Advances in on-demand technology have made it possible to request nearly anything with the push of a button. That’s upended nearly every economic sector, and the food industry is no exception. Not only has technology made it easier to fulfill orders and make deliveries, it has also granted more creative freedom to companies seeking to provide enhanced experiences for their customers.
Food Delivery Companies to Know
- DoorDash
- Gopuff
- Imperfect Foods
- Instacart
- Postmates
- Shipt
- Uber Eats
In recent years, the food delivery industry has seen the rise of meal-kit boxes, food subscription services, office catering and a variety of other methods of putting food on people’s plates. Many are also tackling issues of sustainability and equity, utilizing food delivery as a means to support small scale farmers, reduce food waste and increase global health.
The food delivery companies listed below range in specialty and mission, but they all have one common goal: to connect people with food. Take a look at how they’re shaking up the world of cuisine.
Food Delivery Companies to Know
Headquarters: Birmingham, Alabama
Shipt is a delivery service offering same-day delivery for local grocery, household and various other products. Its services are available for up to 80 percent of households in over 5,000 U.S. cities. As of 2017, Shipt was acquired by Target for $550 million in cash. Since its acquisition, Shipt has now been used to provide same-day delivery to Target customers across the country, allowing flexibility and quick-substitution options for Target customers in the wake of recent supply chain disruptions.
Headquarters: Chicago, Illinois
Home Chef delivers custom-made meal kits to areas in 98 percent of the United States, offering new recipes to choose from and receive each week. The service allows customers the ability to choose pre-portioned ingredient or no-prep meal options from six different recipe categories.
Headquarters: San Francisco, California
Instacart is a grocery delivery company that partners with several national and regional grocery stores to provide customers shopping options from their homes. Instacart users can build shopping lists on the company’s web platform and choose delivery times that suit them best, with the option to have groceries delivered in an hour.
Headquarters: Chicago, Illinois
Tovala offers a food delivery and prep system that allows its customers to cook chef-created meals at home with minimal prep or cooking time. The company sets them up with a smart oven and then delivers prepared meals that can be popped into the oven. With the scan of the barcode on the food’s packaging, meals are cooked to “chef-perfected results.”
Headquarters: New York, New York
Serving roughly 336,000 customers as of 2021, Blue Apron provides fresh and sustainably sourced ingredients as well as instructions on how to use them to create full meals. The company offers plans for both couples and families, as well as unique add-ons like wine subscriptions and gift cards.
Headquarters: New York, New York
HelloFresh customers can enjoy fresh meals based around high quality produce with a preparation time of 45 minutes or less. HelloFresh provides its customers with the ability to mix and match their ideal recipes based on their dietary restrictions or preferences, removing the added tasks of shopping for ingredients.
Headquarters: Needham, Massachusetts
Ideal for vegetarian and vegan customers, Purple Carrot is a subscription food service that delivers plant-based ingredient kits or prepared meal kits to homes. In 2019, Purple Carrot was acquired by e-grocer Oisix ra daichi in an opportunity to expand its services across Japan.
Headquarters: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Juggling professional and personal responsibilities becomes more manageable when Gopuff takes shopping off the to-do list. The company supplies pickup and delivery services in cities across the country for items related to grocery, cleaning, bath and beauty, and other areas. With a fixed delivery fee of $2.95 and 24/7 delivery in several of its areas, Gopuff markets itself as an option for buyers with busy schedules.
Headquarters: Nashville, Tennessee
Porter Road Butcher provides a delivery service for customers to order local pasture-raised meat from Kentucky, Pennsylvania and Tennessee. The company offers individual servings of various beef, chicken, pork and market products, as well as curated subscription boxes and cooking hardware.
Headquarters: Seattle, Washington
A subsidiary of Amazon, Amazon Fresh uses the same delivery technology as its parent company, but this time solely for food, drink and other household items. Amazon Fresh offers same-day delivery to U.S. and select worldwide Amazon Prime members for a variety of name-brand and Amazon-brand grocery products.
Headquarters: San Francisco, California
Imperfect Foods aims to curb food waste by offering a delivery program through which customers can order irregularly shaped or surplus food products at a lower price than Grade A produce. By reducing surplus waste and committing to sustainability, Imperfect Foods supports farmers and customers alike in its effort to make the food industry more eco-friendly.
Headquarters: New York, New York
Grubhub is an internationally recognized food delivery tech company that connects customers with their favorite restaurants and foods through its online web platform. With almost two decades of food delivery experience under its belt, the company counts over 300,000 restaurants as its partners and also includes Seamless, AllMenus and MenuPages within its portfolio of brands.
