Hong Kongers are spoilt for choice when it comes to food delivery. We are able to order from hundreds of restaurants and all the major supermarkets – and have our food delivered to us. Due to our love of convenience, compact city size and efficient transport network, the food-delivery industry has seen tremendous growth in the past few years.
In fact, according to Nikki Neuburger of Uber Eats, the Asia-Pacific region has grown 30 per cent on the Uber Eats platform in the past year alone. Neuburger was recently in Hong Kong to speak to food executives and insiders at Uber Eats’ very first APAC Future of Food Summit.
“Uber is a logistics platform across three sectors: consumers, delivery partners, restaurant partners.” – Nikki Neuburger
Uber Eats is a platform; it benefits consumers (who don’t need to hunt around all the different websites available for online ordering) and restaurants (who don’t need to build an online ordering system, market themselves or employ delivery staff).
The real value here for Uber Eats is the collection of data, and the company is using the valuable information it already has about how we order to investigate what could come next. Together with Deloitte, Uber has presented an exploration of some possible scenarios related to where food delivery is headed in the future.
Deloitte’s predictions
- One plate at a time: ethically and socially conscious consumers demand change
- carbon footprint labelling, fair trade proof throughout supply chain
- Data-driven food:technology takes the guesswork out of food and eating
- ordering your macro requirements
- Master chef:quality food, whether cooked or delivered, brings people together
- supply chain transparency for food quality and proof of provenance
- On trend:experience-hungry consumers chase the latest craze
- food technology, changing eating traditions
We can all agree that there will be movement in a few different directions. The industry will usually follow the money, but which direction will that be?
Ethically and socially conscious food involves paying a fair price for labour as well as environmental costs, and this is more much expensive for everyone. Will the market share of this type of consumer rise enough to be the dominant change in the industry?
We think data-driven food is most likely to be the driver. As people become more educated about their personal nutritional requirements, they will want to incorporate these into their delivery services. It’s a logical step for a data platform like Uber Eats to ask its restaurants to supply this nutritional data and have it appear alongside all the menu items.
Explore the future of food with us at our Food’s Future Summit 2019.
