DoorDash has raised $250 million from hedge fund Coatue Management and venture capital fund DST Global. Investment will go to development: it has become the fastest growing in the US.

The capitalization of the company, including borrowed funds, reached $4 billion. According to the American research firm Edison Trends, 2018 is a breakthrough year for DoorDash: it shows a record growth in financial performance - 250% (!). Since January, the restaurant food delivery service has almost doubled its geography, to 1,000 cities in the US and Canada. During this time, 100 of the best restaurants became partners (an absolute growth record in the industry). DoorDash recently announced partnerships with restaurant chains Chipotle, IHOP, Red Lobster, White Castle and Cheesecake Factory.

“DoorDash is gaining market share faster than anyone else in the industry,” said CEO and co-founder Tony Xu.

Management is actively implementing DoorDash Drive, a platform that allows retailers to offer transportation to customers who place orders directly at the restaurant. Within its framework, the company became in the United States the national operator for the delivery of products from the world's largest trading network Walmart. Over the past 4 months, its service coverage has expanded to almost 300 stores in 20 states. In August, DoorDash launched the DashPass subscription, which gives you $10 access to a whole month of delivery service. At the same time, the company introduced a new "Pickup" feature. Through a mobile application or on the website, users place an order for delivery to their car.

“Over the past few years, the last mile logistics space has exploded with innovation and competition. DoorDash's rapid growth took them from If to When, said Thomas Laffon, Senior Managing Director of Coatue Management.

DoorDash has passed the path to success in 5 years. A San Francisco-based startup has turned an ordinary mobile app into a five-star service with a huge selection of restaurants and food. Tony Xu's company brilliantly embodied his business idea, which became the motto - to satisfy people's craving for delicious food.

DoorDash founders Andy Fang, Tony Xu and Stanley Tang

No wonder the number of DoorDash investors includes such reputable venture funds as Khosla Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Vision Fund (SoftBank), Charles River Ventures, GIC, Kleiner Perkins, Wellcome Trust and YCombinator.

Formerly (Kentucky Fried Chicken) franchised by AmRest Holdings SE (Wroclaw, Poland). Companies have been digitizing establishments for 3 years now.

Sources: prnewswire.com, trends.edison.tech, doordash.com. Prepared by Stanislav Klopot

The director of the largest Latin American food tech company told RBC what he would spend $500 million on and why the company would not compete with Russian delivery services

Carlos Moises (Photo: personal archive)

“My mom taught me and my sister how to cook, but I won’t teach my kids how to cook,” says Carlos Moizes, CEO of Brazilian food delivery service iFood. “People stop cooking at home: in developed countries, even new residential buildings are being built without kitchens. It's not just a big city trend, it's a story all over the place." Moises considers the generosity of investors to be the best argument in favor of his words: in November 2018, iFood raised $500 million during the next investment round.

Seven years ago, the service started with 30 orders for food delivery from Sao Paulo restaurants per day. It is now the largest Latin American food tech company with 390,000 daily orders in Brazil, Mexico and Colombia. “No one has any idea how big the potential food delivery market is,” says Moises. At the FuturEcommerce conference organized by Mail.Ru Group, Moises told RBC how the project became a leader on its continent and explained what he was going to invest in.

Gone for delivery

41-year-old Carlos Moises was born in the most populated city in the Southern Hemisphere - Sao Paulo. Here, at the Pontifical Catholic University, he received an education in business administration. Moises began his career as a financial analyst at the Brazilian Banco Safra. Employment experience was not very successful: "I was a small cog in big companies, and I wanted to work for myself."

In the early 2000s, he opened a small consulting agency, but despite several years of hard work, the agency did not bring in much money. Moises decided to try his hand at other niches. In 2007, he launched a company that did outsourcing technical support for the casino. This time, things picked up quickly. “The segment of the casino market in Brazil was very large then,” says the entrepreneur. But the rise was followed by a fall: the state took up the regulation of this area, and Moises had to close the company. The entrepreneur worked for several years as a manager in the Brazilian division of the Spanish online travel agency and coupon seller Groupalia. In 2012, the company was taken over by local player Peixe Urbano. “After the deal, the business stopped growing. I lost interest in him and left,” recalls Moises.

