Big news in the meal delivery world this week, as Second Measure released a report finding that DoorDash had overtaken GrubHub in total meal deliveries in May 2019.
GrubHub has been a force in the industry, and leading the charge on rapid expansion and market capture, but DoorDash, to anyone paying attention, has been working hard to fight for their own piece of the pie. Anecdotally, we have noticed a large expansion in advertising by DoorDash which might explain the market capture and growth.
Other services like Uber Eats, Postmates, and Caviar are still much in the game, and can be especially dominant depending on the specific city being tracked.
There’s no denying that there is consumer demand for technology-enhanced meal delivery, but profit has been hard to come by. Many services are still operating at a loss, despite being in an otherwise more mature state as a business. The margins in food delivery are already rather thin.