DoorDash Bats Lashes at Sally Beauty & M·A·C Cosmetics
Deliveroo adds childcare for couriers, Sam Nazarian launches Everybody Eats, eGrocery sales falter
We’re starting the week off with a fun blast of news: new beauty partners on DoorDash, childcare help for Deliveroo workers, a new king of ghost kitchens and more. Read on!
This week’s edition is brought to you by Curbivore — 3/28-29 in DTLA.
Today:
DoorDash & Beauty Partners Kiss and Make Up
Deliveroo Gives Couriers A Childcare Leg Up
Chart Time | Grocery Delivery Up, Pickup Down
SBE Transmogrifies Kitchen United Into Everybody Eats
3PD | DoorDash Puckers Up to New Beauty Partners
DoorDash is starting the week with a heavy dose of cosmetics: the 3PD just added makeup retailers Sally Beauty and M·A·C Cosmetics as new partners. With Sally Beauty, DoorDash is tapping into the brand’s 2,000+ nationwide stores, and celebrating with $0 deliveries (note that Sally already offers a two-hour delivery service of its own.) Estée Lauder-owned MAC has a smaller footprint, with only 129 U.S. storefronts selling just MAC-branded makeup.
The Big Picture: Makeup and beauty has grown into a good-sized category for DoorDash, which now features over 400k SKUs. You can see the logic: the items are generally small, prices are high enough to support a delivery-added margin, and there can certainly be some date night-related time sensitivity to how quickly you need the product. DoorDash kicked off the category with Ulta back in 2021, and added Sephora in ‘22; it’s now building off that latter partnership by letting members access the brands bi-annual sales through DD as well.
Deliver the Future at Curbivore — March 28 & 29
The world of the curb comes together in a week and a half! Check out all of Curbivore’s amazing partners that are moving commerce to the curb — better yet, join them! Tickets are still available, but prices jump later this week. Register now.
LABOR | Deliveroo Adds Free Childcare to Entice Workers
U.K.-based 3PD Deliveroo is looking to make its platform more appealing to workers (or “riders,” in its parlance,) with the launch of free childcare services. Partnering with the app Bubble, Deliveroo will offer 1,000 riders up to 15 hours of free and flexible childcare, on a first-come, first-served basis. The publicly traded company is also offering its workers free access to over 1,500 educational courses, while sponsoring 100 couriers to get certifications for new skills like web dev and cooking.
The Big Picture: The idea of a flexible work schedule is a bit less appealing if you’ve got dependents that you can’t just leave at home at the drop of the dime. Deliveroo’s own research shows that 81% of its child-bound workers would find care support useful, while here in America there are all sorts of stories of delivery-workers that have to bring their kids along for the ride. That can lead to scary outcomes, like when this DD driver had her car stolen, with her kids still inside. While it would be nice to see the 3PDs continue to invest in this space, real solutions will have to come from the government; while countries like Norway spend as much as $30k per year per child on early childhood care, the United States spends… 500 dollars.
CHART TIME | Grocery Delivery Rises, While Pickup Craters
Don’t let that first glance at the chart fool you: grocery delivery looks to be doing just fine, rising to $3.1 billion in February from $2.9B the year prior, according to the latest Brick Meets Click data. But the overall eGrocery space was certainly dragged down, as fewer shoppers opted for store pickup or ship-to-home. The sector’s $7.9B in overall sales is also a drop from last month’s $8.5B. Declines were driven by lower spending per monthly active user, likely driven by the government cutting back on SNAP allocations.
Ghost Kitchens | SBE Buys Kitchen United, Launches Everybody Eats
SBE founder and CEO Sam Nazarian is buying up the assets of shuttered ghost kitchen and food hall operator Kitchen United, merging them into his existing virtual restaurant portfolio to form a venture he’s calling Everybody Eats. “We want to democratize food,” notes Nazarian. (Was food previously despotic? A mere kleptocracy? Perhaps there's been some sort of restaurateur military junta pulling the strings all along?) SBE has been a big player in the space for some years now, with its C3 subsidiary offering sub-brands like Krispy Rise and Umami Burger since early 2020.
The Big Picture: Nazarian has become one of the kings of the ghost kitchen space, but that’s as much a testament to his competitors faltering as it is to his own success. Last fall the company added Craveworthy Brands as a partner and just a few months before that SBE gobbled up the remains of Nextbite. Nazarian brings a wealth of industry connections with him, he sold his previous hotel chains to hospitality giant Accor, and Kitchen United was linked up with the likes of Kroger and Circle K. Will that be enough to keep ghost kitchens alive?
A Few Good Links
Domino’s discounting pies by 50% for college basketball championships, notes last year the occasion moved 3 million pizzas. Joyride raises $5.2M by Yamaha Motors, when will they finally launch the Delivery as a Service product they’ve been teasing? Dollar stores struggling. Walmart names Yilei Shi as VP of Last Mile Strategy. How one determined coder realized food delivery workers were being shortchanged by their app. GoUrban raises €3 million for fleet software. Fisker running out of cash, pauses car production. Starbucks gives up on NFTs months after everyone else forgot about them. Qdoba hires Little Caesars exec as Chief Development Officer. Virtual Dining Concepts acquires Man Vs. Fries. Yellow asks court to kill former employee class-action lawsuit. Hertz CEO out. OOIDA and CTA lose court attempt to block AB5 from applying to truckers. Teamsters add UPS specialty workers.
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