A food court in your pocket
As on-demand platforms mature, standalone dining experiences will emerge on top of them.
In January, Uber opened up its UberRUSH platform to allow companies to create their own local on-demand businesses without having to build logistics from scratch. They are working with the likes of 1800 Flowers, Rent The Runway, and T-Mobile to use Uber’s driver network to define local commerce across every consumer vertical in NYC, SF, and Chicago.
A few weeks ago, mastermind chef David Chang of the Momofuku empire announced that his next restaurant Ando would be built on top of this very platform. This is a huge deal because a year ago Chang invested in Maple, a fully vertical mobile food delivery startup that not only focuses on making the highest quality food but also the complex logistics behind each delivery. I think this marks an inflection point where picks and shovels start to enable more innovation at the top of the stack around the local end-user experience instead of the highly complex (and capital intensive) last-mile logistics piece. It’s akin to what cloud services like AWS have enabled for startups but for the physical world.
When you think of food delivery, you tend to think about brick and mortar restaurants as aggregated by marketplaces like Seamless, Postmates, and DoorDash. In this case, the “modularization” of physical restaurants on these platforms implies some form of commoditization where the end product ironically becomes an afterthought. DoorDash and Seamless provide great flow-through to restaurants but stop short of providing partners any guidance (packaging, advice, etc.) when it comes to what customers end up putting in their stomachs. Maple launched to close that gap and RUSH will enable others to do so with limited startup costs and technical know-how.
I’m thrilled that Ando is launching because for the first time, an international restaurant group has the ability to define how a rich dining experience works on personal devices. There have been other attempts to create restaurants without the front of house, but many are simply commercial kitchens attached to Seamless in one market. Unlike other food startups, Ando is in an interesting position due to the nature of its hybrid tech/hospitality roots that enables it to:
- Innovate on the actual food product (vs. logistics, etc.) Leveraging UberRush for last mile delivery affords Chang the opportunity to do what he does best.
- Translate brick and mortar hospitality to mobile. How can CRM, referral, feedback, etc. be applied to a data-centric medium?
- Think about the physical dining experience outside the restaurant. How does the experience differ with friends, coworkers, or solo?
These are interesting questions because they involve experimenting with new means of augmenting a rich offline experience with the efficiency and scale of technology that restaurants have never previously leveraged. Hospitality-driven CRM exists but restaurants currently don’t know how many minutes per day you spend thinking about them or which items you contemplate eating before committing to ordering them. Coupons and gift cards exist, but restaurants don’t think about tracking referrals and creating viral incentives. Restaurants spend enough time perfecting their menus but lack the resources to figure out how their food product tastes when it’s delivered across town in rush hour traffic. They surely don’t have enough bandwidth to think about how they can offer a delivery product that suits larger orders that aren’t catering, but aren’t solo experiences such as picnics, co-workers, or get-togethers.
I’m excited for startups like Ando to blaze a trail for emergent mobile-first restaurants whether offshoots of existing brands or new startups. If all goes well, a food court will exist in your pocket where there’s a combination Taco Bell and Pizza Hut (and some).