Immediately after the story with Groupalia, he got a job as a financial manager at RestauranteWeb, a food delivery service that had just appeared in Brazil, a project of Just-Eat, a large European holding (founded in Denmark in 2001). So the entrepreneur got into food tech. “In the US and Europe, this market was growing at a high rate, and I was convinced that it would soon take off here too,” he says. Much has been said in favor of this. Brazil has a huge and rapidly growing middle class of 113 million people (since 2003 this segment of the population has grown by 40%). At the same time, most middle-income people do not have a personal car, and public transport is poorly developed. All this made the emerging delivery services very popular.

In 2014, the attention of Moises, who managed to grow up to the general manager of Just-Eat for Brazil, was attracted by a young, but already conquered specific audience startup iFood. The service was created by several entrepreneurs from São Paulo back in 2011 as an additional sales channel for the food magazine Disk Cook. At first, the publication invited readers to order food from partner restaurants by phone. Then the partners made a special delivery site, and then launched a mobile application. When the number of orders reached several hundred per day, the Brazilian venture fund Warehouse Investimentos invested $1.6 million in the service. By mid-2014, the project had raised another $4.6 million from the Latin American telecommunications company Movile, which bought 50%.

The telecoms giant was known for its flair for innovation: in the early 2000s, for example, it was one of the first to make text messaging available in Brazil, which other cellular companies saw as an uninteresting toy. But Moises, who suggested that Just-Eat Brazil's management team merge with iFood, had other reasons to be interested in the startup: “Even then, iFood outreached RestauranteWeb, so the deal was a smart move to strengthen local market positions for both parties.”

As part of the merger in September 2014, Just-Eat invested about $5.7 million in iFood. As a result, the European service received a 25% stake in the company, 50% of the shares remained with Movile, and another 25% with the founders of iFood. Moises spearheaded a rapidly growing project.

Carlos Moises (Photo: personal archive)

"Application for any person"

Thanks to the first investments, by the end of 2014, the service increased the number of orders by more than 10 times, to almost 500 thousand per month, and, according to its own estimates, occupied 80% of the Brazilian online food delivery market.

Moises explains this success by betting on a mobile application and aggressive marketing. “From the very start, iFood began to adhere to the principle of mobile first - first we made a mobile application, and then we took up the site,” says the entrepreneur. “Today we do the same: first we develop technologies for the application, and then we implement them in the desktop version.”

Now many Brazilians have smartphones, and only office workers make orders from a computer. But even accustoming the inhabitants of the country to order food through the application was not easy. “People are used to doing everything through a phone call to the operator. To save our model, we had to retrain them,” says Moises.

iFood has invested the lion's share of its investments in aggressive marketing, primarily on TV and on the Internet. “In all promo campaigns, in every video, we said: “Download our app and order food!” Moises recalls. So, in one of the iFood promotional videos, where starred the famous Brazilian actor Rodrigo Gilbert compares the long wait for a response from a call center operator and an instant order through the iFood application. Almost 26 million people have watched this video on YouTube. In another video that received twice as many views, the Brazilian singer and actress Anitta danced in front of office workers dressed as a balding man. "iFood is the delivery app that's perfect for any face," read the slogan. These efforts have borne fruit: now 96% of iFood orders come through the mobile app and only 4% through the website.

But if the service was saved from the failure of the mobile application by advertising, then with the connection of restaurants to the online platform, everything turned out to be much more difficult. “For some reason, food service owners thought that since we were an online platform, they should give us discounts as coupon sales services,” says Moises. “We have been trying to convey to them for a long time that we do not need discounts, but simply their online presence on our site.” At first, Moises and his staff had to personally persuade every owner of a small restaurant or cafe to connect to the iFood system. But the promise of benefits from demand forecasting and order growth did not convince entrepreneurs.

The breakthrough came when Moises was able to negotiate with big players like PizzaHut and Domino's Pizza. “Showing the results to the kids, I said: look, since they are connected, join too, what are you afraid of,” he recalls. “It helped: at the start, only pizza could be ordered through iFood, and now we offer a choice of 28 cuisines of the world.”

