Timeline of online food delivery

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This is a timeline of online food delivery.

Big picture

Time period Key developments in online food delivery
1996–2001 This era is characterized by the rise of the Internet, the dotcom boom and the subsequent crash. Dotcom startups like Webvan, HomeGrocer, and Kozmo started online grocery delivery, but ended up closing in 2001 after the dotcom crash. Seamless is also founded.
2001–2010 GrubHub is founded. By the late 2000s, major pizza chains have created their own mobile applications and started doing 20-30% of their business online.[1]
2011–2015 With increased smartphone penetration, and the growth of both Uber and the sharing economy, food delivery startups start to receive more attention again. This era is associated with the founding of Caviar and Instacart.[2] By 2015, online ordering is about to overtake phone ordering.[3] But by September, online delivery still accounted for just about 3 percent of the 61 billion U.S. restaurant "visits" or transactions.[4]
2016 This period sees the shutdown of many online food ordering and delivery services, with the services engaged in food preparation seeing the hardest hits. SpoonRocket, Din, and Bento shut down, while services such as Sprig and Munchery undergo belt-tightening.
2017 DoorDash and Eat24 both partner with robot delivery companies (Starship Technologies and Marble respectively), and some observers see robot delivery as a necessary component of a sustainable and defensible business model for online food delivery.

Full timeline

Year Month and date (if available) Event type Organization type Details
1989 Launch Grocery delivery Peapod, which pioneers the online grocery delivery concept, is foundedby Andrew and Thomas Parkinson in Evanston, IL.[5]
1994 January Going online Fast food chain "PizzaNet" – Pizza Hut’s digital ordering hub, launches, and accepts the first-ever online order, a large pepperoni, mushroom and extra cheese pizza.[6]
1996 July Launch Grocery delivery Webvan, an online grocery delivery service, is founded by Louis Borders. It IPOs on November 5, 1999.[7]
1998 March Launch Multi-purpose delivery Kozmo, an online delivery services for many services (including groceries) founded.[8]
1999 December 1 Launch Online food ordering SeamlessWeb is founded in order to provide companies with a web-based system for ordering food from restaurants and caterers.[9]
2000 June 26 Merger/acquisition Grocery delivery Webvan buys out HomeGrocer.[10]
2001 April 12 Shutdown Multi-purpose delivery Kozmo shuts down.[11] The company had made profits in New York, Boston and San Francisco in December and secured $25 million in investments prior to shutdown.
2001 July Shutdown Grocery delivery Webvan shuts down.[12]
2001 Going online Fast food chain Papa John's pizza launches online ordering.[13]
2002 March Going online Grocery store Safeway begins delivering online grocery orders.[14]
2004 Launch Online food ordering GrubHub, an online restaurant delivery service, is founded in 2004 by two web developers, Matt Maloney and Mike Evans, who were looking for an alternative to paper menus.[15]
2007 August Launch (subsidiary) Grocery delivery AmazonFresh initially offers home grocery delivery to residents of the Seattle suburb of Mercer Island in an invitation-only beta test in August 2007.[16]
2008 March 1 Launch Online food ordering Eat24hours, an online restaurant delivery service, is founded.[17]
2009 January Launch Catering service ZeroCater, a startup for delivering catered food to businesses, is founded.[18][19]
2009 July Product enhancement Fast food chain Pizza Hut launches a free iPhone application today that offers mobile ordering and games to play while one waits for delivery.[20]
2009 August Launch Catering service Roaming Hunger, a website for finding food trucks, launches the first website dedicated to booking catering from food trucks at any location.[21]
2012 February Launch Online food ordering and delivery DoorDash, which would later become a Y-Combinator summer 2013 food delivery company, issues its first delivery.[22]
