Do you drink coffee? How many cups do you drink a day? I love coffee. I always drink it in the morning. It wakes me up. I can focus on my work better if I have coffee. When I worked as an English teacher, I used to drink five or six cups a day. I … Continue reading [Easy English Blog] Coffee

Consolidation in the world of on-demand food ordering and delivery continues apace. Today, Just Eat Takeaway — the European company that only just got its own $7.8 billion merger approved by regulators in April of this year — officially announced that it has reached an agreement to acquire Grubhub in the U.S. for an enterprise value […]

Today, as a pizza delivery driver, I delivered to a customer with young kids. She gave the pizzas to one of her kids to take inside, where the kid dropped them and it went everywhere. She then rang the store and claimed that I'd dropped the pizzas, then told her to "suck it up." FML

French startup Jow has raised a $20 million funding round led by Eurazeo. Jow wants to make it easier to cook at home by taking care of menu ideas and helping you manage your online orders of groceries. The company has partnered with national food retailers so that your oder is seamlessly processed by your […]

Jüsto, an online supermarket based in Mexico City, announced Tuesday it has raised $65 million in a Series A round led by General Atlantic. The amount is sizable for a Series A in general, but supersized for a LatAm startup. In fact, according to PitchBook data cited by General Atlantic, the round represents the largest […]

Grocery picking service Instacart is dabbling with on-demand food delivery, announcing the launch in Florida of a pre-made meals delivery option that shoppers can tag onto a bigger supermarket order. It’s partnering with US supermarket chain Publix for the initial launch of Instacart Meals — offering what it dubs a “digital deli counter” where app […]

Estonia-based Membo — which is backed by Y Combinator and will be presenting at the incubator’s Summer 2021 Demo Day next week — is aiming to take a slice of the premium end of grocery shopping in Europe and a bite out of supermarket giants’ continued dominance of the traditional weekly food shop.  On-demand food […]

Supermercato24, the Italian same-day grocery delivery service, has acquired Szopi.pl, an on-demand grocery delivery service in Poland. Terms of the deal remain undisclosed, although I understand it is a mixture of cash and stock. Szopi had raised €1.7M from various investors, including Impera Alfa. The acquisition sees the two companies join forces to speed up […]

Zomato has raised $250 million, two months after closing a $660 million Series J financing round, as the Indian food delivery startup builds a war-chest ahead of its IPO later this year. Kora (which contributed $115 million), Fidelity ($55 million), Tiger Global ($50 million), Bow Wave ($20 million), and Dragoneer ($10 million) pumped the new […]

Uber said on Tuesday it has sold its food delivery business, UberEats, in India to local rival Zomato as the American ride-hailing giant races to shed lossmaking operations to become profitable by next year. As part of the deal, Uber would own 9.99% of Zomato and its Eats users would become part of the Indian […]

Global investment firm KKR is betting on the pizza business — it just led a $43 million Series C investment in Slice. Formerly known as MyPizza, Slice has has created a mobile app and website where diners can order a custom pizza delivery from their local, independent pizzeria. And for those pizzerias, CEO Ilir Sela […]

Alkemics, the Paris-based platform that lets brands collaborate and launch products with retailers, has picked up €21 million in a Series C funding. It follows €20 million raised in 2016. Backing the round is growth-stage fund Highland Europe. Existing investors Cathay Innovation, Index Ventures, SEB Alliance and Serena Capital also participated. The new investment comes […]

French startup Taster has raised a $37 million Series B funding round from Octopus Venture, Battery Ventures, LocalGlobe, HeartCore, Rakuten, GFC and Founders Future. The company operates dozens of restaurants that only exist on food delivery platforms. You can’t book a table as there is no table. Taster has been focusing on five street food-inspired […]

A day after acquiring Postmates for $2.65 billion, Uber has officially launched grocery delivery in select Latin American and Canadian cities. The initiative is the product of the also recently announced acquisition of Cornershop (still pending regulatory approval), back in late-2019. The Santiago, Chile-based startup brought grocery delivery to the Latin American market, before moving […]

Justo enables customers in Latin America to buy groceries directly from its website or app and get them delivered to their location of choice.