Today, small restaurants become partners with the company also because it offers them to purchase products through its iFood Shop marketplace. According to Moises, prices for entrepreneurs there are on average 20% lower than when buying through alternative channels. " Marketplace iFood Shop connects more than 50,000 restaurants with more than 100 distributors,” explains Moises. “Scaling allows us to get the best price: iFood is the largest food tech company in Latin America. According to our calculations, a restaurant that joins iFood, on average, increases revenue by 50% in six months.”

iFood in numbers

50 thousand restaurants connected to the platform

390 thousand orders daily

109% - an increase in the number of orders per year

1.3 thousand employees

120 thousand couriers delivered orders in a year

500 cities— iFood geography

$117 million— Estimated revenue in 2018

Sources: company data, Naspers.com

Eating everyone on the way

First large investments iFood received in 2015. Then Movile, together with Just-Eat, invested about $ 80 million in the project. Thanks to this, the company began to expand into other Latin American markets - Argentina, Mexico and Colombia.

According to Naspers, iFood's revenue in 2015 was 61 million Brazilian reais (about $16 million at the then rate), the loss due to active expansion was 24 million reais (about $6 million). The following year, financial indicators almost tripled - to 171 million reais (about $44 million) in revenue and 15 million reais (about $4 million) in profit, and in 2017 they reached $53 million and $5 million, respectively. The company managed to grow largely thanks to the strategy of mergers and acquisitions of local players.

In Brazil, iFood acquired local services Devorando, Apetitar, Hellofood Brazil (owned by Just-Eat) and others, and in Mexico - 49% of the SinDelantal service (owned by Just-Eat, and before that - Hellofood Mexico). The acquisitions also included US-based order tracking and delivery time optimization platform SpoonRocket. “In three years, we have carried out a total of 25 mergers and acquisitions of local competitors,” states Moises.

This strategy has allowed iFood to reach around 500 cities in Latin America. In all the service uses for the delivery of orders as individual entrepreneurs working through a special application, and courier services. For example, the Brazilian Rappido, which delivers orders on bicycles (its main investor is the same Movile).

However, the strategy did not always work. For example, in Argentina, Moises had to sell the business to PedidosYa, the local division of one of the largest international players, Delivery Hero. “In Argentina, there are still many problems with the infrastructure, the payments ecosystem and the penetration of technology in general. iFood did not grow as fast as we wanted there, so we decided to focus on markets where the potential is higher, ”explains the entrepreneur.

In 2016, there was another unsuccessful attempt to exit - now to Russia. Then Moises wanted to acquire Russian service food delivery ZakaZaka. “With the help of ZakaZaka, iFood hoped to overtake Delivery Club in the Russian market,” says Andrey Tsytsenko, CEO of Delivery Club, co-founder of ZakaZaka. “But we sold this service to Mail.Ru Group, and it didn’t work out.”

Carlos Moises (Photo: personal archive)

Today, Moises does not think about entering the markets of other continents. “There is high competition and big players like Delivery Hero, Just-Eat or Delivery Club. In Latin America, there are more opportunities for us: the market is just emerging here, and it is so large that there is enough space not only for food delivery services, but also for restaurants with their own courier services“, he notes.

Low start phenomenon

The Latin American market is a good place for companies whose work is built through mobile applications. A huge population and the underdevelopment of digital and consumer technologies create the prerequisites for a quick breakthrough in half-empty niches. In 2017, the Chinese Didi Chuxing invested $100 million in the Brazilian taxi aggregator 99, and in the spring of this year it completely bought the company for another $900 million. and Andreessen Horowitz. Former Alibaba CEO Jack Ma traveled to Argentina in 2017 to explore how the company could penetrate latin america. The visit raised concerns among the management of the largest online marketplace in the region, MercadoLibre, which is used by more than 174 million people in 15 countries.

