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July 21, 2015

More Food Will Soon be Ordered Online than Over the Phone

By Andrew Bindelglass, Contributing Writer

Every year, Americans make almost 2 billion food delivery orders. For years, this process was always the same: a lazy Sunday afternoon, rifling through a manila folder full of menus, picking up the phone and calling in an order. In recent years, however, many delivery restaurants have included an option to order online on their websites, and independent websites and mobile apps like GrubHub and Seamless have provided another option to order delivery.



Ever since the inception of GrubHub back in 2004, the practice of ordering online has become more and more popular. In the past five years, the amount of online delivery orders has more than doubled, going from 403 million per month in 2010 to 904 million per month in 2015. At the same time, the amount of delivery orders placed over the phone has been steadily decreasing, falling from 1.39 billion 2010 orders per month to 1.02 billion in 2015. If this trend continues as expected, online delivery orders will soon surpass those made over the phone.

GrubHub originally dominated the online delivery game, as it was the first third-party application aimed at providing a one-stop platform to order food online. However, other startups have begun to eat into their market share, to the point that in 2015 only 25 percent of online delivery orders were placed through GrubHub. There are several reasons for this. First, other apps like Seamless have begun to offer the exact same service as GrubHub with access to different restaurants. Second, many chain restaurants like Papa John’s and Domino’s have begun to offer online ordering they host themselves, taking away from GrubHub’s market share. Finally, other startups like UberEATS and DoorDash have come about that offer delivery service from restaurants that don’t deliver, allowing people to experience higher quality food that is still delivered right to their door.

This remarkable boom in online delivery ordering represents just another way that mobile applications are making life more convenient. It will be interesting to see what the next innovation will be in what is already becoming an incredibly crowded field. 




Edited by Dominick Sorrentino
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