Shawdesh desk:
The early pandemic years were a boom time for food delivery services. With lockdowns in place and people more leery to eat out, usage of services including Uber Eats, DoorDash, Grubhub, and Postmates surged by April 2020. When the month ended, sales for major food delivery services were up 162% year-over-year, according to data from Bloomberg Second Measure.
But since then, the growth rate of such services has slowed. Bloomberg Second Measure’s data says that sales for major food delivery services were up just 6% year-over-year in June 2023. But the data also reveals a clear leader when it comes to the food delivery wars. Here’s how much share of June 2023’s sales each of the big three services has:
As you can see, DoorDash dominates the food delivery business in America. Yet it might not want to get too comfortable in its lead. As Bloomberg Second Measure points out, one of the biggest challenges food delivery services are facing in 2023 is what Grubhub’s former CEO called “promiscuous customers”—those customers who hop between food delivery services.
Frequent users of food delivery services have become accustomed to app hopping to find the best deals as food prices and fuel surcharges continue to rise. Another issue is that due to the growing web of exclusive restaurant partnerships some food delivery services have set up, sometimes a customer has no choice but to order outside of their favorite food delivery app and use a competing app instead. For example, if a regular Grubhub customer wants a Little Caesars pizza, they need to order it through DoorDash, which has partnered with the pizza chain.
All this seems to suggest that the food delivery wars are far from won by any single player.
Leave a Reply