5 Most Efficient Business Models for the U.S. Food Delivery Market and How to Develop Apps for Them

The virtual restaurant business model allows restaurants to reduce operating costs. They save on rent, since a virtual restaurant does not need large premises on a passable street. And they spend less on employee salaries, as such restaurants do not need to keep a staff of waiters, managers, and administrators.

CloudKitchens developed an IT platform to manage kitchens, orders, and couriers. CloudKitchens connects small local restaurants and chain restaurants to the service. Using it, restaurants can take orders, make payments, automate the work of employees, analyze business indicators, and cooperate with delivery aggregators.

Couriers use the app to select shifts, confirm orders, and deliver them to the customers. The app automatically calculates weekly earnings and tips.

Gopuff has a fixed delivery cost of $2.95 per order. The service strengthens customer loyalty with a subscription. The user pays $5.95 per month and gets free delivery.

The service is growing due to inviting new suppliers and partnering with large retail chains and aggregators. Gopuff works both with major players such as the Morrison supermarket chain, and with small local businesses.

In 2021, the service expanded to other countries. Gopuff bought Fancy and Dija express delivery services and entered the UK market. And in March 2022, it launched in France. Now, Gopuff operates in 1,000 cities in the U.S., France and the UK.

Order pickers head to the store, search for the goods, check the added ones and contact the customers if they want to replace anything. Then they hand the orders over to the couriers or deliver them to customers themselves. The app automatically calculates earnings, and order pickers can deposit them into their accounts.

Instacart is expanding by inviting new retailers. Now the service offers three hundred thousand products from twenty-five thousand grocery stores in the United States and Canada.

Another growth driver is selling their own technological solutions to retailers. In March 2022, Instacart brought together all services and tools for partners into one technological platform. The websites and apps of such supermarket chains as Publix, Wegmans, and The Fresh Market are now powered by Instacart. The platform also offers digital solutions for stores. These include smart carts with built-in goods scanners, and self-checkouts.

The user tracks all the actions of the courier in their house on a video. As the courier finishes arranging the products and closes the door, the broadcast ends. A video record of the delivery remains available in the app within a week.

Walmart solved the last mile problem and beat its competitors, Shipt and Instacart delivery services. InHome is now available to 6 million households in the U.S., and Walmart plans to connect 30 million more households by the end of 2022.

Express delivery is another direction that Walmart is developing. Users make orders in the app, order pickers collect the goods in the store, and couriers deliver them to the customers within two hours. Now Walmart delivers 160,000 products from 3,400 stores of the chain. According to the company data, express delivery covers 70% of the U.S. population.

Grubhub connects to its service both brick-and-mortar and virtual restaurants. For the first month, the restaurant can use Grubhub for free. After the trial period, the aggregator charges the restaurant a commission.

The aggregator also offers its partners tools for business promotion and development. For example, Grubhub partners can connect the analytical service Grubhub Direct, open a virtual restaurant or integrate Grubhub with their POS system.

The company has 300,000 partner restaurants in 4,000 U.S. cities. Grubhub processes 745,000 orders per day and serves 32 million active users.

In 2020, Grubhub was bought by Just Eat Takeaway, a European online food delivery company. The merging brought together two leading food delivery services in the United States and Europe, and now the company has 70 million users worldwide.