UberEATs, Foodora, MenuLog, Deliveroo: The food delivery revolution

UberEATs, Foodora, MenuLog, Deliveroo - all of them promise fresh, tasty food, often from bricks-and-mortar restaurants around Sydney and NSW.

So, let’s find out who’s who in the home delivery app market.

UberEATS

CLAIM: The newest player in the food delivery business, which launched here in July, UberEATS uses the resources of drivers already signed up with Uber.

UberEATS’ Caspar Nixon says the idea was to expand the customer base for restaurants.

“We’ve got a mixture of high-end and trendy restaurants but it’s not necessarily all five-star menus. It’s restaurants that have traditionally been inaccessible for in-home delivery,” he says. While dinner is the home delivery mainstay, office worker lunch orders are increasingly popular.

EXPERIENCE: It’s a lunch order from Vietnamese eatery So 9 at Waterloo on a public holiday; a watermelon and lychee slushie, rare beef salad, grilled lemongrass chicken and rice paper rolls.

As I already have the Uber app, I’m familiar with the service and my details are on file, so ordering is seamless.

Delivery time is estimated at 40 minutes, but that doesn’t happen, with the delivery time being updated on the app.

Although it’s expected that delivery services will be busy on a public holiday, that’s exactly when many want to use it, so I call at the hour mark to inquire about the whereabouts of my food.

While the delivery is very late, the customer service makes up for it. I am told the food is on the way, the cost of my order is refunded and a $20 credit is added to my account.

The food arrives an hour and 25 minutes after ordering. The chicken is cold, the beef overcooked and rice paper rolls left off the order, but the slushie has arrived in excellent condition. Because of the refund, I don’t bother following up and I’m still reasonably happy.

HIGHLIGHTS: Geared towards premium eateries, including Thieverya t Glebe, Sake at Double Bay and Three Blue Ducks at Rosebery. Delivery is free but it only covers the inner city.

FOODORA

CLAIM: Foodora, once known as Suppertime, started offering lunch and dinner for corporate clients 15 years ago.

Last year it was bought by a German company which operates Foodora globally.

“The shift was made from being a purely corporate offer to residential as well,” Foodora’s Charlotte Rijkenberg says.

The service is accessed through an app and delivers by car and bicycle. It also wants to offer beyond the usual fast food fare.

“Food delivered to you can actually be of a high quality, healthy and something you shouldn’t feel guilty about,” Rijkenberg says.

EXPERIENCE: It’s a bit fiddly to sign up to the app but beyond that, it’s straightforward. I order from BL Burgers in Darlinghurst: a couple of classic cheeseburgers, shoestring fries and a soft drink.

I’m also able to apply a $10 discount from a flyer handed to me at a train station, which more than covers the $5 delivery fee. It’s estimated my food will take 35 minutes to arrive, but gets to me nine minutes early.

The burgers are in great condition, the drink is cold and the fries OK. They’ve probably suffered the most in the delivery. Overall a great result.

HIGHLIGHTS: BL Burgers in Bondi and Darlinghurst, Malaysian eatery PappaRich and Bondi favourite Gelbison. There’s a delivery fee and it currently serves the eastern suburbs, inner west, North Sydney, Chatswood, and has plans to expand.

MENULOG

CLAIM: Menulog is a decade-old company, where orders were originally made online and then sent to restaurants via fax. Menulog now has an app and extensive coverage across NSW. Alistair Venn, from Menulog, says while most customer orders are for Italian or Thai food, people are also becoming more adventurous for different styles of cuisine.

“We’re really seeing huge growth in healthier options. Vegetarian is our fastest growing category,” he says, but adds that many people use the service for guilty pleasures, too. Restaurants usually organise their own delivery, but Menulog also provides drivers.

EXPERIENCE: Going all out on a guilty pleasure, I order half a dozen doughnuts from Milk Bar by Cafe Ish at Redfern. Its sweets have something of a cult following, and I submit an order via the app, which I have used before.

It’s a little less slick than the others, but still easy to navigate. I’m also able to apply a 15 per cent discount that has been emailed to me. Delivery is estimated at 56 minutes but is much quicker, at just 27 minutes.

The delivery guy looks a bit put out when I ask for a receipt, as he tells me he needs it to get paid, so I take a photo instead. The doughnuts are in great condition — the only thing left to do is eat them.

HIGHLIGHTS: Manoosh Pizzeria at Enmore is the most popular restaurant order and Red Rooster the most popular chain order in NSW. Menulog has extensive coverage across the state but there is a delivery fee.

DELIVEROO

CLAIM: While it sounds positively Australian, Deliveroo was founded in the UK, and launched in Sydney in November last year.

Deliveroo’s Levi Aron says it has an edge because of the way it crunches data. “Being a technology company, it’s all about working our what consumers want, how often they want it and how soon they want it,” he says.

“Different cuisines take different prep time and different restaurants operate differently — we need to take that all into consideration and our algorithms do that.”

Aron does deliveries every fortnight either by bicycle or a moped: “It’s really important to understand the restaurant side, what it’s like to be a delivery driver or a customer on the other side; to understand the whole ecosystem.

EXPERIENCE: Signing up to the app is easy, except that it doesn’t accept my discount code for a first-time order.

I order food from Mamma’s Buoi, a Surry Hills restaurant that’s only a few blocks away, but hey, that’s what delivery is for.

While the delivery is predicted to be 22 minutes, it only takes 15. The food — rice paper rolls, a beef pho, chicken slaw salad, dessert and cold drink — is packed neatly in a bag and arrives in excellent condition. Nothing has spilt and everything is at the right temperature. The food looks good enough to be photographed for our cover, and tastes exactly as it would if you were eating in-house.

HIGHLIGHTS: Includes upscale options, including Salaryman, Surry Hills, Mary’s Burger, Newtown and Red Lantern, Darlinghurst. Covers the CBD, inner suburbs, Chatswood, North Sydney, Crows Nest, Manly and Parramatta.