Wonder

Research Outline

Prepared for Jonathan M. | Delivered February 25, 2021

Restaurant to Consumer Market

Goals

To gain an understanding of the size and scope of the restaurant to consumer market (restaurants who deliver to consumer themselves) in the US.  The ideal response would identify how many restaurants there are, how many orders they prepared and delivered last year, how many hold a courier fleet and when/if available, annual revenue and/or average order revenue.

Early Findings

According to data collected from AWS and Statista, the restaurant-to-consumer (R2C) segment is one of two segments in the online food delivery market. "Customers can choose between platform aggregation services (e.g. Just Eat or Deliveroo), that collect the menus of different restaurants, or they can use the website of the preferred service/restaurant (e.g. Domino’s). Most services also offer a mobile App."
"Meals ordered online are directly delivered by the restaurant, no matter if ordered via a platform or a restaurant website (e.g. Domino’s)."
Revenue figures in this segment include online orders that are picked up in the restaurant.
In 2018, the R2C segment saw revenues total approximately $14.875 billion. Prior to the pandemic, it was predicted that the segment would grow at 6.6% CAGR over the next five years to reach $20.166 billion in 2023.
One of the leading players in the R2C segment is Domino's, who had annual US sales in 2017 of $5.93 billion (about 39.8% of the total market). 
In the US, approximately 59.4% of online food order are placed by men. 
Globally, the R2C segment is valued at $156 billion. This figure would mean that the US represents 9.54% of the global market.
Approximately 8.3% of all restaurant sales in the US are earmarked as delivery, though this statistic does not state whether this is restaurant-delivered or delivered via a third-party.
As an important caveat, the majority of this data was published prior to the onset of the pandemic. "Because of the pandemic, restaurants have been closing their doors for good at an alarming rate of 60% since June (2020). And, it is forecast that as much as 85% of independent US restaurants could be permanently out of business by the end of 2020."
Due to the rising costs of service and commission fees with thrid-party delivery services like DoorDash and GrubHub, many restaurants are implementing their own fleet of delivery drivers. For example, "Wing Zone, a wing franchise with 90 locations worldwide, has met a more plentiful supply of delivery service drivers and hired more than 200 new drivers on the domestic front."
Paywalled SourcesOf note, a report titled 'United States Online Food Delivery Market & Volume Share Report 2020-2026: Focus on Platform-to-consumer & Restaurant-to-Consumer Delivery Models' was published in January 2021 by Research and Markets. Though the majority of the report is not publicly available, the abstract states the total online food delivery market (for all segments, including R2C) is expected to reach $34.2 billion by the end of 2026. This source has been included as reference in case further decisions to purchase this independently are desired.
Summary The time constraints of the discovery portion of research allowed for initial review to establish viability of continued research. Of note, early findings did not uncover specific metrics surrounding how many restaurants have their own fleet of drivers, though some tangential information on the growing need and desire to do so was uncovered. As such, further research would be suggested to explore this further. Within the total project, every effort will be made to identify these metrics, though if they are not available within the public domain, at least 8-10 additional pieces of information, data, and/or statistics surrounding the propensity of in-house delivery fleets. 