New Yorkers and Chicagoans are most likely to get their takeout from GrubHub. Chances are DoorDash will fork over your food in San Jose and Fort Worth. In Charlotte, N.C., and Los Angeles Postmates is most likely to bring home the bacon (cheeseburger).
What’s the biggest food delivery service in your city?
Prepared food delivery is a fractured market.
Lisa Lake/Getty Images for Anheuser-Busch
Rani Molla was a senior correspondent at Vox and has been focusing her reporting on the future of work. She has covered business and technology for more than a decade — often in charts — including at Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal.
The takeout food delivery market is a fractured one, according to data from Second Measure, a company that analyzes billions of dollars worth of anonymized debit and credit card purchases.
GrubHub, which includes Seamless, has the greatest overall market share and is the most popular takeout delivery platform in nine major cities, according to August data for the 22 most populous cities in the U.S. Grubhub’s marketshare is likely to increase after GrubHub’s recent acquisition of Eat24, Yelp’s delivery platform.
In these cities DoorDash has the second overall markets share, while UberEATS is third.
But thanks to the mechanics of food delivery platforms — which often require companies to sign up hoards of independent restaurants in each new city — the more than $100 billion takeout food delivery market is still anyone’s game.
DoorDash, for example, specializes in partnerships with nationwide chain restaurants that are often more difficult to secure but allow for more volume with fewer partners.
UberEATS, which launched in several cities last year and is now profitable in 27 of 108 cities worldwide, has the benefit of existing driver networks around the country from its parent company Uber.
Amazon — which only leads food delivery in its hometown of Seattle — has huge organizational and delivery chops from its retail business that it could leverage to grow its food delivery business.
Prepared food delivery makes up the vast majority of Postmates’ sales, but the service does deliver groceries and non-food items as well — a useful fallback from food delivery. Note that that also means Postmates market share might be slightly overrepresented.
Caviar has the biggest market share in the highly competitive and tech-forward San Francisco. Like UberEATS and Postmates, Caviar has a driver network in addition to its tech platform.
Here’s the above information as a sortable table:
Takeout food delivery market share in August 2017
City | GrubHub (Seamless) | DoorDash | UberEATS | Postmates | Eat24 | Caviar | Amazon Restaurants |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Washington | 34.60% | 11.80% | 24.70% | 12.40% | 7.30% | 6.90% | 2.50% |
| Boston | 55.70% | 11.50% | 12.50% | 6.20% | 8.70% | 5.50% | 0.00% |
| Chicago | 61.60% | 9.30% | 10.60% | 9.70% | 3.10% | 4.70% | 1.10% |
| San Francisco | 16.80% | 11.00% | 9.50% | 15.10% | 22.20% | 24.10% | 1.30% |
| Los Angeles | 19.70% | 12.10% | 12.00% | 38.70% | 13.90% | 2.60% | 1.10% |
| Houston | 15.10% | 33.30% | 33.40% | 5.70% | 7.30% | 0.00% | 5.20% |
| Philadelphia | 62.50% | 0.00% | 8.90% | 6.10% | 5.10% | 17.40% | 0.00% |
| Phoenix | 18.00% | 19.80% | 24.00% | 25.00% | 8.80% | 0.00% | 4.30% |
| San Antonio | 33.30% | 34.40% | 18.70% | 10.20% | 3.30% | 0.00% | 0.00% |
| San Diego | 19.70% | 20.30% | 17.90% | 20.20% | 12.50% | 1.10% | 8.40% |
| Dallas | 14.30% | 29.10% | 30.50% | 8.30% | 7.10% | 3.90% | 6.80% |
| San Jose | 4.10% | 77.50% | 7.80% | 3.30% | 6.20% | 0.00% | 1.10% |
| Seattle | 15.10% | 7.00% | 20.00% | 16.40% | 12.10% | 8.50% | 21.00% |
| Austin | 22.80% | 14.30% | 31.40% | 10.40% | 11.00% | 0.00% | 10.00% |
| Denver | 49.00% | 14.20% | 13.70% | 12.90% | 10.10% | 0.00% | 0.00% |
| Jacksonville | 72.00% | 0.00% | 10.20% | 0.00% | 17.80% | 0.00% | 0.00% |
| Columbus | 27.60% | 25.00% | 16.80% | 10.50% | 1.60% | 0.00% | 18.60% |
| Indianapolis | 31.30% | 42.10% | 10.10% | 10.40% | 6.20% | 0.00% | 0.00% |
| Fort Worth | 9.00% | 46.20% | 38.20% | 0.00% | 4.30% | 2.40% | 0.00% |
| Charlotte | 20.10% | 26.60% | 7.80% | 42.90% | 2.50% | 0.00% | 0.00% |
| El Paso | 91.90% | 0.00% | 0.00% | 0.00% | 8.10% | 0.00% | 0.00% |
| New York | 85.90% | 0.90% | 2.70% | 4.00% | 1.90% | 4.50% | 0.20% |
Source: Second Measure | Note: Postmates data may be slightly overrepresented due to other delivery types.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
