food-delivery
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Deliveroo’s next order: the rest of your shopping
It took 296 million orders to produce £2.9 million in profit in 2024. Now owned by DoorDash, Deliveroo is betting that your groceries, gifts and forgotten essentials belong in the same app as dinner.
iFood won dinner. Now it wants the rest of your day.
Brazil’s delivery heavyweight is turning takeaway habits into a business in groceries, payments and restaurant software. Its next test is making that convenience pay for everyone involved.
Rappi Wants Your Next Ten Minutes
The Colombian delivery app turned forgotten groceries into a business spanning nine countries. Now Amazon, advertisers and banks are buying into the habit it built.
Rebel Foods took the restaurant out of the restaurant business
Faasos escaped punishing rents by moving dinner upstairs. Rebel Foods turned that experiment into a network of shared kitchens, food brands and a $1.4 billion valuation. Making the whole machine profitable is the harder course.
Migros One Wants the Whole Shopping List
Groceries, dinner, pet food: Migros One is gathering the household shop into one app. Behind the screen, the Turkish retailer is putting its stores, software and delivery network to work together.
How KFC Canada Turns Weird Side Quests Into a Growth Strategy
The chicken chain’s Canadian playbook is equal parts local sourcing, pop-culture mischief and operational discipline. Now it is putting C$30 million behind a bigger question: can a bucket brand own the afternoon drink run?
Pizza Pizza Turned One Bad Digital Stat Into a 750-Store Feedback Machine
Canada’s orange pizza chain discovered that one in three digital-delivery customers had a problem. Its response - simplify the order, test in public and turn every menu launch into measurable theatre - is a playbook operators can actually copy.
FoodBoss Built Kayak for Takeout - Then Google Walked Into the Kitchen
The Chicago startup made delivery apps compete on price and speed, then learned the harder lesson of comparison businesses: the better your idea works, the more likely a platform giant is to copy the view.
What Restaurant Operators Can Steal From Newk's: It Lost the Dining Room, Then Found a Leaner Growth Plan
When COVID-19 erased 75 percent of its business, the nearly 100-unit Southern chain did not abandon scratch cooking. It cut the clutter around it - and turned a four-day curbside scramble into a more disciplined franchise playbook.
The Company That Taught Nigeria to Buy Online
Jumia built warehouses, a payment wallet and a fleet of delivery riders to sell phones and rice to a continent the big retailers skipped. Fourteen years in, Nigeria is the market deciding whether the bet finally pays off.
The Qatari Delivery App That Turned a Business-School Project Into a Billion-Riyal Exit
A university idea from HEC Paris became Qatar's first billion-riyal tech exit. Here is how Snoonu built a delivery machine that food, groceries and everything else now runs through.
One Fare at a Time, Snapp! Built Iran’s Everyday Operating System
Snapp! started by putting a price on a Tehran taxi ride before the passenger got in. A decade later, that small piece of certainty anchors a 20-service super app built for the peculiar scale, sanctions and street logic of Iran.
The $49 Billion Checkout Line Behind Your Dinner
Delivery Hero built a federation of local apps that can move dinner, diapers and cold medicine before the doorbell feels late. Now its most valuable product may be the logistics system hiding behind eleven familiar brands.
Yandex Built a Search Box. Then It Put the City Inside It.
The company that taught a search engine Russian grammar now wants to route the commute, deliver dinner, recommend the film and answer the question - all on the same machine-learning spine.
How a Stanford Class Project Became the Way America Gets Dinner
It started as a phone number taped to a flyer on a Palo Alto campus. A decade later, DoorDash carries more than $100 billion in orders a year and is quietly rebuilding itself into the plumbing for local commerce.
Slim Chickens Built a 300-Store Flock on One Surprisingly Sticky Idea: Choice
The Fayetteville chain turned garage-tested tenders, 14 sauces and table-side hospitality into a mostly franchised global business. Its next test is harder: preserving that sense of choice and care while opening in more formats, markets and countries.
The 49-Step Biscuit Trying to Conquer America
Bojangles built a regional institution by refusing to microwave breakfast. Now the Charlotte chain is pairing hand-folded biscuits with AI drive-throughs in a bid to turn Carolina loyalty into a national franchise.
The $4.99 Question Inside Smashburger’s Second Act
The chain that helped turn a cooking technique into a category is simplifying its menu, sharpening its value pitch and asking a harder question: can craft, speed and scale share the same griddle?
The Pizza Chain Quietly Building a 1,200-Store Operating System
Marco's is known for dough made in-store and two kinds of pepperoni. Its more consequential recipe is a franchise machine designed to make local pizza shops behave like one coherent national chain.
The 2,200-Item Grocery Store That Turned Errands Into Theater
Most supermarkets compete by stocking more. Stew Leonard's built a $500 million-plus family business by carrying less, making more in view of shoppers and giving the dairy aisle a cast of singing animals.
HelloFresh Put Dinner on Autopilot. Now It Wants the Rest of the Kitchen
The lime-green box solved the 6 p.m. question with portioned ingredients and a recipe card. Fifteen years later, HelloFresh is trying to turn that weekly habit into an operating system for what households eat.
The 74-Year-Old Chicken Chain Betting Its Comeback on $3.79 Meals and a 600-Store China Deal
Church's spent years rebuilding the unglamorous machinery behind a legacy fast-food brand. Now higher franchisee sales, a sharpened value menu and a huge China agreement are turning an old Texas name into a live growth story.
The Two-Name Burger Chain Betting Its Future on 570 Square Feet
Checkers & Rally’s built a national burger business by selling the same seasoned fries under two regional names. Now the drive-thru specialist is shrinking the restaurant, widening the freezer aisle and testing how much growth can fit inside a very small box.
The Fast-Food Chain Betting the Mainland Wants a Hawaiian Plate Lunch
Hawaiian Bros turned chicken, rice and macaroni salad into a high-throughput operating system. Now the Kansas City chain is testing how far a deliberately tiny menu - and a carefully borrowed spirit of hospitality - can travel.
Pizza Hut Built the Pizza Night. Now It Has to Reinvent the Hut.
The red roof taught generations to turn dinner into an occasion. A pending $2.7 billion ownership split now asks whether a 68-year-old restaurant icon can pair its old magic with the speed, value and digital habits of modern pizza night.
Popeyes Turned 12 Hours of Marination Into a Global Growth Machine
The chicken chain’s strongest asset is not one sandwich. It is a repeatable system for turning Louisiana flavor, kitchen craft and internet conversation into traffic for more than 5,400 restaurants.
How a Wing Craving in Ohio Became America's Loudest Sports Bar
Two friends could not find a decent wing in Columbus in 1982, so they started frying their own. Four decades later the sauce list has a heat challenge, the sports bar has a takeout spinoff, and a third of the orders never sit down.
Noodles & Company Wants to Be the Place Where Every Craving Fits in One Bowl
The Colorado chain built a national business by treating noodles as a universal language. Now it is testing whether a sharper menu, a strong digital habit and fewer weak stores can turn variety into durable growth.
Papa Johns
Papa Johns sells pizza, but the bigger machine sells consistency - fresh dough, franchise support, digital ordering and a familiar garlic-sauce ritual across nearly 6,000 restaurants. Now that machine is being rebuilt while North American diners pull back.
Potbelly Sandwich Works
Potbelly turned an antique shop's lunch counter into a repeatable neighborhood ritual. Now, under RaceTrac ownership, the question is whether its stove, hot peppers and lunch-hour warmth can travel to 2,000 shops without losing the odd little details that made the first one work.