s not hard to imaging Uber pushing consumers to order from its own virtual restaurant and have that meal delivered on an Uber e-bike.

Having its own fleet of electric bikes in big cities could also help Uber fend off competition from GrubHub and DoorDash, which recently raised $535 million for its own restaurant delivery services. And such a move is not without precedent. Meituan, a Chinese food delivery company, recently purchased the Shanghai bike-sharing startup Mobike.

But potential Jump/Uber integration would also presumably be a win for consumers and restaurants. Getting food delivered faster means less chance of a lukewarm meal arriving at your door. Obviously hotter food is more enjoyable, and it also helps protects a restaurant’s brand from a bad eating experience.

We’ll see if Uber “jumps” (ed. note: sorry) at these opportunities, but this acquisition looks like a smart play, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see others following suit.

March 6, 2018

Ordermark Raises $3.1 Million to Simplify Restaurant Delivery Orders

Canter’s Deli is a storied eating institution in Los Angeles, serving up delicious food since 1931. Alex Canter, the deli’s fourth-generation owner and operator, wanted to embrace the new customers restaurant delivery services like GrubHub and DoorDash could bring. But there was a problem.

Though he successfully set up 14 different online ordering platforms at Canters, each service had its own technology and procedures for handling orders, and none of those services talked to each other. “Each system requires its own hardware to manage it,” Canter told me by phone, “They pretend like nothing else is out there.” Despite added revenue, all these added delivery services were causing confusion with the wait and kitchen staff.

To solve this problem, Canter co-founded and is the CEO of Ordermark, which funnels orders from disparate online ordering services into a unified system to simplify order fulfillment. Ordermark announced today that it has raised a $3.1 million seed round led by TenOneTen Ventures, with participation from Act One Ventures, Mucker Capital and others.

So instead of having to build its own ordering app and force customers to download it, a restaurant can use Ordermark to connect the business with apps and services customers already use.

Ordermark also works in reverse, as a single point of communication back out to customers. If a menu item runs out or the restaurant is shutting down early, the business can enter that information into the Ordermark dashboard and it gets communicated out to all partner-delivery services.

Based in Santa Monica, California, Ordermark has 30 employees and just celebrated its one-year anniversary. Canter said his company is already working with 150 restaurant brands including burger chain Sonic. It will use the new money to accelerate growth and expand to more markets and integrate with more delivery services.

With big players like UberEats and Amazon, and startups like DoorDash getting $535 million in funding, there is gold in them thar restaurant delivery hills. And just like the pick axe salesmen who made the real money in the original gold rush, Ordermark is setting itself up nicely by providing the tools restaurants need to boost their own revenue.

March 1, 2018

Will DoorDash’s New $535M Mean More Robots?

Restaurant delivery startup, DoorDash, announced today that it has raised a whopping $535 million Series D round. The new funding was led by SoftBank (more on that in a minute) and reportedly gives DoorDash a $1.4 billion valuation. DoorDash has now raised more than $721 million in total.

According to TechCrunch, the new money will be used to expand DoorDash from 600 to 1,600 cities, and to hire 250 more people. Additionally, the company plans to make “big investments” in its DoorDash Drive platform. Drive is the company’s service that allows restaurants to accept orders directly (not through the DoorDash app), yet still use DoorDash’s drivers for delivery.

Providing restaurants with a way to fulfill orders without going through the DoorDash app could be a key differentiator for DoorDash as it fights in the battle royale that is the restaurant delivery space. The company can use all the cash it can get as it goes up against GrubHub, Postmates, Amazon and UberEats–which, by the way, SoftBank is an investor as well.

Uber recently purchased Ando, David Chang’s delivery-only restaurant in New York. The Spoon’s Allen Weiner recently noted that this acquisition could translate into more vertical integration, resulting in UberEATS promoting its own food versus meals from other establishments.

DoorDash’s Drive enables the inverse of that. Control is decentralized from its own app and given over to individual restaurants. Empowering restaurants with more delivery options could add more fuel to the virtual restaurant boom we’re experiencing, allowing restaurants to experiment with new cuisines and products online for delivery only, without having to invest in physical infrastructure.

I’m also curious to see if this new money will spur any big forward movement with robot delivery. DoorDash partnered with Marble during the summer of last year for a food delivery pilot program in San Francisco, and worked with Starship Technologies for a pilot in Redwood City and Washington D.C..

Of course, with big money and big valuations comes big expectations. With a sufficiently large warchest, the pressure is now on DoorDash to not just succeed, but exceed expectations.

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