Millennials are the first generation to choose staying at home over a night out and this is part of the reason why meal delivery kits and food delivery services have become increasingly popular. They want healthy, restaurant standard meals, that require a little bit of effort to make, but not too much. But of course, Millennials are a bit old hat these days, if we want to look ahead to the future of our food delivery services, we need to look at the behaviour of GenZ.
What differs with GenZ is that even though they too prefer staying at home, unlike Millennials they are less likely to want to get involved in any of the cooking process. They want food delivered ready to go, they want it delivered fast, and they want to enjoy it from the comfort of their own homes… well, OK from the comfort of their parents’ homes. You see, GenZ’ers continue living with their parents for as long as they can get away with; house prices are ridiculously high, the cost of living is higher than ever, and hey who doesn’t love their mum doing their washing for them. And because they’re not forking out tonnes of money on rent or mortgage repayments, compared to previous generations they are spending way more of their income on online meal ordering and food delivery services.
If you want your food business to thrive both now and in the future it’s important to meet your customers’ needs and that means staying ahead of the game and keeping on track of the future trends in food delivery services. Fortunately, we’re here to help you with that.
Here’s our rundown of the hottest trends in food delivery services:
Drone Delivery
When we think of what a futuristic world might look like we imagine lots of little spaceships flying through city air spaces, a kind of aerohighway if you like. And although we may be a while off of flying cars, there is definitely something futuristic filling our skies these days.
Drone delivery is being implemented by food delivery companies who want to get their orders out as quickly as possible to their customers. The benefit is that the drones don’t get held up in traffic like cars and motorbikes do, they have low operating costs (you certainly don’t need to worry about the rising cost of fuel prices when you use a drone), and they can take a much more direct route to their final destination.
Big companies, like Amazon, have been using drones to deliver their parcels for a good few years now to great success. And as such, smaller businesses are realising the benefits and are starting to experiment with this delivery method too. The only downside is that drones shouldn’t fly in the rain or in high winds, which if you live in the UK could put a little bit of a dampener on the idea. But even so, we think the future of food delivery services lies in drone delivery. If you’d like to find out more about drone delivery services we’d suggest you click here.
Crypto Payments
Blockchain technology and cryptocurrency have taken the world by storm and now the food services industry wants a slice of the action too.
We are gradually moving towards being an entirely cashless society, with more and more of us choosing to pay contactless with our cards, phones or smartwatches. But as we move into the future, this will develop further and digital payment methods in the form of cryptocurrency will become the norm.
The idea behind cryptocurrency is relatively simple, once you get your head around the fact the money is in a sense ‘virtual’. Let’s think of an example. So, you’ve finished a home workout and you suddenly have a craving for something healthy and nutritious to refuel you after your hard work. You do a quick Google search on your phone for ‘acai bowls near me‘, which tells you there’s somewhere that delivers about 20 minutes away from your house. Perfect. You choose your bowl, go to the checkout, and select crypto as the payment method. Now, the thing about cryptocurrency is that it is forever fluctuating. What this means is that in some cases you may end up paying slightly more for your acai bowl, and then in other cases you may pay less. That’s the risk you take when you pay by crypto. Sounds a bit risky I know, but what current users of crypto like about this digital currency is that there is in most instances no transaction fee and there are far less cases of fraud, making this in some respects a safer form of payment.
However, the fact remains that this is a highly volatile currency, in which values can frequently crash, resulting in losses to the customer. From a business owners’ point of view, crypto is the future and it would be wise to adapt your business to accommodate crypto payments so that you can continue to grow in a competitive industry.
24/7 Ordering
GenZ lead hectic lifestyles and as such don’t want to waste precious time waiting for things. They want to be able to order something at any time of the day and have it delivered within as little time as possible. To make your food business meet GenZ’s needs you are going to need to start thinking about offering a food delivery service that operates 24/7. They won’t think anything of ordering sushi at 3am, as this is a generation of gamers and online social networkers, the world to them has always been digital and if the online world is 24/7 why shouldn’t their food delivery.
Decent food delivery services will already have a good system in place for taking orders, and some may even use something like zoho twilio, which is a text messaging service that can be used for bulk customer lists to let them know about promotions or menu changes etc. You can currently order your favourite takeout through your TV, through your smartwatch, you can even order through Alexa, but what next, what’s the future of food delivery services?
To cope with 24/7 ordering, some companies are exploring the idea of virtual restaurants. I guess the best way to explain this is by imagining the area you live being represented on a map a bit like Google maps, however it isn’t the actual real life businesses that show up on this map, but rather the virtual establishments instead. So, the geography is the same, but the services are more varied and there can be more of them. They are store fronts if you like. This means far less overheads for businesses, which is a win for them, and means far more flexibility and diversity for customers. This is fast food on the grandest scale possible and for GenZ and indeed the generations that follow, 24/7 virtual ordering is the language they understand.
Delivery Robots
With the advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning technology, food delivery services are now able to use smart robots to fulfil their orders. The delivery droids come equipped with enhanced cameras, 3D maps, and special sensors that ensure they avoid any potential hazards like potholes, pedestrians, cyclists, dogs, and traffic. They are able to transport food over a short distance, keeping it hot, and safely delivering it to the customer who then has to enter a code that unlocks the robot and gives them access to their order.
So, if we’ve already got delivery robots, what’s next. Well, we reckon robots will start appearing in the kitchens in years to come, with technology advancing to such a stage that we will no longer need top chefs to come up with culinary masterpieces, we will simply be able to program a robot to do the job for us. And we expect to see lots more automation in every part of the food service industry, including robots working alongside human workers as waiting staff. After all, if robots can deliver food to our homes surely they can deliver to our restaurant tables too.
Technology is forever improving, and in order to improve our businesses we must move with the times. And that is no different within the food delivery services sector. As customer demands increase, so too must customer service and deliverability. After all, the customer is always right.