2012 July 1 Launch Online food ordering and delivery Instacart, which offers an app that lets users order groceries and delivers them, is founded.[23]
2012 September 12 Launch Online food ordering and delivery Caviar launches, and starts off offering delivery in the San Francisco area from high-end restaurants rated 4-stars or higher on Yelp.[24]
2013 April Launch Food preparation, online food ordering, and delivery Sprig, a delivery service for healthy meals, launches in San Francisco.[25]
2013 June Launch Food preparation, online food ordering, and delivery SpoonRocket, a Y-Combinator-backed company for delivering fast food meals, is founded.[26]
2013 June Expansion Grocery delivery AmazonFresh expands out to Los Angeles.[27] It would later expand out to San Francisco by December 2013.
2013 August Merger/acquisition Online food ordering Seamless and GrubHub merge.[28]
2014 August 4 Merger/acquisition Online food ordering and delivery Square acquires Caviar.[29]
2015 February 10 Merger/acquisition Online food ordering Yelp acquires Eat24.[17]
2015 February 18 Launch (subsidiary) Online food ordering and delivery Uber launches into the food delivery space with UberEATS, starting off in Barcelona.[30]
2015 April 16 Market size Online food ordering and delivery Online food ordering business in India witnessing exponential growth. Organized food business reaches worth US$48 billion, of which food delivery is US$15 billion.[31] Several startups rose in 2015 including Zomato, TinyOwl, Swiggy, Innerchef, Food Panda, The First Meal and Fresh Menu with focus on apps.[32]
2015 October 5 Partnership Online food ordering and delivery Tapingo announces launch of large scale cooperation with Aramark to expand its services into many university campuses across the United States
2016 March 15 Shutdown Food preparation, online food ordering, and delivery San Francisco Bay Area-focused on-demand delivery service SpoonRocket shuts down after failing to raise capital to continue operations, despite achieving unit economics profitability. It says it will transition customers to competitor Spring, which is offering SpoonRocket users a $10 discount.[33][34][35] The next day, it is announced that Brazilian food chain iFood is acquiring SpoonRocket for its technology.[36][37]
2016 October 11 Acquisition (failed) Online food ordering and delivery Bloomberg reports that Square tried to sell Caviar (with Uber and GrubHub as potential suitors) but failed to agree on a price with either buyer, with Square proposing a price tag of $100 million. Caviar loses money, but Square (a public company) does not provide information on the extent of its losses.[38]
2016 October 25 Shutdown Recipe ingredient delivery Recipe delivery service Din shuts down after failing to become profitable. Despite achieving profitability on a unit economics basis, it failed to make enough of a margin to offset operational overhead.[39]
2016 December 9 Shutdown Food preparation, online food ordering, and delivery Bento, a delivery service that provides pan-Asian cuisine, shuts down. Despite achieving unit economics profitability, the service has to shut down after running out of money and failing to raise more.[40] Upon shutdown, the co-founders share more information on the company's trajectory, struggles, mistakes, and difficult decision to shut down.[41] Prior to the shutdown, the company transitioned from high burn to profitability by transitioning from an on-demand delivery model to a catering model.[42]
2017 March 21 Robot delivery Online food ordering and delivery DoorDash rolls out six delivery robots for use in California, following trials in Redwood City.[43] The delivery is in partnership with Starship Technologies, which is also partnering with courier service Postmates.[44]
2017 April 12 Robot delivery Online food ordering and delivery San Francisco-based startup Marble announces a partnership with Yelp's Eat24 where Marble's robots deliver food for partner restaurants, initially geographically limited to some parts of San Francisco. The robots are maintained by Marble, and initially have both a human chaperone and a remote person monitoring the robot.[45]

