Today in restaurant and grocery tech news, Walmart and Buzzfeed expand their shoppable content partnership, while Discover makes moves to capture young consumers’ demand for digital ordering. Plus, airport dining begins to make a comeback.
55% of Consumers Who Buy Groceries Online Use Mobile Devices
The Omni Grocery report: What Consumers Expect from their Grocery Shopping Experiences, a collaboration between ACI Worldwide and PYMNTS that surveyed more than 2,300 consumers, found that the movement toward working from home has brought an increasing comfort with ordering produce, dairy and all manner of other consumables to be delivered to the front door.
Walmart Grows Its Shoppable Content Empire With Buzzfeed Partnership Expansion
Among online grocers, Walmart is winning the contextual commerce race, announcing move after move to turn the online shopping experience from work to leisure. On Tuesday (Sept. 28), Buzzfeed announced that it is growing its Tasty brand’s partnership with the retailer, which first launched in 2019, with new add-to-bag capabilities and ad sales opportunities.
Owner of Airport Eateries Sees Revenue Surge to 53% of Pre-Pandemic Levels
SSP Group, which operates foodservice sites in airports and railway stations in 35 countries, on Wednesday (Sept. 29) announced that its revenues in the last week were roughly 53% of 2019 levels, according to a pre-close trading announcement on the company’s website. Third-quarter revenues increased to 27% of 2019 levels, resulting in second-half revenue of 37%, with projections of nearly 50% in the fourth quarter.
Having grown up in the digital age, today’s college students expect more flexibility and convenience from their dining options than previous generations. Seizing on this demand, banking and payment services company Discover announced on Wednesday (Sept. 29) that it is partnering with student meal plan solution Phood to create a prepaid card that will allow students to shop from off-campus vendors the same way they shop from on-site vendors.
Delivery Fee Caps Benefit Major Restaurant Chains While Leaving Independents to Struggle
Demand for food delivery may be higher than ever, but the economics of the model remain unworkable for restaurants and delivery services alike. Zhuoxin (Allen) Li, Ph.D., an assistant professor of information systems at Boston College studying the legal and economic factors influencing on-demand delivery platforms, speaks with PYMNTS about the best- and worst-case scenarios of delivery pricing.
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