Uber Eats Reveals Most Craveable Food Combos
DoorDash Kitchens, Chick-fil-A pricing settlement, connected shopping tech
Ahh, you’ve just about made it through another week — let us reward you with some interesting consumer data from Uber Eats, a tour of DoorDash Kitchens, and of course a big ol’ lawsuit settlement. Oh, and have you signed up for next week’s webinar on delivery tech pricing? It’s gonna be a good one!
Today:
Uber Eats’ 2023 Cravings Report
DoorDash Kitchens — Food Hall Meets Ghost Kitchen
Chart Time | Consumers Love Smart Shopping
Chick-fil-A Pays $4.4M Delivery Price Transparency Settlement
3PD | Uber Eats Reveals Consumers’ Most Craveable Meals
Uber Eats released its fifth annual Cravings Report — pushing out its analysis of popular orders a few months earlier than usual. In terms of modifications, here are the five most popular requests: no onions, dressing on the side, ranch, extra soy sauce, spicy. In terms of the most frequently ordered, it’s a mix of classics and not-so-classics: french fries, garlic naan, pad thai, miso soup, California roll. What about combo orders you ask? Americans are craving to combine: burrito bowl + cheese, french fries + salt, chicken sandwich + shredded lettuce, (who is the sicko that would offer that sandwich sans lettuce??) cheeseburger + mustard, and wings + ranch. Thinking of alcohol pairings? Here’s where taste gets a bit unexpected: ribeye + vodka, cheeseburger + frozen margarita, (RIP Jimmy Buffett) chicken + frozen piña colada, lobster tail + apple whiskey, and tamales + daiquiris.
The Big Picture: Is the fact that Americans like french fries news? No, so let’s maybe analyze which trends are in flux. Uber notes that in the past year, it’s seen more people ask to hold the onions, a fall in rosé sales, a jump in hot sauce requests, and a surge in interest for apple pie. Looking back at the 2022 report, we can see that last year customers loved to combo a breakfast sandwich with American cheese, whereas this year it seems folks must be eating more chicken wings for breakfast…
WEBINAR | Right Pricing Delivery Technology, 10/26
How can restaurant tech providers justify their cost structures in the wake of Toast’s fee debacle? Which are the value added services that are worth their cost to restaurateurs and retailers? Does switching from 3PD to 1PD save operators on commission or ultimately cost them customers? Join us on 10/26 at 10 AM Pacific as we hear from Restaurant Dive’s Lead Editor Emma Beckett, as well as two restaurant tech founders and a scrappy pizza operator, to learn the latest lay of the land.
VIRTUAL RESTAURANTS | Exploring DoorDash Kitchens
Is it a ghost kitchen or a food hall? That’s the question that’s swirled around DoorDash’s restaurant concept, ever since it first emerged a few years ago. While earlier iterations were almost pure delivery plays, newer locations feature in-store dining, making them more akin to a mini food hall. Kicking the tires on DoorDash’s Downtown Brooklyn location, some of the operational efficiencies of offering coffee, sushi, grain bowls and more under one roof start to make themselves clear.
The Big Picture: There have been two approaches to virtual kitchens — going upmarket with better staffing and location choice (which you can also see with Local Kitchens and Kitchen United) or to cut costs to the bone with minimal staffing and marginal, delivery-only locations. REEF and VDC struggled with that latter approach, and it looks like C3 may still be following that path (as we asked earlier in the week, are they really going to put sushi chefs inside a TGI Fridays?) Salted’s approach — owning the brands but comboing them in small footprints — seems to split the difference.
CHART TIME | Consumers Ready for Smart Ordering
New data from PYMNTS shows that consumers want tech to do the thinking for them. Nearly 40% of shoppers said, for example, that they’d like their phone and car to order coffee for them as they approach a cafe (technically some of them said they *already* do this, we’d love to see what tech they’re using.) Consumers also expressed interest in “just walk out” style self-checkout, video chatting with sales reps, VR shopping and more.
POLICY | Chick-fil-A Settles Delivery Price Transparency Suit
Can you catch a winged animal red handed? Chick-fil-A just agreed to pay out a $4.4 million settlement over a lawsuit alleging that the company would advertise cheap delivery but then secretly mark up its costs to cover the loss. The suit alleges the chain would promote delivery as being either free or just a few dollars, but then raise menu prices a whopping “20 to 30” percent as compared to the in-store amounts. The settlement to consumers is in the form of $29.25 gift cards or cash payments.
The Big Picture: While other chains like Del Taco and El Pollo Loco “fairly and prominently represent their true delivery charges” (per the complaint) — Chick-fil-A isn’t the only chain to get into this kind of trouble. Panda Express recently settled a $1.4M lawsuit of a similar nature. Now that Chick-fil-A is done hiding its prices, it should be noted that they really are an outlier in terms of how much they mark up the menu for delivery: while the fast food category averages a 15.3% premium, the chicken chain raises prices a whopping 29.8% for delivery orders. Next time, try the drive-thru?
A Few Good Links
How policymakers are working to increase cargo ebike adoption. Walmart using holiday deals to increase grocery market share. Digital freight startup Convoy shutters. Highway Trust Fund falls short for billionth year in a row — maybe it’s time to raise gas taxes? American Eagle hires new supply chain head. Golden Corral launches fast casual subsidiary: Homeward Kitchen. BurgerFi moves into movie theaters. TGI Friday gets into event services. New research shows that Jared Fogle’s criminal behavior had no effect on Subway sales — no word on whether or not the Hamburgler’s heinous crimes affect McDonald’s.
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