Food delivery: Going transatlantic

Is Europe becoming the battleground for the future of food delivery? Asking this question is in itself a small victory for the European FoodTech ecosystem. Before, the dream for a European startup was to become big enough in its home market to raise funds to go to the US (often with mixed results). For US startups, their expansion target was mainly in Asia. Now it seems that Europe is becoming their biggest target.

In the past weeks:

In the meantime, European startups are building their resistance and are starting to land in the US (after expanding in multiple European countries):

We will see where this go. It seems that in 18 months, we went from a concept to the creation of dozens of players, and now to the concentration phase with four categories:

  • one massive pure player in each continent which intends to compete with the other on its key markets: Getir in Europe, GoPuff in the US
  • Meal delivery startups heavily invested in players such as Gorillas for Delivery Hero and Flink for DoorDash
  • Local players awaiting acquisition, active in one or a handful of cities
  • Free agents with their own strategies such as Deliveroo and Frichti

It seems that this concentration will keep moving forward at great speed as some minor players will undoubtedly run out of cash shortly. This may lead either to a series of small acquisitions… or failures (which would reinforce the defiance against this ecosystem). 

MegaTrend #4: Food Automation
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