Mobile apps ring in the future of food delivery

DAVID SWAN
September 26, 2017
The Australian

The future of food is dawning, with Australians ordering more delivered food than ever and a spate of new apps changing the way we eat. 

Australians are cooking less and less, and that’s at least in part due to the simplicity of apps such as Menulog.

“The food space is going through an explosion from a technology point of view,” Just Eat chief technology officer Fernando Fanton told The Australian.

“Up until now it was really the same for the last 100 years without much innovation.”

Menulog, acquired by Just Eat in 2015, predates the likes of ­UberEats, Foodora and Deliveroo, and is about to hit the 10,000th restaurant on its platform in ­Australia.

Mr Fanton said Australia was one of Menulog’s top markets, with Menulog orders and revenue continuing to increase by double digits year-on-year despite the company operating here for more than 11 years.

“People are now engaging ­digitally and behaviours are starting to change,” he said. “People are not only content with the convenience with ordering online, but there are so many options in front of them. 

“And that’s new. It used to be about what restaurants you walk by on the way home, and now you can open an app and order from one of 100 different restaurants with two clicks.”

Mr Fanton said he was unfazed by competition with a crowded market of apps and services offering solutions similar to Menulog.

“Whether there’s (enough) room for all of us, that’s something the consumers will decide in the end,” he said.

“What we’re trying to do is make sure nobody needs to cook food unless they really want to. If they want that sheer pleasure of enjoying that experience with their family, sure, but we don’t want cooking to have to be a chore or something you don’t like.

“The challenge for us is to find the barriers of why people don’t choose food delivery; five years from now if you tell me which companies will still be there, it all depends on who captures those opportunities.”

The Menulog founders have moved on to their next business, FoodByUs, which is at the other end of the spectrum to home delivery. Its business offers a “one stop shop” to connect cafes and eateries with local suppliers, offering food distribution using a tech platform. 

FoodByUs managing director Ben Lipschitz, who runs the business with former Menulog founders Gary Munitz and Tim Chandler, said Australia’s rapidly growing cafe culture had nearly doubled over the past two years in revenue. But with cafes and coffee shops booming, distributors are struggling to evolve their product range and technology to meet ­demand. “What we’re seeing is a new appreciation for buying local,” he told The Australian.

“A lot of customers are now demanding more from their cafes, they want to understand where the products are coming from, what type of coffee beans the cafe is using, and it’s forcing the cafe to take a more nuanced approach to serving the customer.” 

Mr Lipschitz said customers were more discerning than ever, ordering more niche items such as vegan doughnuts or gluten-free products. 

“We started getting calls upon calls, asking if we could service these cafes,” he said. “The demand was there but it was also consistent, so we thought we’d be crazy not to jump on it.”

Available in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane, FoodByUs sells local suppliers a platform to market and sell their products wholesale, along with an order management system, while cafes can search for products suited to their needs. It has GPS tracking for deliveries and mobile ordering along with an integrated payment system and delivery.

“A lot of how distribution is done into cafes has been just a very traditional way of doing it,” he said. “There’s trucks, warehousing, a lot of heavy costs and not a lot of technology in that process. … Something we’re hearing from both sides is ‘thank God someone’s doing this’.”