When you look at all of the food delivery apps out there, there's not much that distinguishes one from the other. To see who gets out ahead, it is basically a popularity contest amongst them. GrubHub used to lead the way here until a few years ago when Doordash claimed that lead. When you really think about it, is there really any difference between any of these companies?
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| With food delivery apps, it is a constant race to see who will be on top. |
Is there a food delivery platform that is better than the others?
When you look at all of the major food delivery companies operating in the United States, they all generally offer the same type of service. There is nothing different. They all offer delivery from local restaurants, and the pricing is generally about the same. They all offer some sort of membership pass that will get customers free deliveries. What can one of these companies possibly do to distinguish themselves from their competitors?
Food delivery app drivers need to deliver food in a timely manner
When hearing this, one has to wonder what a timely manner actually means? Does it mean 15 minutes, 20 minutes, a half hour? How about 40 minutes? Is that an acceptable delivery time? Whatever that magic time is, it can be one of the most desirable things that a food delivery company strives to achieve in order to set themselves apart from their competitors.
How can that be done though? Let's be honest. There's not one food delivery company that has better delivery drivers than the others. Most people that delivery with Doordash also deliver with Grubhub or Uber Eats. They might also do Instacart, Roadie or use some other gig work app. So trying to gather all the best delivery drivers to your app is not going to work.
It's really a tough scenario for food delivery gig companies. They all want to have the reputation of getting food to their customers quicker than their competitors. Unfortunately, this is a feat that is almost impossible due to too many people involved. Everything would have to be perfect from the customer, the delivery driver and the merchant. Let's not forget traffic and other obstacles along the way.
The perfect food delivery order
Let's give an example of a perfect food delivery order. The customer places their order. The app immediately circulates it out to drivers. The first driver it's offered to accepts it because it pays well. Good thing this was a good tipping customer. The driver just so happens to be right next to the pick up location. The merchant was really quick to have the food ready and hands off the order to the delivery driver.
The customer is only a mile away. The delivery driver proceeds and takes about five minutes to get to the drop off location. It is a single family home with easy parking in the driveway. From start to finish this call may have taken 10 minutes. If a food delivery app were to make sure every delivery order went like this, they would be able to proclaim themselves as the leader in the food delivery business and would take over the world.
The truth is that this could never happen. How many perfect orders are there? Not many. Any customer that expected their delivery to be made in 10 minutes is not living in reality. A 20 minute delivery is super quick, but they really should expect their food to be delivered in 30 to 40 minutes. That is considered a timely manner! I don't give a damn what the delivery apps say. We all know that is just to entice the customer to place an order.
Can pricing make a food delivery app stand out from its competitors?
It would, but there is only so much these companies can do with their pricing. I mean, they do have to make money. They do not have control of what the merchants charge for their food. The only charges the food delivery apps have control over are their delivery fees and the fees they charge for their free delivery memberships. Let's not forget the fees they charge their partnered merchants. But really, there is not much one of these food delivery companies can do with pricing to distinguish themselves from their competitors.
Can strategic marketing make a food delivery app stand out from its competition?
This is the only thing that a food delivery app can do to try and set themselves apart. They need to keep their name out there and make sure that people are using their app over the others. All of that is done through marketing, and it can be very costly.
Have you ever wondered why a certain food delivery app seems to dominate its competitors in a certain area but not in another. This is all done by slick and strategic marketing of that particular area. If you can get customers to think of you when they want food delivered, you have gained that customer, and you want to make sure you keep that customer.
If you think about California, one of the biggest economic places in the world, these food delivery companies are not making nearly as much money as they used to before the state got on them about the labor rights of their drivers. Now, with Prop 22 and other new laws, these food delivery companies may be losing much more money than ever.
Before Prop 22 was passed, do you remember when some of these gig companies were threatening to leave California if they were forced to turn their drivers in to employees? That was one of the biggest bluffs ever. None of these companies would ever leave California. They would lose name recognition in one of the biggest markets in the world.
California has a major influence over the rest of the United States. If any of these food delivery companies left California, they would basically be handing the market over to their competitors, and we all know that they wouldn't want to do that. There are only a few food delivery companies that are competing for national dominance. There is no way that Doordash, Uber Eats or Grubhub are just going to hand over the food delivery industry to on another.
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