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Restaurant delivery giant Deliveroo has announced a new strategy, which will see it add a predicted 5,000 new restaurants to its platform. The move comes as it has confirmed it will, for the first time, work with restaurants which have their own delivery rider network.
“Deliveroo announces that restaurants who make deliveries with their own rider fleets will be able to join Deliveroo and make use of the company’s 15,000-strong U.K. rider network,” an announcement said this morning.
It means that restaurants now have the opportunity to receive deliveries via their own databases and networks and through the Deliveroo platform.
The new service, which is called “Marketplace+” will, according to Deliveroo, “dramatically extend the delivery service restaurants are able to offer while improving delivery times.” As well as increasing restaurant’s capacity to deliver, it will also mean they are able to deliver to within a greater radius, as those which use their own network of delivery riders typically limit their catchment.
It will launch in the UK and Ireland — as well as Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, Australia, Hong Kong — next month. Deliveroo says it is capable of adding 50 percent more restaurants to its platform because of the 35,000-strong (15,000 in the U.K.) proprietary rider network it has cultivated.
Deliveroo co-founder and CEO Will Shu said the move was “part of our mission to become the definitive food company.”
Deliveroo says it will enable restaurants to do three key things:
- Fulfil more orders at times of high customer demand — and shorten delivery times. (Deliveroo says its riders deliver food in an average of 30 minutes.)
- Extend the time frame in which restaurants can offer delivery, because of a greater number of delivery riders.
- Extend the catchment for delivery.
Restaurants will be able to choose for themselves how to offer delivery. And for customers? Deliveroo says it will mean they will get increased choice, price ranges and service options. “No other company is offering this mix of services to restaurants or customers,” the announcement says.
