UberEats and DoorDash are Becoming More like Amazon

If you’ve used food delivery apps like DoorDash or UberEats over the last few years, you’ll notice the number of restaurants on the platform has skyrocketed. And interestingly, they all seem to be offering the same types of cuisines. As it turns out, these platforms have become a battleground for testing virtual concepts. In 2021 there were roughly 10,000 virtual brands on UberEats but today that number is now 40,000. 

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Virtual Kitchens

The WSJ had a piece recently on the rise of virtual brands in the restaurant space. Such a novel idea. Given the rise of super delivery apps (DoorDash, UberEats,GrubHub, etc), legacy restaurants such as Chili’s and Applebees can quickly develop new brands that cater to a digital audience. In one such example, Chili’s was able to spool up a completely new virtual brand with no physical stores called ‘It’s Just Wings’ and grow it to $150m in one year –  that’s roughly 5% of Chili’s total business. Furthermore, they can keep their costs to a minimum with no massive advertising budgets, additional leases or significant overhead. Even after accounting for fees tacked on by the delivery apps this business is likely highly accretive.  In fact, the majority of customers had no idea that this food was even being prepared at a Chili’s restaurant which shows having a virtual brand can help create new, non-cannibalistic revenue streams, and serve as an incubator for new food concepts. Startups and ad agencies should take note as there is ample space to create new businesses around this changing landscape. 

What’s at stake is a massive TAM expected to hit $1T by 2030 made up exclusively of virtual brands and ghost kitchens.  Similar to the private label business in grocery, get ready for a crowded, opaque market where it’s harder to tell where or by whom your food was created. 

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Food Delivery and Marketplaces Converge

I continue to see the surplus of food delivery companies and F&B marketplaces on an impending crash course. Is DoorDash a retailer, a logistics company, a brand, a restaurant or even a media/data company? Their vision is likely to be a bit of each and this will be accomplished under a build, partner, buy framework.  Like numerous other industries, the idea of a horizontal play has turned vertical and we’re starting to see each encroach the other’s territory. The challenge in the future will be how to become the super app that customers interact with daily. This fight for share is not without challenges. The average smartphone user has 80 apps on their phone, but they only use ~9 apps per day and 30 apps per month. This means that 62% of those apps don’t get used much, if at all. 

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