Thursday, July 30, 2015

"Peak Food-Delivery Bubble? Groupon Gets Into the Act"

Hey, Groupon has to do something.
GRPN Groupon, Inc. monthly Stock Chart 
From recode:
We are a hungry people. And damn it, we just cannot for the life of us have enough options for getting food from a restaurant into our salivating mouths.
sandwich
Luckily, the heavens produced GrubHub and Seamless and Delivery.com. And then DoorDash and Postmates and Caviar. Oh, and Uber with its new UberEats service. There’s Eat24, which Yelp gobbled up, and Tapingo to feed the college masses. And there’s also that test Amazon is running in Seattle, which is a little weird but we’ll take it, because we are so, so hungry. But sometimes you kinda feel like ordering a meal from a restaurant that doesn’t actually have seating — a place that’s all delivery all the time. Munchery and Sprig can help you out with that.

Still, maybe, just maybe, we the hungry people of the United States need one more delivery option. It turns out Groupon has our backs.

The company still best known for its daily deals said on Thursday that it was launching its own restaurant delivery and pick-up service, starting in Chicago and then expanding to other cities this year. Some of the better known partners participating in the program are the sandwich shops Quiznos and Subway, along with Popeye’s and Papa John’s. Hundreds of local Chicago restaurants are taking part, too. The announcement comes shortly after Groupon acquired OrderUp, a food delivery startup that’s live in dozens of smaller cities.
Groupon’s pitch to us, the hungry people: A 10 percent discount on all orders. Groupon is taking the hit on this, not the restaurant, and essentially looks at it as a marketing expense....MORE
At about the same time the above was showing up in one feedreader, this was dropping from another:
Handpick’s Smart Groceries marries meal and grocery delivery