Company type | Subsidiary |
---|---|
Industry | Logistics |
Founded | May 1, 2011 |
Founder | Bastian Lehmann Sam Street Sean Plaice |
Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States |
Area served | Select cities in United States |
Key people | Bastian Lehman (CEO) Sean Plaice, Kristin Schaefer (Management Team) Nabeel Hyatt, Brian Singerman, Khai Ha (Board Members) |
Products | Mobile app, website |
Services | Delivery (commerce) |
Revenue | US$1 billion (2018) |
Number of employees | 5,341 (2019) [1] |
Parent | Uber |
Website | postmates |
Postmates Inc. [2] is an American food delivery service, founded in 2011, and acquired by Uber in 2020. It offers local delivery of restaurant-prepared meals and other goods. It is headquartered in San Francisco, California. [3]
As of February 2019 [update] , Postmates operates in 2,940 U.S. cities. [4] Postmates primarily competes with Grubhub, DoorDash, and its sister service Uber Eats.
The company has been sued for alleged antitrust price manipulation. [5]
Postmates was founded in 2011 by Bastian Lehmann, Sean Plaice, and Sam Street. [6]
In December 2014, Postmates opened its application programming interface to merchants to allow small businesses to compete in the business of consumer goods delivery with larger companies such as Amazon. [7] [8] [9] [10]
In November 2017, Postmates launched its service in Mexico City, its first location outside the United States. [11] It ceased operations in Mexico in December 2019, citing a lack of growth and a desire to focus more on the U.S. market. [12] In 2018, Postmates launched its service in 134 new cities in the United States, bringing its total number of cities in the United States up to 550. [13]
On December 13, 2018, Postmates announced the development of an autonomous delivery rover. [14]
In 2011, Postmates raised over US$800,000 through involvement with the Angelpad accelerator. [15] [16]
In September 2018, Postmates announced that it had raised US$300 million in additional funding, led by Tiger Global Management. [17] Fortune reported that the deal valued Postmates at US$1.2 billion. [18]
In January 2019, Postmates raised US$100 million in investments from BlackRock together with Spark Capital, Founders Fund, Uncork Capital, and Slow Ventures. The total valuation of the company reached US$1.85 billion. [19]
In September 2019, GPI Capital led a final round capital raise in Postmates with its Managing Partner, Khai Ha, joining the board. [20]
In December 2020, Uber acquired Postmates for US$2.65 billion. [21] [22] [23]
In May 2019, Postmates changed its pay structure for delivery workers, removing a $4-per-job minimum pay guarantee, changing the base rate per job, and decreasing the per-mile rate in some markets. Working Washington, a labor activism group affiliated with the SEIU labor union, urged couriers to refuse jobs with Postmates. The company defended its modified pay structure, citing improved efficiency and its policy of allowing workers to keep all tips without counting them against other compensation. [24]
In April 2020, a group of New York residents sued DoorDash, GrubHub, Postmates, and Uber Eats, accusing them of abusing their market power by only listing restaurants on their apps if the restaurant owners signed contracts which include clauses that require prices to be the same for dine-in customers as for customers receiving delivery. [25] [26] [27] [28] The plaintiffs stated that this arrangement increases the cost for dine-in customers, as they are required to subsidize the cost of delivery; and that the apps charge “exorbitant” fees, which range from 13% to 40% of revenue, while the average restaurant’s profit ranges from 3% to 9% of revenue. [25] [26] [27] [28] The lawsuit seeks triple damages, including for overcharges, since April 14, 2016, for dine-in and delivery customers in the United States at restaurants using the defendants’ delivery apps. [25] [26] [27] [28] The case is filed in the federal U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York as Davitashvili v GrubHub Inc., 20-cv-3000. [29] [25] [26] [27] [28] A trial date has not yet been set. [30] In March 2022, U. S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan denied the defendants' motion to dismiss. [31]
Uber Technologies, Inc. is an American multinational transportation company that provides ride-hailing services, courier services, food delivery, and freight transport. It is headquartered in San Francisco, California, and operates in approximately 70 countries and 10,500 cities worldwide. It is the largest ridesharing company worldwide with over 150 million monthly active users and 6 million active drivers and couriers. It facilitates an average of 28 million trips per day and has facilitated 47 billion trips since its inception in 2010. In 2023, the company had a take rate of 28.7% for mobility services and 18.3% for food delivery.