Intelligence and food

Brazil remains a key market for iFood, but Moises expects to strengthen his position in other Latin American countries with the exception of Argentina. Just for this, in November 2018, he raised $ 500 million from the South African media group Naspers (has a stake in Delivery Hero, Swiggi and Mr Delivery), Movile and the European fund Innova Capital.

Technology development will help iFood to gain a foothold outside of Brazil, the entrepreneur believes. Today, the company already determines customer preferences using artificial intelligence. "IN Lately we invest a lot in the development of AI, says Moises. “Now our system is able to predict what customers want to order based on their previous orders. For example, if you are a vegetarian, the app will not show you meat dishes.”

Artificial intelligence helps iFood with determining the best delivery route. These orders are sent to restaurants in the order in which they can be delivered the fastest. “If we have ten orders for a particular restaurant, we don't ship them all at once. Sometimes it happens that the courier will deliver orders faster if he starts with the one that was accepted last. That’s why the system calculates the ideal logistics solution so that couriers can serve more dishes and restaurants can get more money.” Further development of these technologies is a top priority, says the iFood CEO.

The company plans to invest in staff development. As part of a special "International cuisine" program, iFood sends 20-30 employees from one national unit to another every three months. So, recently employees of the Brazilian office went to the Mexican division of iFood. “For employees, this is development, and for the company, it is an opportunity to improve sales, hone work models in different countries, apply experience in new markets and optimize all processes, says Moises. - Before leaving, the employee indicates what problem he would like to solve or what goal he sets for himself in another market. For him, this is something like a three-month challenge. He can stay in this country longer if he wants to realize the new plans that have appeared during the trip.”

View from the outside

"The average user in the regions can rarely afford shipping"

Andrey Lukashevich, director of Mail.Ru Foodtech Ventures

“Promoting the food delivery service through a series of TV comedy commercials has been very effective. This provided the business with growth in a couple of years from a million orders per month to several million. However, in Russia, this strategy will be less successful: a TV campaign is effective only if it is carried out on a national scale, and our delivery restaurants are still poorly developed outside of Moscow, St. Petersburg and other million-plus cities. It also plays a role that the expectations of restaurants on the average bill, which they indicate with the help of the minimum order amount, and the actual purchasing power of the general population do not correspond to each other. The average user in the regions can rarely afford shipping. However, humor and celebrity involvement in the promotion has always shown itself. in a good way increase awareness of the service or product.

“The market was heavily undervalued”

Andrey Tsytsenko, CEO of Delivery Club

“Companies like iFood, which are already handling tens of millions of orders a month, are just getting started. Previously, everyone thought that food delivery services would not be able to reach a high frequency of orders. Now, when global players are showing such results, we understand that the market was greatly underestimated. It is much larger than was thought a few years ago, and everyone is happy about it. But the next rise in interest greatly increases competition.

The global food delivery market is currently dominated by two players, Delivery Hero and Just-Eat. Local services, such as iFood, are also on the rise, taking control of regional markets. I think in the future there will be a monopoly, conditional UberEats - a global company that will exist in many markets with the same product.

Food delivery is not a novelty in the restaurant services market, but its growth in popularity is gaining momentum just in our time, marked by an accelerated rhythm. Restaurants trace their history back to 1782, when the first establishment was opened in Paris, which had menus, separate tables and strictly defined opening hours. As before, they are a place where you can not only eat delicious food, but also solve important business issues. But not every day there is a need to visit restaurants, sometimes people simply need to eat with minimal loss of time. The accelerated pace of life is replacing establishments where you can eat and talk leisurely with a new business service in demand - ordering and delivering food at the place of demand.

Indeed, why quit urgent work and waste time in traffic jams, getting to a cafe or restaurant, if you can just order food delivery? And absolutely inexpensive.

The heyday of this food delivery business came at the beginning of the 20th century, when a promising business idea for the delivery of birthday cakes arose. Later in America, when telephone service arrived, enterprising Italian expats came up with the idea of ​​delivering pizza to their homes. Soon, hardworking Asians became their competitors, organizing the delivery of their national food. Traditionally existing in Europe, the hotel pickup of orders in the rooms of guests, in the USA, clever restaurateurs have transformed it into the delivery of ordered food from restaurants directly to their homes. And employers, in order to save time, began to order business lunches for their employees in the offices.

