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Here in the UK, delivery was standard well before apps—almost every local take-away offered delivery if you phoned up and ordered. Maybe just because the UK is
by Latty 7y ago
Here in the UK, delivery was standard well before apps—almost every local take-away offered delivery if you phoned up and ordered.
Maybe just because the UK is smaller and so they need to cover less distance? I often see people talking about grocery delivery the same way, when all the major supermarkets have been doing it as standard here in the UK for years.
- leetcrew 7y agoit could be that the UK is mostly dense enough. there are a few very dense parts of the US where you've been able to get pretty much anything delivered (eg, NYC) for a long time. I don't know much about grocery delivery, but I can think of two reasons offhand why it would be more viable. the first is that the delivery window for groceries is much more forgiving. if you have a cooler, you can keep refrigerated/frozen items at the correct temperature indefinitely. this allows you to load a lot more stuff in the vehicle and plan a more efficient route. the second is just a guess, but I'd bet the typical grocery order is larger than a typical food delivery order, so you make more money per stop.
- osullivj 7y agoCertainly delivery was commonplace in the UK by the late 90s. It was unusual in the late 80s. Douglas Adam's first Dirk Gently novel (1987) has an American character who complains frequently about the lack of delivery pizza in London.