Room service or in-room dining is a hotel service enabling guests to choose items of food and drink for delivery to their hotel room for consumption. Room service is organized as a subdivision within the food and beverage department of high-end hotel and resort properties. It is uncommon for room service to be offered in hotels that are not high-end, or in motels. Room service may also be provided for guests on cruise ships. Room service may be provided on a 24-hour basis or limited to late night hours only. Due to the cost of customized orders and delivery of room service, prices charged to the patron are typically much higher than in the hotel's restaurant or tuck shop, and a gratuity is expected in some regions.
Online food ordering is the process of ordering food, for delivery or pickup, from a website or other application. The product can be either ready-to-eat food or food that has not been specially prepared for direct consumption.
Olo is a New York City-based B2B SaaS company that develops digital ordering and delivery programs for restaurants. The company’s platform allows customers to place restaurant orders from multiple origination points – from a brand’s own website or app, third party marketplaces, social media platforms, smart speakers, and home assistants. It also provides restaurants with order analytics and other services.
delivery.com LLC is an American online platform and suite of mobile apps that enables users to order from local restaurants and stores for on-demand delivery. The company currently has more than one million users and an online marketplace of more than 12,000 restaurants, wine and liquor stores, grocery stores, and laundry/dry cleaning providers.
Zomato is an Indian multinational restaurant aggregator and food delivery company. It was founded by Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj Chaddah in 2008. Zomato provides information, menus and user-reviews of restaurants as well as food delivery options from partner restaurants in more than 1,000 Indian cities and towns, as of 2022–23. Zomato rivals Swiggy in food delivery and hyperlocal space.
Foodler Inc. was an American online food ordering service that connected consumers with a wide variety of restaurants for immediate delivery. The company’s website, www.foodler.com, ranked restaurants according to consumer feedback with recommendations based on order history, user ratings, discounts, and free delivery. Users could rank specific dishes. Foodler also remembered users’ favorite foods, addresses, payment, and tip preferences to speed up the ordering process.
Grubhub Inc. is an American online and mobile prepared food ordering and delivery platform based in Chicago, Illinois.
OrderUp was an online and mobile food-ordering and delivery company which operated in at least 37 markets. Prior to being acquired by Grubhub, OrderUp was a part of the Groupon family of companies and operated as both OrderUp and Groupon-To-Go.
Foodpanda is a Singaporean online food and grocery delivery platform owned by Berlin-based Delivery Hero. Foodpanda operates as the lead brand for Delivery Hero in Asia, with its headquarters in Singapore. It is currently the largest food and grocery delivery platform in Asia, outside of China, operating in 11 markets across Asia.
Ola Consumer, formerly Ola Cabs, is an Indian transportation company that provides ride-hailing services and operates other business verticals such as financial services and cloud kitchens. It is headquartered in Bangalore, and operates in 250+ Indian cities.
Maplebear Inc., doing business as Instacart, is an American delivery company based in San Francisco that operates a grocery delivery and pick-up service in the United States and Canada accessible via a website and mobile app. It allows customers to order groceries from participating retailers with the shopping being done by a personal shopper. The company also provides alcohol delivery in states and provinces where it is allowed. It has partnerships with 1,500 retail banners comprising 85,000 stores. Instacart reaches nearly 98% of SNAP households, offering delivery services from nearly 180 retail banners, including ALDI, Food Lion, Publix, The Save Mart Companies and Walgreens, spanning more than 30,000 stores across all 50 states and Washington D.C. Since its founding, Instacart Marketplace has powered more than $100 billion of GTV and over 900 million orders with approximately 20 billion items ordered.
DoorDash, Inc. is an American company operating online food ordering and food delivery. It trades under the symbol DASH. With a 56% market share, DoorDash is the largest food delivery platform in the United States. It also has a 60% market share in the convenience delivery category. As of December 31, 2020, the platform was used by 450,000 merchants, 20,000,000 consumers, and one million delivery couriers.
