Food delivery

The first food delivery service was for naengmyeon (cold noodle) in Korea, recorded in 1768. Haejang-guk (hangover soup) was also delivered for the yangban in the 1800s. Advertisement for food delivery and catering also appeared in the newspaper in 1906.[3][4]

A man and a Starship Technologies delivery robot waiting at a pedestrian crossing in Redwood City, California

Meal delivery orders are typically on demand, intended to be eaten right away, and include hot, already-prepared food. While some service providers offer subscription services, ordering for delivery usually involves contacting a local restaurant or chain by telephone or online. Online ordering is available in many countries, where some stores offer online menus and ordering. Since 1995, companies such as Waiter.com have their own interfaces where customers order food from nearby restaurants that have partnered with the service. Meal delivery requires special technology and care, since the food items are already cooked and prepared, and can be easily damaged if dropped, tilted, or left out for long periods of time. Hotbags are often used to keep food warm. They are thermal bags, typically made of vinyl, nylon, or Cordura, that passively retain heat.[5]

In Mumbai, dabbawalas deliver hundreds of thousands of lunches to paying subscribers every workday through a system of rail and bicycle links. The lunches are sent in tiffin carriers, and are prepared in the late morning by either a restaurant or family member (typically a wife for a working husband, since many families still follow traditional asymmetrical gender roles). The tiffins are then returned either in the afternoon or the next day by the same system.

In the Philippines, most commonly delivered meals are from fast food chains like Jollibee, McDonald's, Pizza Hut, Shakey's, KFC, etc. Orders are being done through their delivery websites, mobile apps, or by phone. Time of delivery usually takes around 30 to 45 minutes.

In China, consumers mainly place food delivery orders via smartphone apps, with the number of users approaching 500 million people as of 2020.[6] The transaction scale of China's food delivery market is expected to eventually surpass US $129.17 billion, an increase of 14.8% year-on-year.[7]

Community-supported agriculture schemes work on a subscription box model, where a box of vegetables, dairy product, fish, or meat is delivered periodically from a local vendor.

Various meal kit delivery subscription services have started in Europe and North America since 2007. These typically have pre-measured ingredients designed for accompanying recipes.

InstaShop, an app-based grocery delivery service.

Grocery delivery companies will deliver groceries, pre-prep or pre-made meals, and more to customers. The companies work with brick and mortar stores[8] or their own line of grocery items. These orders are typically larger and more expensive than normal meal deliveries, and are often not meant to be eaten right away, rather they are to replace items someone has run out of, like flour or milk. They are almost always done online, and typically take at least one day to deliver, though some companies offer same-day delivery. Many delivery services are required to offer delivery within a couple hours because frozen and fresh foods have to be delivered before they spoil.

Grocery delivery differs greatly from meal delivery in the sense that its is usually sent as a parcel through common mailing services like USPS or FedEx, if it's only non-perishables. Since non-perishable items are normally packaged before arriving at grocery stores, they can easily be repackaged and delivered to customers without any special care. Sometimes, dry ice is added to keep perishable items fresh. Fresh and frozen foods complicate delivery which is done, usually by store/provider employees or third party services such as Instacart.

The grocery delivery business has taken off, with hundreds of niche delivery companies springing up offering a variety of different services from weekly grocery restock to pre-planned, pre-measured family meals to make cooking easier. Online retailer giants have hopped on board too. Amazon.com, for example, offers AmazonFresh delivery service. Amazon purchased Whole Foods Market in 2017,[9] and by 2018 Amazon had added Whole Foods items to its Prime Now service, for 2-hour delivery in certain markets.[10]

According to Forbes,[11] grocery stores should deliver their own groceries to help prevent third party, part-time, non-store deliverers from becoming the 'face' or brand image of their local grocer. Limitations of having to pick and deliver groceries within a short period of time need to be remedied to allow for more flexibility to enable more deliveries to be more efficiently routed. Frozen and fresh food refrigeration units inside the store and the delivery vehicle, as well as lockable, consumer refrigeration boxes at the consumers home will be a solution that allows the groceries to be delivered at any time, further relieving delivery issues. This scenario will allow more local grocers to deliver with employees vs outside delivery services.

A farmer in his field buys his breakfast from a motorcycle-based traveling vendor. Zhangpu County, Fujian

In addition to paying for the food, customers will often have to pay a delivery fee. The delivery fee will cover the cost of gas or other transportation costs, but usually does not go to the delivery person.[12] For meal delivery, it is common to give the deliverer an optional tip upon paying for the order. In Canada and the United States, tipping for delivery is customary. Opinions on appropriate amounts vary widely.[13] In addition, grocery stores may charge more for the foods that are ordered online for delivery than they charge for the same items off-the-shelf.

In restaurant delivery, if the delivery service is provided by a third party, such as Uber Eats or Deliveroo, the delivery fee, which can be as much as 25 or 30 percent of the value of the order, is paid by the restaurant to the service provider. In addition to the delivery fees, the service companies charge the restaurants a fee to set up the account, further cutting into the restaurants' margins.[14] Due to intense competition between the service providers wishing to sign up restaurants to use their services, restaurants have been able to negotiate lower delivery fees. McDonald's negotiated the delivery fees charged by Uber Eats from nearly 20 percent to "around 15 percent," according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.[14]

In October 2020, Montgomery County, Maryland County Executive Marc Elrich announced that he and the Montgomery County Council (Maryland) are investigating the county’s ability to force lower fees charged to restaurants by food delivery apps.[15]

In a 2019 market study of restaurant delivery services, the global market for online-ordered prepared food delivery was estimated at $94 billion and is estimated to grow at just over 9 percent a year, reaching $134.5 billion in 2023.[16] The study defined the market as 1)"meals ordered online which are directly delivered by the restaurant, no matter if ordered via a platform (e.g. Delivery Hero) or a restaurant website (e.g. Domino's)"; 2) online meal orders and deliveries "both carried out by a platform" (Deliveroo, UberEats, e.g.); 3) "online orders that are picked up in the restaurant" by the customer. It does not include phone orders.[16]

According to research conducted by the NDP Group, online restaurant ordering is growing 300% faster than dine-in traffic.[17]

"Online ordering has started to become the norm, thanks to the convenience, accuracy, and ability to integrate payments. At scale, ubiquitous on-demand and subscription delivery of prepared food could potentially spell the end of cooking at home.”[18]

• Milk delivery
• Yakult lady
• Online grocer
• Take-out