Delivery apps just hit a climax: huge convenience, huge costs, huge competition

Past: pizza and Chinese. Today: everything... Food delivery apps are exploding the amount of restaurant food we eat at home — over 50% of all restaurant orders will be delivery/takeout by next year. 50%. And the surging industry is catered to by The Big Food Four:

1. DoorDash (private, SF-based): Leading with 34% of the market. That’s gonna grow now that it acquired Square-owned Caviar for $410M last week.
2. GrubHub (public, Chicago): The go-to in NYC, it owns 33% of the delivery-by-app market.
3. Uber Eats (public, SF): 17% of all food delivery. And the favorite in Miami and Atlanta.
4. Postmates (private, SF): It delivers 11% of our meals, boasts the most whimsical logo of them all, and is testing a sidewalk delivery bot called Serve.

Now they're moving in together to save money… Classic Millennial style. The Big Food Four are still unprofitable (“$5 off your first 5 orders”) — so instead of fighting each other over growth, it may be more efficient to just team-up. Case in point: DoorDash acquiring Caviar. We expect more mergers to come — that’s how the airlines became profitable. It happened with ride-hailing too, and it’s hitting e-scooters right now.