“What’s for dinner tonight?”
Whether that question comes on a commute home or after a failed attempt at a dinner for two, consumers around the world are turning to food delivery apps to get their grub more than ever.
At Thinknum, we track over 700,000 individual open listings for restaurants and other services provided by 10 different food delivery, courier, and/or logistics companies. We even mapped them and their respective territories.
The Map
(click the image to see a larger version of it)
Here's how we ranked these ten delivery services:
10. Delivery.com ($PRIVATE:DELIVERY)
With over 17,000 restaurants in over 100 cities tracked in our database, Delivery.com is a small, yet still present, competitor in the American food delivery space.
What makes Delivery.com stand out slightly against its competitors is delivery of other things besides prepared meals. In some markets, such as New York City and Boston, Delivery.com users can order in groceries, alcohol, and even dry cleaning services.
It also had a presence in Hong Kong in 2014, but sold its assets in 2016 to Food Panda.
9. Bite Squad ($PRIVATE:BITESQUAD)
Founded in 2012, Bite Squad goes against the grain of most food delivery services in focusing on smaller markets. Right now, the neighborhoods around Washington D.C. are the only exposure the company has to the heavily populated and saturated Northeastern United States. Bite Squad also has zero presence in Los Angeles or Chicago, two other large metro hubs West of the Mississippi.
It still has coverage in a few big city areas, such as its native Minneapolis, Minnesota, and essentially foothold in every major city and college town in Florida.
City |
State |
Bite Squad Delivery Locations |
Minneapolis |
Minnesota |
286 |
Seattle |
Washington |
275 |
Honolulu |
Hawaii |
263 |
Las Vegas |
Nevada |
261 |
Austin |
Texas |
258 |
Jacksonville |
Florida |
233 |
Tampa |
Florida |
213 |
Orlando |
Florida |
209 |
Tallahassee |
Florida |
207 |
Columbus |
Ohio |
170 |
Where Bite Squad shines is with Midwestern towns where there is little competition. While major players are focusing on the Big Apple and Tinseltown, Bite Squad is digging its heels into Davenport, Iowa and Conway, Arkansas.
And although it has less restaurants offered than Delivery.com, its exposure to these small markets make it a wildcard in the delivery service game.
8. Deliveroo ($PRIVATE:DELIVEROO)
Deliveroo’s mainland is the United Kingdom, where it was founded eight years ago in the heart of London.
At present, it is the second biggest food delivery service in the U.K., serving from over 16,000 restaurants. It also has restaurants elsewhere in Europe, as well as Hong Kong and Australia, which it tracks outside of our database.
Recent rumors hinted at Uber Eats, another company on this list, buying out Deliveroo for $2 billion, which would boost the service’s offerings without question
7. Postmates ($PRIVATE:POSTMATES)
Postmates is spread throughout the major U.S. metro hubs, but doesn’t offer much outside of them.
Still, Postmates has Founded in 2011, the company not only focuses on delivering meals, but also groceries and alcohol.The self-touted “anti-Amazon”, Postmates delivers in over 550 U.S. cities and established its place in Mexico City a year ago.
6. Takeaway.com ($PRIVATE:TAKEAWAY)
Takeaway.com zigs where other delivery services zag; its strongest markets are in Poland, Belgium and the Netherlands, where some of the biggest players in the United States have zero exposure.
Founded in 1999 and originally branded as Thuisbezorgd.nl, the delivery service began serving in the Netherlands before expanding to nearby Germany and Belgium in 2007. From there, it continued to roll across the European continent and acquire other small delivery services in new markets such as Vietnam.
Today, Takeaway.com is the only major food delivery service provider in Vietnam, and, oddly enough, the micronation of Luxembourg. Its individual websites for Poland (Pyszne.pl), Romania, Bulgaria, and Austria (Lieferservice.at) are also more popular than other delivery services in the area.
5. Delivery Hero ($XETRA:DHER)
The first publicly-traded company on our list also comes with a unique profile of customers it serves around the world.
Like Takeaway.com, Delivery Hero makes its mark on other markets around the world such as the Scandinavian countries, Germany, and South America.
One of the biggest purchases it made was when it took in Foodpanda from Takeaway.com in 2016, giving it a monopoly in Thailand, Malaysia, and Pakistan. By being in these markets that are mostly untapped by other international food delivery services, Delivery Hero is able to reach hundreds of millions of people that could become potential customers.
