When it comes to ordering meal delivery, consumers have plenty of options, from leading third-party aggregators to smaller, regional players to restaurants that offer in-house delivery. Soon, delivery providers may have one more major player against which to contend.
Digital on-demand convenience service Gopuff announced Monday (March 21) its first restaurant partner for Gopuff Kitchen, its meal delivery service, which has previously sold meals prepared in-house. Through this partnership, the company will offer late-night meal deliveries from North Palm Beach, Florida-based fast-casual chain BurgerFi’s “Fi on the Fly” food truck.
For more: Gopuff Launches Hot Meal Service Using Mobile Kitchens
“By partnering with Gopuff, we are ushering in a new, unrivaled era of convenience and superior service,” Ian Baines, CEO of BurgerFi, said in a statement. “We are excited to bring this unique late-night delivery option to life and will continue to raise the bar across every aspect of the BurgerFi experience.”
With this announcement, the on-demand delivery service is making moves into the third-party restaurant delivery space dominated by players such players as DoorDash, Uber Eats and Grubhub. Granted, these aggregators fired the first blow, as it were, with each of them having added convenience delivery to their marketplaces in recent years. In fact, DoorDash and Grubhub both have in-house digital convenience stores, with the latter’s launching just last month.
Related news: Grubhub Launches Grubhub Goods to Challenge DashMart, Gopuff
Gopuff is not the only major delivery service making moves to challenge restaurant aggregators’ hold on the category. At the start of the year, Instacart launched its Ready Meals Hub, offering hot food from grocery retailers, typically at lower prices than restaurant delivery.
See also: Instacart Aims to Price Out DoorDash with Launch of Meal Delivery
Findings from PYMNTS’ December 2021 study, The Digital Divide: Delivery Service Aggregators And The Digital Shift, created in collaboration with Paytronix, revealed that 42% of all consumers had used a restaurant aggregator in the previous 18 months.
Additionally, the study, which drew from a survey of a census-balanced panel of more than 2,500 United States consumers conducted in late October, found that the top reason for using aggregators is the perceived ease and convenience of the channel, with 65% of users ranking this factor as a motivator.
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“The COVID-19 pandemic necessitated consumers staying at home and forgoing in-person dining,” Tom Pickett, chief revenue officer at DoorDash, told PYMNTS in an interview earlier this month. “The way they adapted reflects trends that were already taking shape: dining behaviors are increasingly shifting toward convenience in online ordering and off-premises dining.”
Read more: DoorDash: Bbot Tech Brings Digital Convenience to On-Site Dining
Meanwhile, research from the October 2021 edition of the Digital Divide report, Aggregators: The Cost Of Convenience, also created in collaboration with Paytronix, found that consumers who do not use aggregators cite cost-related concerns as the main deterrent.
Read the full report: Digital Divide, Aggregators: The Cost of Convenience