An overview of what is happening in the food delivery market

The food delivery market has grown a lot in recent years. With this, innovation needs are born to make this service more and more automatic and of quick execution. Because of this, several brands bet on new forms of delivery combined with new disruptive technologies. Different food delivery brands are developing new food delivery options that will change the future of the food delivery industry.

These new developments are based on two P of Marketing:

• Process: An easier online ordering system

• People: Create the smallest customer journey 

New ways to order

{ Make all the journey easier and fast for the customer }

• Order by Tweet

The domino's brand has developed a fast pizza ordering system via emoji, where consumers using a simple pizza emoji tweeted or sent by message were able to order their pizza based on their account history.

• Order via a virtual assistant

Domino´s created a Pizza bot for Facebook messenger named Dom, where the customers can message Dom and order a pizza with a single word or emoji

Figure 1: Virtual Assistant used by Domino´s

• Order via Alexa or Siri

The development of technology has had a major impact on the way we order food today. One of the best examples is the appearance of virtual assistants like Amazon's Alexa or even Apple's Siri, which allows consumers through their voice to place their orders for food. The advancement and popularity of these new technologies, food delivery companies have started to use them in a way to customize and personalize their services to satisfy their consumers' wishes as much as possible.

The company Just Eat has started to integrate this new technology into its services. Its main objective for the company is that ordering food at Just Eat, becomes an integral part of people's lifestyles, like having a natural conversation with a friend but the friend is the voice assistant of Amazon Alexa.

This company has added Alexa reordering skills, since the company supports the new Echo Show, customers can easily order food my voice.

Figure 2: Echo show used to order food at Just Eat

Example of Domino´s:

Grubhub, an American online and mobile prepared food ordering and delivery marketplace that concepts dinner with local takeout restaurants is another example which use Alexa to let customer reorder any of their last three purchases.

• Order via Smartwatch

This type of technology is increasing in the past few years like the graphic can show.

Figure 3: The evolution of smartwatches

So with the popularity of this technological device, food delivery brands started to develop platforms that could be used in these new devices, both Android and Apple, where the customers can order meals from their wrists in a few clicks.

Domino´s was the pioneer, however other companies introduced this option in the order option, like OrderUp, an American online and mobile food-ordering and delivery company.

• Order via smart TV

Like phones, watches, and televisions have also become smart devices with countless functions beyond just watching TV. So once again, food delivery brands took advantage and saw an opportunity on smart TVs as an option for food ordering.

 For example, Papa John’s makes ordering pizza as fun as easy as streaming a movie. They developed an app on Apple TV, that allows customers to customize all orders, payment and delivery information. Besides, they created a 25% discount campaign for consumers who use this device as an incentive to order through Apple TV.

“Pizza and entertainment are a natural fit,” CEO John Schnatter, the highly visible face of the chain, stated in a press release. “With the launch of our Apple TV app, we’re hoping to make family movie night and friend gatherings around the TV even more enjoyable.”

Another example of this development is the TVtakeaways, an app that is directly integrated with Samsung’s Smart Tv operating system.

• Order from your car

Like televisions, watches or mobile phones, cars, with the evolution of technology, have become intelligent devices, of which it has numerous functions without just driving. So, it’s also an opportunity to be an option for order food. Pizza Hut together with the company Accenture Visa creates a system through which they can order their food while driving.

• Order with your eyes

Through a collaboration with Tobi Technology, a company focused on the development of technological solutions, Pizza Hut has developed an unusual and subconscious menu. This menu collects data through the movement and focus of consumers' eyes, thus suggesting ingredients and creating over 4 896 possible combinations in 2.5 seconds. .

Modern Delivery Options

{ Speed up delivery, lower operational costings }

• Delivery with robots

The evolution of AI technologies is giving rise to autonomous delivery cars and robots. With this, several food delivery companies develop their delivery systems through use.

For example, a Just Eat in collaboration with Starship technologies’ and an Eat24 in collaboration with a technology start-up Marble and Yelp develop autonomous robots with their mechanism to facilitate and shorten the time of the food delivery process.

• Delivery with drones

For now not only experiences, however, but there have also been some experiments in order to understand if drones are possible effective mechanisms of food delivery.