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Is Amazon already back in the food delivery game?

June 14, 2019

Although Amazon announced earlier this week that it was closing its 4-year-old Amazon Restaurants delivery service, it's not quite out of the food delivery game. The e-tailer is backing the third-party delivery company, Deliveroo, which is planning a major expansion in the U.K. after securing $575 million in funding from Amazon and other investors, according to Bloomberg.

Since its founding in 2012, Deliveroo has raised $1.5 billion in venture capital and is now hoping to increase its reach in the U.K. from 33% to half of the U.K.'s population by the end of the year, Chief Executive Officer Will Shu, told Bloomberg.

The third-party delivery business is hugely competitive. In fact, there are more than 1,000 third-party delivery providers in the U.S. alone, Chowly CEO Sterling Douglass recently said during a QSRWeb's podcast, while venture capitalists sunk $3.5 billion into food and restaurant delivery startups last year.

"Whether they're local, regional market places that may have even been started off by a college student ... or another branded online ordering company or mobile app company that pops up, he said. "As the technology is getting easier and easier to build you're seeing a lot of options for restaurants."