At present, this way of catering is typical not only for far abroad countries, but also throughout the post-Soviet space. Today, restaurateurs offer a large selection of dishes from different national cuisines, festive dinners. In addition to food delivery, you can also order the serving of selected dishes, and waiter service is also offered.

At first, the most popular service among Russians was home delivery of pizza, and then delivery of Japanese sushi served as a successful competitor. Among the benefits of delivering pizza or sushi is the time saved, which does not have to be spent on cooking or a trip to a restaurant. Efficiency and the ability to choose the time and place for delivery of the order are also important.

But it is also not without drawbacks. The range of food delivered to your home is limited and it costs more due to transportation costs. When ordering food, the main thing is to choose a reliable supplier that guarantees high-quality and tasty dishes prepared in compliance with all sanitary standards and conditions that exist for this service.

Usually, restaurants and other catering enterprises are engaged in the development of such a service, which is caused by their desire to increase their competitiveness by retaining old and getting new customers.

Now the main positions of food for delivery through the order are pizza, Japanese cuisine and business lunches (complex lunches). This uncomplicated choice is due to the simplicity and speed of preparation of the dishes offered. Often, customers choose a catering company, focusing not even on the taste of the dishes, but on the speed of their delivery.

If in Moscow and St. Petersburg the food delivery market segment is already completely filled, then on the periphery this market is still developing, and demand still exceeds supply.

The future will show how the food delivery business market will develop in the future. It is a fact that today catering is a noteworthy niche in the service market.

What is happening in Russia?

In Russia, the undisputed leader in the segment is Delivery Club (acquired by FoodPanda for $30-50 million)

The Russian market for this business model is a little more complicated than the European one - a large market share is concentrated in the hands of large restaurant chains (which reduces the commission), b about Most of the market is in Moscow.

Notable player number 2 is Zakazaka, which focuses on restaurants outside of Moscow and mobile traffic.

2. Food delivery services from restaurants:

Brightrepresentatives: Deliveroo (F - $199.6M), Doordash (F - $186.7M), Postmates (F - $139M), FooDora (acquired by Delivery Hero)

How does it work: companies deliver food from restaurants in less than 45 minutes. Own delivery allows you not only to quickly bring food, but also provide access to restaurants from which you cannot get delivery in another way. This is a favorite way of ordering lunch for English office workers.

The commission that restaurants are willing to pay for an order along with delivery is higher (20-30%), the client may need to pay a small amount for delivery, but the company takes on most of the cost. Food is brought on motorcycles, bicycles, sometimes on foot, less often by cars.

What is the attraction?

• Very large target market. In Europe, 80% of restaurants do not have their own delivery, companies of this type open this market to Internet users.
• Phenomenal repeat purchase rate. About 20-30% of users who have tried the product once become loyal, for individual companies and regions this figure reaches 40-60%. A truly unique situation.
• Service quality control. You can provide a high level of customer service.

What is happening in Russia?

In Russia, Delivery Club announced the start of work on such a model. Of the independent players, in my opinion, FoodFox deserves the most attention, which delivers food in Moscow through own network foot couriers. You can place an order both through the website and in the mobile application.

3. Online services for booking tables in restaurants:

Outstanding Representatives: Opentable (V - $2.6 billion, purchased by Priceline Group in June 2014), Bookatable (purchased by Michelin Tire in January 2016), Quandoo (V - $219 million, acquired by Recruit Holdings in March 2015)

How does it work: on the website or in the mobile application, you can choose a restaurant according to a set of criteria (cuisine, location, price ...) and book a table for a specified time and number of guests. The service is usually integrated with the restaurant management system and automatically transmits information about the order.

The company earns a fixed amount from each visitor who booked or a percentage of his account in the restaurant.

What is the attraction?

• Barriers to entry associated with free customer acquisition channels. Marketing, as a rule, is built on search engine optimization, a large amount of unique content (mainly reviews), integration of the solution with the website of the restaurants themselves. The number one player who received a large amount of free traffic is expensive and difficult to beat.
• Integration with the restaurant's IT system, and especially with its website, makes it difficult for competitors to enter (it would be strange to have two widgets for booking a table on the same restaurant's website).

