by Freedonia Industry Studies
March 7, 2022
This week, DoorDash announced that it would buy table-side contactless ordering and payment technology firm Bbot. This is part of the company’s move into technology areas, particularly restaurant logistics.
DoorDash seems to plan subscriptions to restaurant logistics services from table-side ordering technology to online ordering and delivery. This allows restauranteurs to focus on their core competency, which is usually the food. It’s also a good avenue for DoorDash as well. First-party logistics for use by the restaurants should be a more stable and profitable business extension as it relies more on technology and less on the expensive labor, which is a challenge for its original online ordering and delivery business.
One question would be access to consumer's data. Unless there is some sort of firewall or agreement about data ownership, DoorDash would be accumulating a treasure trove of information about demographics and ordering habits/preferences coming from those doing their online ordering and delivery and customers using the tableside technology.
Some restaurants have been bothered by orders going directly through third-party delivery firms such as DoorDash, GrubHub, UberEats, etc., as those firms get the customers' contact info and buying habits that the restaurants would want for marketing. However, restaurants might be more inclined to share the data with DoorDash if they weren’t frozen out of seeing who the customers are and what they like to buy.
For more information and discussion of opportunities, see The Freedonia Group’s extensive collection of off-the-shelf research, including Foodservice Single-Use Packaging and Food Carryout & Delivery (update in progress) from our sister published Packaged Facts. Freedonia Custom Research is also available for questions requiring tailored market intelligence.