There’s a potential climate-related crisis brewing in the beer industry and Province Brands has just raised $1.6 million for its technology that purports to be a solution. The Canadian company, which has developed a way to make beer from any plant material, is pitching itself as a solution to the increasing shortages of barley and […]

Honestbee, the online grocery delivery service in Asia, is nearly out of money and trying to offload its business. The company has held early conversations with a number of suitors in Asia, including ride-hailing giants Grab and Go-Jek, over the potential acquisition of part, or all, of its business, according to two industry sources with […]

Grubhub offered free lunch to everyone in New York City yesterday. What could go wrong? Between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m., New Yorkers could use a Grubhub promo code to get a $15 discount on lunch. Naturally, restaurants got flooded with an unexpected deluge of orders. According to Buzzfeed, a worker at a Mexican restaurant […]

Bellwether Coffee plans to take its tech-enabled commercial roaster overseas with the fresh funds.

In May, venture capitalist Michael Moritz of Sequoia Capital warned in a Financial Times column that Amazon’s recent $575 million investment in the London-based delivery service Deliveroo could prove ominous for local restaurants. Wrote Moritz: “Amazon is now one step away from becoming a multi-brand restaurant company — and that could mean doomsday for many […]

With many restaurants forced to rely entirely on the delivery and takeout business during the pandemic, there’s been a lot of discussion about whether the industry can survive while paying hefty fees to delivery platforms like Uber Eats and Grubhub. Lunchbox, on the other hand, is a startup that allows restaurants to build ordering experiences on […]

Berlin-based on-demand grocery delivery and dark store operator Gorillas has grabbed “close to” $1 billion in Series C funds, in the latest sign of the searing investor interest driving activity in urban food shopping apps across the continent and beyond. The round is being led by another food-focused on-demand delivery startup — German’s Delivery Hero […]

Online grocery delivery, a booming business at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, has definitely come down to earth with the shifts in the economy, public health and technology investing. Oda, one of the bigger players in online grocery delivery in Europe with operations in its home market of Norway as well as Finland and […] Oda, the Norwegian grocery delivery startup, raises a fresh $151M, but at a lowered valuation of $353M by Ingrid Lunden originally published on TechCrunch

UrbanPiper, a restaurant management platform that processes 18% of all online food orders in India, has raised $24 million in a new financing round from a number of investors including Swiggy and Zomato, the three firms said Monday. The six-year-old startup’s Series B funding was led by existing investors Sequoia Capital India and Tiger Global. […]

The FrankOne coffee maker, fresh off a successful crowdfunding campaign, is now available for purchase, and I got a chance to test out one of the first run of these funky little gadgets. While it won't replace my normal pourover or a larger coffee machine, it's a clever, quick, and portable way to make a cup.

European food ordering and delivery giant Just Eat Takeaway has revealed that it’s selling its stake in Brazil’s iFood for up to €1.8 billion ($1.8 billion) to Prosus. The initial deal will amount to €1.5 billion in cash, plus another €300 million depending on the performance of iFood over the next 12 months. News of the […]

Uber has reportedly made an offer to buy food delivery service Postmates, according to The New York Times. According to the Times, the talks are still ongoing and the deal could fall through. For those that have been paying attention to Uber, this appetite is not new, albeit consistent. A little over a month ago, […]

Los Angeles-based Ordermark, the online delivery management service for restaurants founded by the scion of the famous, family-owned Canter’s Deli, said it has raised $18 million in a new round of funding. The round was led by Boulder-based Foundry Group. All of Ordermark’s previous investors came back to provide additional capital for the company’s new […]

Albertsons is the first U.S. grocer to utilize Firework's platform to create, host and curate its own short-form and livestream video to improve customer engagement.