can advertise their services, another way for
restaurants to ensure customers still choose to
eat their food even if they aren’t able to make it
to their brick-and-mortar premises, and a means
by which OpenTable can make its already-
popular app even more so. At this point, it might
seem that the ‘sharing economy’, when applied
to food delivery services, is bringing harmonious
benefits to every stakeholder.
AN INNOVATIVE FIELD, BUT NOT ONE
WITHOUT ITS PROBLEMS
The revolution in the ways in which we dine via
the emergence of the ‘sharing economy’ has also
sometimes been referred to as the ‘Uberization
of food’. This term is, of course, a reference to the
aforementioned Uber, with another common
term being the ‘gig economy’, where contractors
may be used rather than employees to deliver
services – for example, available drivers with cars
or residents with spare bedrooms.
As explained by the reusable packaging
specialists IFCO Systems, various combinations
of technology and sharing have already
been used with real benefits for the food
supply chain. We are seeing the emergence of
‘restaurants without seats’, for example, which
are commercial kitchens that devote themselves
to the preparation of food solely with home
delivery in mind. ‘Seats without restaurants’,
meanwhile, are online platforms that connect
home cooks with customers.
However, such an abundance of possibilities
- effectively blurring the lines between such
previously disparate activities as eating at home
and eating out – also presents new issues. One