Bringing it home - when food is all about the delivery options

The boom in food home delivery services in 2016 had us wondering if we’d ever need to eat out again. Hilary McNevin wades through some of the options for 9Kitchen.

With meals of restaurant quality brought to the door by any means, the standard pizza and curry deliveries of our past were eclipsed by leading chefs signing up to have their dishes delivered to our homes in 2016. But plenty of other options popped up too, and suddenly we could cook without having to think too much, boxes of food arriving at our doors filled with ingredients already portioned and just in need a none-too-taxing toss in the pan. And, if you preferred to do your shopping at your local butcher, baker, independent grocer and bottle shop, we could ask someone to go and do our shopping for us. If you’re anything like us at 9Kitchen, you’ll never stop eating at restaurants, but there is undeniably more choice than ever in how we engage with a dining room and a restaurant menu. Here we take a look at some of the diverse delivery options that arrived in 2016 and wonder what this will mean for food delivery in 2017.

Endulj – curated dining delivery

Chef Matt Germanchis, formerly of restaurant Pei Modern set up the Endulj kitchen in Melbourne’s Windsor in October 2016. Referred to as ‘curated dining’, Germanchis spent about 18 months working on the project before opening the doors on the delivery service that works only within a 5km radius of the kitchen. “The quality of the food has to be kept up to restaurant standard,” he says and he has collaborated with some of Melbourne’s leading restaurants including Lee Ho Fook, MoVida, 38 Chairs and Pei Modern to have dishes from their menus delivered to homes. “We have to keep each brand in-tact, if a dish doesn’t travel well I go back to the chef and we work on it or try something else,” says Germanchis. Endulj also offers a savvy wine list to match the dishes with the selections made by leading Melbourne sommelier Ainslie Lubbock. 

Culinary Carton – cooking without the foot work 

Culinary Carton allows you to do the cooking after you receive restaurant-quality, measured out ingredients, sauces, proteins and recipe cards. Dinner is on the table in less than 30 minutes. By the team at the Grosvenor Hotel in Melbourne's East St Kilda, the main reason behind establishing the company was to cater to the growing number of time conscious individuals who were fed up with the meal delivery options available in the market. They found that the idea of bringing restaurant-quality produce to people in portion-controlled sizes cut down the already limited time for customers to shop and prepare meals, while still allowing them to contribute the ‘home cooking’ element.

Uber Eats – restaurants direct to your door

It was mid 2016 that the Uber Eats behemoth pulled up in its privately owned car in Melbourne and Sydney, to bring restaurant dishes direct from their kitchens to our homes. While we didn’t need any more encouragement to stay in our trackie dacks on the lounge, we lapped up the extension of the transport app which gave us another reason to stay-in. By October it had extended its reach to Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide and while there are flaws in the model—there’s inconsistency in the way your food is delivered, and if food doesn’t travel well it can dilute the brand of the restaurant—the Uber service is still sitting pretty. 

Your Grocer – champions of local

On the other side of the delivery monster that is Uber, is Your Grocer. It started in Melbourne in 2013 and just last year stretched its wings to Sydney. The premise is about supporting small and local food businesses. Put in your postcode and provided that you're in their delivery areas, you can have your shopping list fulfilled and delivered to your door. This isn’t a meal delivery but is for those who insists on buying from and supporting the little guys, and who want to do their cooking at home. So, if you can’t get your local shopping done, these guys do it for you. 

The future of food delivery

So what does 2017 hold for food delivery? We've already seen and plans, kitchens that let you cook and fridges that . So perhaps next we'll be looking at home delivery of the chefs themselves, and who wouldn't want a chance to order that?