While growth rates might differ from one area of the country or even the world to the next, it is very clear the home food delivery industry is growing at a tremendous rate. According to researchers, the growth rate has been about 20% year over year for the last five years. For any kind of industry, that would be considered explosive growth.
Some of the growth within this industry has occurred because of convenience factors while necessity (think COVID lockdowns) has also played a role. Let’s take a look at some of the trends that have led to the demand for home food ordering and delivery services.
The Evolution of Home Food Delivery
It wasn’t all that long ago that pizza was the only option when it can to ordering hot food and having it delivered to your home. Today, restaurants and fast food “joints” are going to have trouble staying in business if they aren’t willing to deliver their goods.
For a while, the home food delivery business was growing at a steady pace without drawing attention. Restaurants in particular began to realize pizza places were making a lot of money, and it might have been more about convenience than the food. For an investment of two or three extra employees a day, restaurants found they could boost revenue by offering hot food delivery services.
This lead to more restaurants and fast food corporations developing online apps to make ordering fast and convenient as opposed to hiring someone to man the phones.
Today, experts estimate that the home food delivery revenue in aggregate will rise to $220 billion by 2025. If correct, that would translate to approximately 40% of the total restaurant sales done a year in the U.S. by itself.
Technology Leading the Way
At the start of the growth in popularity of home food delivery, much of the traffic was handled by phone or online directly with the restaurants. One by one, companies that focus solely on picking up food and delivering it to patrons began jumping into the ring. This was driven by the introduction of mobile apps that made it easy for customers to view a full range of menus and order food through one portal.
These fleet-type services have been springing up all over the world. In the last year alone, the home food delivery industry has had trouble keeping up with demand because of the lockdowns associated with the COVID19 pandemic. In fact, home delivery was the only way people could order and eat restaurant food during some periods over the last year. In addition, many businesses have started supporting the online delivery service niche by offering things like foodpanda coupon codes and Finder’s local Uber Eats restaurant lists. These companies make money by helping people better use these meal delivery apps.
In recent months, it has become the norm for people to just open up their favorite food delivery app, order what they want, and have it delivered to their doorstep. To meet this demand, new home food delivery service providers are joining the fray through investment. It’s now very rare for a restaurant to offer direct delivery services. There is now a clearer divide between the restaurants that prepare the food and the home food delivery service providers who are going to bring it to you.
