How resilient is food delivery?

The obsession with food delivery appears to be over.  The pandemic more than doubled the food delivery business. As COVID-19 cases decline, consumers are ready to return to dining. Rising inflation and fuel costs may also have impacted budget-cautious customers' usage.

The combined enterprise value of food delivery companies decreased 37% since its peak at the end of 2021, $312B. Here are some recent developments from the food delivery sector:

• Berlin-based Delivery Hero is the lowest performer, with its share price decreasing by 72%. Delivery Hero merged with Glovo in January this year. Glovo still has serious regulatory challenges in its main market Spain. In August 2021, Delivery Hero also invested £230 million in post-IPO equity in Deliveroo. Deliveroo lost 78% of value since then.
• London-based Deliveroo's share declined 59% since the end of last year. However, the company announced a positive Q1 2022 performance. Gross Transactions Value (GTV) grew 12% year-over-year. Orders went up 18%. However, Deliveroo is also facing regulatory challenges of its own as a French court fined the company last month.
• The US-based DoorDash declined 56% since December 2021. It continues to dominate the US food delivery market. The company announced its Q1 performance last Thursday. Revenue grew 35% to $1.46 billion, but at a significantly lower pace compared to last year during lockdowns. DoorDash plans to invest heavily in new categories such as groceries, alcohol and retail delivery.

Time will tell if the food delivery segment will hold out or adapt to recent changes as grocers and restaurants return to pre-pandemic operations.

If you're looking to explore trends, startups, or in-depth analysis of more foodtech topics, hop over to Dealroom's foodtech blog space by clicking the button below. 👇

In the news

📦 On-demand grocery delivery app SEND goes into voluntary administration.  SEND is a leading grocery delivery service in Australia, employing more than 300 people. The company's future will be determined in the next 20-30 days, following a meeting with creditors. - Business News Australia

🌾 Soaring fertilizer prices put global food security at risk. Russia, the largest fertilizer export in the world, has been met with several sanctions following its invasion of Ukraine. The price of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium (NPK) is up 125% since January. The ban on Russian natural gas might make it worse. - Axios

🥩 Tyson Foods raises annual sales forecast as U.S. meat prices soar. The largest meatpacker in the US increased its prices due to rising cots of labour and goods. The company also increased its expectations for sales from $49-51B to $52-54B. - Reuters

Latest foodtech deals

Select deals from last week:

🇮🇳 Absolute Foods, an Indian AI-driven vertical farming company, raised $100M at $500M valuation. The fresh funding will be used to scale its technology and hire more people. The company currently spreads over 100K acres and exports fruits and vegetables to 10 countries. The company's revenues jumped 11X to $3.7M in FY21.

There are 100+ other startups working on vertical farming solutions.

🇺🇸 Brightseed, a SF-based AI-driven platform for identifying compounds in plants, secured $68M in Series B funding. The company's machine learning platform could help researchers find hidden properties of plants, which can be used in medicine or recreating sustainable food options like alternative meat.

Other notable foodtech deals from around the globe: 

🇺🇸 Voyage Foods, a California-based sustainable foods company, secured $36M to become a leading player in the ethical food market.  The company aims to create a sustainable and healthy alternative of beloved foods. Today the company produces cacao-free chocolate, peanut-free spread and coffee without coffee beans. 

🇸🇪 Melt&Marble (formerly Biopetrolia), a Swedish precision fermentation company, raised €5 million in Seed funding. The company will use the funding to scale its technology to create non-animal fats with the properties of beef fats.

Read up on all the latest foodtech deals in Dealroom.co

Tip of the week

There are now 120 unicorns, 5 of which were created this year. The US leads with
48 unicorns, followed by Asia (42) and Europe (24). 

Dive in

🗺️ Foodtech investment heatmap

🎓 Foodtech university spinouts

🦄 110+ Foodtech unicorns and $1B+ exits

Ivan Draganov

Senior Innovation Analyst
Dealroom

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