Headquarters: San Francisco, California
Postmates is a popular restaurant delivery platform in the United States, and it also provides on-demand delivery services for users seeking groceries, beverages, retail items and other products. Its service connects with a network of local delivery workers in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, New York and dozens of other U.S. cities to streamline restaurant delivery. Uber acquired Postmates for $2.65 billion in 2020 in an effort to expand its delivery services.
Headquarters: New York, New York
Daily Harvest delivers fresh fruits, vegetables and other produce to customers on a subscription basis. The company’s variety of meal offerings includes soups, harvest bowls, flatbreads, chia bowls and other meals designed to make healthy eating more accessible.
Headquarters: Austin, Texas
Favor’s Texas-only on-demand food delivery and ordering platform allows customers in a huge range of in-state locations to have restaurant food, groceries and even dry cleaning delivered to their door. The company says its fleet of “runners” work on a gig basis and are “personal assistants, not delivery drivers.”
Headquarters: Chicago, Illinois
Crafty’s solutions support workplace food programs. Its offerings keep corporate kitchens stocked with snacks, drinks, produce, shelf-stable meals and other goods. The company provides its customers with a software platform that enables real-time visibility into food spending, automated ordering and inventory tracking. Crafty also helps businesses set up coffee stations and in-office cafes as well as access corporate catering solutions.
Headquarters: San Francisco, California
Starting under the name “UberFRESH” in 2014 and extending from its parent company, Uber Technologies Inc., Uber Eats uses its transportation services for delivering meals, groceries and other items from local participating restaurants and markets. Uber Eats remains one of the most popular food delivery services in the world, partnering with over 1,000 active grocery stores in the United States alone in 2021.
Headquarters: New York, New York
Goldbelly is a meal delivery service with the goal of supporting the sale of delicacies from small restaurants in U.S. metropolitan areas. The company seeks out local restaurants to partner with, and provides customers the opportunity to receive their orders from anywhere in the country — a Philadelphia cheesesteak can be sent to a home in Los Angeles, or vice versa. With its service, Goldbelly has been credited for saving a handful of small U.S. food businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Headquarters: Chicago, Illinois
Tock is a system for delivery, takeout, reservations and events. It allows businesses to manage orders and bookings, while also allowing customers to explore, discover and book at restaurants, wineries and culinary events around the world. Users can search based on reservation type, location, date, time and party size to find businesses from the “New & Notable” to James Beard Award nominees.
Headquarters: Los Angeles, California
At a $5-per-month membership fee, Thrive Market allows customers to ship personalized organic and non-GMO grocery boxes to their homes. Thrive Market currently offers over 5,000 organic products for purchase and serves over one million total members. The service also offers an included program known as Thrive Gives, where with each membership purchased, Thrive Market also provides a free one-year membership to a student, teacher, veteran, first responder, nurse or family in need.
Headquarters: New York, New York
Hungryroot’s meal-kit delivery service provides customers across the country with simple, easy meals based around healthy vegetables and fresh produce. Hungryroot’s meals are designed to be quick to prepare, with many meals requiring a prep time of only seven minutes.
Headquarters: San Francisco, California
DoorDash partners with local restaurants and national food chains to provide on-demand delivery to customers across the United States. In 2019, DoorDash acquired food delivery rival Caviar for $140 million in cash and stock. Caviar was known for delivering exclusive non-fast food options. The acquisition has allowed DoorDash to offer a wider variety of restaurants within its delivery app.
Headquarters: Istanbul, Turkey
Originating from Turkey, Getir is a food and grocery delivery app that has established its services across multiple cities, including Boston, Chicago and New York. Getir has aimed to set itself apart from other delivery services by doing away with time-slot deliveries and offering instant delivery by processing an order as soon as a user puts it in.
Headquarters: New York, New York
Seeking to provide healthy meal options for younger individuals, Little Spoon is a food delivery service that ships organic meals, snacks and vitamins made for infants and children. The service offers products all under six dollars and has sent out over 17 million meals since its founding.
Headquarters: Los Angeles, California
ChowNow is a behind-the-scenes supporter of the restaurant industry, providing tech-powered solutions for ordering, delivery, marketing and customer service. The company provides its industry clients with a central platform for organizing and managing curbside pickup, delivery and reservations, and helps build a more appealing and interactive online experience for their customers.