References

  1. "Why Pizza Giants Want Customers to Click, Not Call, for Delivery". Adage.com. Retrieved January 10, 2016. 
  2. "Delivery Start-Ups Are Back Like It's 1999". The New York Times. Retrieved January 10, 2016. 
  3. "Online food delivery ordering is about to overtake phone ordering in the US - Quartz". Qz.com. Retrieved January 10, 2016. 
  4. "Restaurant food delivery heating up". Columbian.com. Retrieved January 10, 2016. 
  5. "Peapod". Retrieved January 8, 2016. 
  6. "Pizza Hut Celebrates 20th Anniversary of World's First Online Purchase With 50 Percent Off Online Deal for Hut Lovers Members". Restaurantnews.com. Retrieved January 8, 2016. 
  7. "Webvan announces shutdown, Chapter 11 filing - Jul. 9, 2001". CNN. Retrieved January 10, 2016. 
  8. "E-Commerce: The failure of Kozmo.com". Threeg1b.blogspot.com. Retrieved January 10, 2016. 
  9. "Jason Finger of Seamless: The Random Idea That Sparked a $100M Business". :. Retrieved January 8, 2016. 
  10. "Webvan Group buys HomeGrocer.com in $1.2B deal- - Jun. 26, 2000". CNN. Retrieved January 10, 2016. 
  11. "Kozmo to End Operations - 1,100 People to Lose Jobs". The New York Times. April 12, 2001. Retrieved January 10, 2016. 
  12. "Webvan goes under / Online grocer shuts down -- $830 million lost, 2,000 workers fired - SFGate". Sfgate.com. Retrieved January 8, 2016. 
  13. "Papa John's Launches Mobile Gift Card Ordering Site - Restaurant News - QSR magazine". Retrieved January 10, 2016. 
  14. "Safeway begins delivering online grocery orders / Albertson's also will help fill the gap left when Webvan closed down - SFGate". Sfgate.com. Retrieved January 8, 2016. 
  15. "GrubHub's CEO On The Shock Of Outgrowing Three Offices In A Few Short Years - Business Insider". Businessinsider.com. Retrieved January 8, 2016. 
  16. "Amazon starts grocery delivery service - seattlepi.com". Seattlepi.com. Retrieved January 8, 2016. 
  17. 17.0 17.1 "Eat24". Retrieved January 10, 2016. 
  18. "How ZeroCater Became A $100M Startup With $1.5M Of Investment". Foodtechconnect.com. Retrieved January 12, 2016. 
  19. "ZeroCater". Retrieved January 12, 2016. 
  20. "Pizza Hut First Pizza Chain to Launch iPhone App". Adage.com. Retrieved January 8, 2016. 
  21. "Meals on Wheels Online: New Site Tracks Food Trucks Nationwide". FastCompany.com. Retrieved January 22, 2016. 
  22. "Y Combinator-Backed DoorDash Delivers Food Quickly In South Bay, Hopes To Expand Beyond Food". Techcrunch.com. Retrieved January 10, 2016. 
  23. "Instacart". Retrieved January 10, 2016. 
  24. "Former 'MunchOnMe' Team Launches Caviar, A Curated 'Seamless'". Techcrunch.com. Retrieved January 10, 2016. 
  25. "With $1.2 Million In Seed Funding, Sprig Launches To Bring Fast, Healthy Meals To SF Eaters For $12 Each". Techcrunch.com. Retrieved January 12, 2016. 
  26. "SpoonRocket Delivery Service Takes Flight". Eastbayexpress.com. Retrieved January 12, 2016. 
  27. "AmazonFresh Grocery Delivery Service Now Available In Los Angeles". Geeky-gadgets.com. Retrieved January 8, 2016. 
  28. "GrubHub and Seamless complete merger - Chicago Business Journal". Bizjournals.com. Retrieved January 8, 2016. 
  29. "Square Acquires Food Delivery Service Caviar". Techcrunch.com. Retrieved January 10, 2016. 
  30. "Barcelona, your meal is arriving now!". Retrieved January 10, 2016. 
  31. IBEF (January 31, 2016). "Food Industry - India Brand Equity Foundation". Retrieved February 29, 2016. 
  32. "Indias growing appetite for food service startups". 
  33. Constine, Josh (March 15, 2016). "SpoonRocket shuts down amongst on-demand apocalypse". TechCrunch. Retrieved May 5, 2017. 
  34. Martin, Scott (arch 15, 2016). "SpoonRocket Shuts Down Meal Delivery Service". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved May 5, 2017.  Check date values in: |date= (help)
  35. Fort, Ellen (March 15, 2016). "SpoonRocket, an App-Driven Food Delivery Service, Ceases Operations. The on-demand market is experiencing a backlash". Eater (San Francisco). Retrieved May 5, 2017. 
  36. Chang, Lulu (March 16, 2016). "Acquisition by iFood brings on-demand meal service SpoonRocket back from the dead". Digital Trends. Retrieved May 5, 2017. 
  37. Dicket, Megan Rose (March 16, 2016). "SpoonRocket finds a home with Brazil-based iFood". TechCrunch. Retrieved May 5, 2017. 
  38. Newcomer, Eric; Wang, Selina (October 11, 2016). "Square Said to Have Discussed Caviar Sale With Uber, GrubHub". Bloomberg. Retrieved May 5, 2017. 
  39. Tuder, Stefanie (October 25, 2016). "Recipe Delivery Service Din Has Shut Down. Blame a crowded market". Eater (San Francisco). Retrieved May 5, 2017. 
  40. Tuder, Stefanie (January 10, 2017). "Bento Is the Latest Meal Delivery Service to Shut Down. Following in the same footsteps as Din and Spoonrocket". Eater (San Francisco). Retrieved May 5, 2017. 
  41. "Kitchen Confidential: Season 3, Episode 6". Retrieved May 5, 2017. 
  42. "The Food Delivery Death Star. VCs still give billions to food delivery startups. But what's their endgame?". The California Review. November 3, 2016. Retrieved May 5, 2017. 
  43. Samuelson, Kate (March 21, 2017). "Robots Are About to Start Delivering Food in California". Fortune. Retrieved May 5, 2017. 
  44. Kantrowitz, Alex. "DoorDash Will Start Delivering Food Via Robots In California This Thursday". BuzzFeed. 
  45. Kolodny, Lora (April 12, 2017). "Marble and Yelp Eat24 start robot food delivery in San Francisco". TechCrunch. 

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