4. Just Eat ($LON:JE)
As we covered before, Just Eat is the most dominant food delivery platform in the United Kingdom today.
Founded in Denmark, Just Eat has 73,883 restaurants tracked within our database, overlapping coverage with its local competitors as well as offering more restaurants in each region.
It also has one of the cheapest delivery charges in the U.K. thanks to its business model with the restaurants it delivers from. By using delivery people already employed by some restaurants, Just Eat is able to knock down its average delivery fee for consumers to only £1.03.
Although its dominance in Europe is notable, it has a similarly impressive status in Canada, where it currently delivers from more restaurants than its local competitors.
3. Grubhub ($GRUB)
Outside of its own service, Grubhub owns Seamless. Combined, the two have 161,198 selections for restaurants… Although that doesn’t mean they serve from over 160,000 eateries.
Because Seamless merged with Grubhub in 2013, some restaurants stuck with both delivery services. In other words, someone could be deciding between ordering from the same Chipotle on Grubhub and on Seamless thinking they are choosing between competitors… When in reality, it’s the same company.
However, there are some differences between the two platforms despite being from the same company. In our database, Seamless has more cities that it serves listed than Grubhub, and delivers from more places in each delivery service’s top cities.
City |
State |
Grubhub Restaurant Count |
Seamless Restaurant Count |
Difference |
New York |
NY |
4725 |
4814 |
89 |
Chicago |
IL |
2545 |
2663 |
118 |
Brooklyn |
NY |
2421 |
2494 |
73 |
Los Angeles |
CA |
1862 |
1942 |
80 |
Philadelphia |
PA |
1205 |
1240 |
35 |
Las Vegas |
NV |
1118 |
1169 |
51 |
San Diego |
CA |
1066 |
1112 |
46 |
San Francisco |
CA |
998 |
1039 |
41 |
Houston |
TX |
985 |
1032 |
47 |
Miami |
FL |
924 |
960 |
36 |
Washington |
DC |
593 |
608 |
15 |
Portland |
OR |
578 |
601 |
23 |
Dallas |
TX |
576 |
607 |
31 |
Bronx |
NY |
568 |
593 |
25 |
Denver |
CO |
568 |
591 |
23 |
Seattle |
WA |
557 |
577 |
20 |
Atlanta |
GA |
534 |
555 |
21 |
Baltimore |
MD |
532 |
549 |
17 |
Phoenix |
AZ |
522 |
545 |
23 |
Austin |
TX |
460 |
479 |
19 |
Grubhub was even further saturated in the U.S. market due to Eat24, which it bought for $287 million from Yelp. That was, however, until it decided to shut it down in August.
Out of all delivery services, Grubhub has the largest market share, taking in 44% of food delivery orders in 2017. But in terms of a diverse portfolio and number of restaurants offered… It isn’t number one on the list.
2. Doordash ($PRIVATE:DOORDASH)
When it comes to strictly dominating the delivery game in North America, DoorDash crushes its competition.
Across the United States, Canada, and Mexico, there are 193,711 places where consumers can DoorDash meals. It is, in all intents and purposes, the largest food delivery service by sheer number of restaurants offered.
Rather than tout itself as a "food delivery company", Doordash calls itself a technology company focused on "delivering good" to all of its customers, clients, and delivery people (or "dashers").
1. Uber Eats ($PRIVATE:UBER)
Due to its offerings in markets from Japan to London and Australia to New York, Uber Eats takes home the crown.
As of Thinknum’s last data pull on September 7th, 2018, Uber Eats offers about 127,800 restaurants to order from in over 25 countries.
One of the reasons why Uber Eats is able to cover so much ground around the world, as well as get customers, is because of the company’s original purpose: delivering passengers to destinations by car. Uber drivers are able to become an Uber Eats courier and can switch between food deliveries and rideshare customers on the fly.
The company also boasts about how Eats can be a way for new users to get involved in all of its products, stating that more than 40% of first time Eats users are also new to using Uber.
On top of all of this, Uber was rumored to buy-out the number 8 service on ours list, Deliveroo, for the past few months in a deal worth $2 billion.
Essentially, Uber Eats has completely taken advantage of the network it has established through its rideshare service, and is in position to conquer the world food delivery market.