What's going on abroad?

This is one of the oldest business models in FoodTech abroad. OpenTable in the US was founded back in 1998, and in 2014 it was bought by Priceline for $2.6 billion.

Many smaller companies were created in France (LeFourchette), England (TopTable), Germany (Quandoo) - all of which were sold to one or another strategic buyer. There is a feeling that any business in this area will be bought by a “strategist”.

Recently, conventional table reservation services no longer arouse much investor interest. Curious modifications of this business model: last minute table reservation with a discount (Uncover), automatic payment services in restaurants so as not to wait for an invoice (Velocity), services for booking tables in nightclubs (Tablelist) and others.

Contrary to what was written above, one of the players in the Opentable model in the Middle East recently closed a new round of funding. Anything is possible in emerging markets.

What is happening in Russia?

In Russia, many companies are trying to replicate the success of OpenTable. Probably the most famous of them is Gettable. If you book a table through Afisha.ru, you should know that you are using the Gettable service. Others include Leclick.ru, Stoliki.ru, etc.

However, it is worth recognizing that this business model in Russia has not yet shown phenomenal results. Perhaps the excess number of restaurants affects.

About 3 years ago, evaluating the prospects of this model, we at Target Global conducted a small experiment. We wrote down the 10 most interesting and popular restaurants in our opinion and called them at 5 pm on Friday with a request to book a table for 7. Eight out of ten easily found seats for us. A similar experiment in London did not produce even two affordable restaurants.

Of course, the benefits of the service are not only in booking seats in inaccessible restaurants, but also in convenience, no need to call and other things. Therefore, such services are gradually gaining popularity with us.

4. Delivery of subscription product sets:

Outstanding Representatives: Hellofresh (F - $256M, V - $2.9B), Blue Apron (F - $193M, V - $1.87B, we invested in this company), Plated (F - $56.4M), Linas Matkasse ( annual revenue $120 million), Marley Spoon (F - $27.5 million).

How does it work? Every week, consumers receive a box of recipes and a carefully crafted set of ingredients to prepare them. The service allows you to cook restaurant-quality food at home and save time on going to the store. The average price per dish in the US is about $10.

What is the attraction?

• This is a fairly effective model for purchasing products. Due to the precisely selected quantity of ingredients (for example, mushrooms for exactly two servings, and not a standard 400 g package) and supplies directly from manufacturers, the cost of products for the buyer can be up to 30% lower than in a supermarket (according to a study by Target Global).
• Low prices for the purchase of products. Due to the concentrated demand for one position (for example, Blue Apron is offering a chicken breast dish this week), companies in this segment can achieve about More savings on purchases (while the supermarket buys more than 30 different chicken products).
• Customers purchase a subscription to a box of recipes and ingredients. It is possible to refuse a subscription or skip a week (for example, due to a vacation), but if the user does not choose this option, then the cost of a new box is automatically debited. This increases the proportion of customers who regularly use the service. The share of loyal users from those who have purchased a box at least once is 20-30% after two years from the date of the first purchase.

What's going on abroad?

This model was first implemented in Sweden by Linas Matkasse. Today, their revenue is about $120 million. However, the proportion of households in Sweden that buy this product is only a couple of percent of the population. Based on this, it is possible to assess the potential for a business model in other countries. The population of Sweden is about 9.5 million people, with a similar penetration in the United States, the revenue for this business model will be $4 billion.

Almost simultaneously, Blue Apron, the US market leader, and HelloFresh, the market leader in Germany, England, and the Benelux, appeared. In less than 4 years, these companies reached valuations of $2 billion and $2.9 billion, respectively. There are a large number of countries in Europe where this model is not represented. In addition, it is unlikely that there will be only one player in each market. This thesis is shared by HelloFresh's competitor in Europe, Marley Spoon.

A large number of old players in the food industry are eyeing this model. Amazon recently announced the addition of a set of products with subscription recipes to the list of Amazon Fresh services.