Food delivery is a courier service in which a restaurant, store, or independent food-delivery company delivers food to a customer. An order is typically made either by telephone, through the supplier's website or mobile app, or through a third party food ordering service. The delivered items can include entrees, sides, drinks, desserts, or grocery items and are typically delivered in boxes or bags. The delivery person will normally drive a car, but in bigger cities where homes and restaurants are closer together, they may use bikes or motorized scooters.
Uber Eats is an online food ordering and delivery platform launched by the company Uber in 2014. The meals are delivered by couriers using various methods, including cars, scooters, bikes, or on foot. It is operational in over 6,000 cities in 45 countries as of 2021.
Tapingo was a mobile commerce application that offers advance ordering for pickup and food delivery services for college campuses. This functionality was merged into GrubHub mobile application after the acquisition.
A virtual restaurant, also known as a ghost kitchen, cloud kitchen or dark kitchen, is a food service business that serves customers exclusively by delivery and pick-up based on phone and online ordering. Virtual restaurants are stand-alone businesses that either operate out of an existing restaurant's kitchen or from a separate kitchen set-up away from a restaurant. By not having a full-service restaurant with a storefront and dining room, virtual restaurants can economize by occupying cheaper real estate. The reduced space lowers overall overhead and operational costs, thus yielding higher profit margins, as the price of the food provided is typically not changed. The virtual restaurant's single kitchen format allows for multiple brands to share kitchen space.
ChowNow is an online food ordering platform that connects customers with local restaurants. Christopher Webb and Eric Jaffe, American entrepreneurs, founded the company in 2011 with headquarters in Los Angeles, California.
SkipTheDishes is a Canadian online food delivery service headquartered in Winnipeg, Manitoba and a division of Dutch-based Just Eat Takeaway.com. Users can order and pay for food from participating restaurants online using an application on the iOS or Android platforms, or through a web browser. Users are also able to provide feedback by reviewing restaurants after receiving an order. It was founded in 2012 in Saskatoon, and later purchased by UK-based Just Eat in 2016, with Just Eat retaining the name. SkipTheDishes was subsequently folded into Just Eat Takeaway following Just Eat's acquisition in 2020, and assumed Takeaway.com's orange branding and logo.Skip is a platform that connects entrepreneurs and small businesses with investment and growth prospects.
Owner.com is an American software-as-a-service company that provides an online food ordering system to independent restaurants in the United States.
Frank points to a clause in the contracts restaurants and the food delivery apps agree to that prohibits owners from charging delivery customers more than people who dine in, even though delivery costs more. "By not forcing those purchasing on apps to bear the whole amount of the fees, instead forcing all menu prices to rise together, in-restaurant diners are effectively subsidizing Grubhub's high rates," said Frank, who argues such an arrangement is anti-competitive and illegal.
Each of the firms uses "monopoly power" to prevent competition, limit consumer choice and force restaurants to agree to illegal contracts that have "the purpose and effect of fixing prices," the suit claimed. ... The four companies give restaurants a "devil's choice" that requires them to keep dine-in prices the same as delivery prices if they want to be on the app-based delivery platforms, the suit claimed. And restaurants must pay commissions to the delivery firms ranging from 13.5% to 40%, the suit alleged. ... Establishments are forced to "calibrate their prices to the more costly meals served through the delivery apps," the suit alleged.
GrubHub, DoorDash, Postmates and Uber Eats were sued on Monday for allegedly exploiting their dominance in restaurant meal deliveries to impose fees that consumers ultimately bear through higher menu prices, including during the coronavirus pandemic. In a proposed class action filed in Manhattan federal court, three consumers said the defendants violated U.S. antitrust law by requiring that restaurants charge delivery customers and dine-in customers the same price, while imposing "exorbitant" fees of 10% to 40% of revenue to process delivery orders. The consumers, all from New York, said this sticks restaurants with a "devil's choice" of charging everyone higher prices as a condition of using the defendants' services.
The New York customers, who seek class-action status, say the delivery services charge "exorbitant fees" that range from 13% to 40% of revenue, while the average restaurant's profit ranges from 3% to 9% of revenue, making delivery meals more expensive for eateries. "Restaurants could offer consumers lower prices for direct sales, because direct consumers are more profitable," the plaintiffs said. "This is particularly true of dine-in consumers, who purchase drinks and additional items, tip staff, and generate good will."