What is happening in Russia?

There are a number of difficulties in implementing the model in Russia. The main ones, in my opinion, are less efficient logistics and the low prevalence of the model of purchasing something by subscription. If the buyer is used to paying cash upon delivery, it is not easy to get him to give the data to his credit card- and even more so to allow the service to automatically write off funds for a new set of products.

What is the attraction?

• The possibility of forming a large assortment of goods without building infrastructure: warehouses, own logistics, a network of suppliers. The main competence of the company is integration with retailers and managing a network of collecting agents.
• The range of products is larger than that of a single retailer. Goods are always "in stock", no need to invest in working capital.
• Barriers to entry - in case of integration with IT systems of retailers.

What's going on abroad?

The most successful project with such a business model is Instacart. The company was founded in 2012 and is currently valued at $2 billion. In the beginning, Instacart made a markup of 10-20% to the final price, but over time entered into partnerships with many retailers, which allows today to sell products without a markup.

While this business model is markedly different from typical e-commerce, for the end consumer, the difference is not that big. Amazon Fresh, Google Express, Jet.com and online delivery of various supermarkets compete for the buyer with Instamart.

Many smaller competitors are focusing on shipping directly from suppliers, in the case of organic products (Good Eggs) for example. There are companies that, using this model, serve a particular group of goods or a niche. For example, alcoholic drinks (Drizly, Minibar, Saucey) or vegan food.

What is happening in Russia?

In Russia, there are a number of traditional food delivery businesses from supermarkets - in particular, Utkonos or food delivery from Azbuka Vkusa.

There are several small players that are starting to work on this model. For example, Instamart, which copies the Instacart model in the USA, or Moscow Fresh, which delivers products from Moscow markets (close to the Good Eggs model).

Summarizing, we can highlight a number of properties inherent in the business models above, which are also true for most other businesses in FoodTech:

1. High repeatability of orders - people need food very often;
2. Comparatively low average checks - even expensive frills in food are difficult to compare in price with electronic goods, household appliances, cars and others popular goods Internet commerce.
3. Conversion rates for food startups are usually higher than the average for the market - hungry people do not think about buying for a long time;
4. As opposed to ordering three pairs of shoes different size in women's clothing when a customer chooses one pair and returns the other two to the store, the food is almost never returned.

Other parameters that vary more markedly and affect the success of individual FoodTech businesses are:

• Percentage of customers who become loyal. After all, it is they who will give repeated orders;
• Margin a;
• Channels for attracting new customers and their cost.

In the following articles, we will talk in more detail with FoodTech entrepreneurs and investors and discuss how these general principles are applied in practice.

Our former compatriot based in Chicago works for Uber Eats. The guy told what it is and how much a courier can earn on food delivery.

I work through mobile applications, I have repeatedly shown you what it is. Basically, of course, this is Uber Eats - an application through which any user can order food delivery from a restaurant or the delivery of any small package, for example, give a jacket to a friend that he forgot. Yes, it is easier for Americans to pay for delivery than to go somewhere.

On the screen of the phone, the money earned in a week in Uber Eats: $ 1,296.2 (74,000 rubles). The system works very simply: you register and start, in fact, to work. You work when it's convenient for you, as much as you want, you arrange lunch for yourself when it's convenient. The application has a list of orders indicating the start and end points, you choose the order that is convenient for you and start fulfilling it. You can walk, ride a bike, scooter, etc. I took a used bike for $30 (1,700 rubles) and have absolutely no complaints.

As you can see, on Monday I earned the most, on Tuesday I worked quite a bit, on Wednesday I took a day off. The next week continued more steadily.

Trip Earnings - earnings from trips at the usual rate, Tip - tips (well, where without them in the States?), Sometimes they give in cash. The most interesting item is Promotions. This is earnings due to increasing rates of delivery costs (for example, when it rains like a bucket or sleet with a strong wind) and promotions ala "complete 5 more orders and we will send $ 20".

To be honest, on average working week it turns out 100 dollars less than on the screen for the period February 19-26.

materials are taken from open sources