Car Pool for Your Lunch? Postmates Launches Group Ordering Feature

As third party delivery apps battle for popularity, the food delivery space is continuing to experience extreme competition, with companies unveiling new and improved features every day. 

The newest innovation appears to be group ordering—a system in which multiple parties can place and add to a single order from their individual devices. Ordering food for a group can be a headache and third party aggregators are one-upping each other in an attempt to streamline the process. 

While Postmates is the most recent to release the group ordering feature, GrubHub jumped on the train earlier this year, launching GrubHub for Work, a scheduled group ordering system for co-workers looking to feed the office. For those who hate the stress of splitting the tab, GrubHub for Work allows users to pay separately, labeling each meal with the orderer’s name.

DoorDash claims to be the first to have offered the service, adding group ordering all the way back in 2017. Last year, Uber Eats tested a similar service, Uber Pool Eats, enabling multiple orders from the same restaurant to be delivered to users who live in the same neighborhood. 

Some of Postmate’s other digital ordering concepts include Postmates Party, an ingenious feature that allows users to receive free delivery if they order from restaurants where another user has already placed an order near their location. This is not only a bid to lure consumers with a waived delivery fee, but an attempt to cut back on travel times for busy delivery drivers—although some users claim the opposite might be true for the customers.

While not all restaurants and food service franchisors are thrilled about third-party delivery, it is clear that the trend isn’t going anywhere. With digital ordering set to triple by 2020, delivery apps will have plenty of opportunities to compete for the group ordering business of hungry office parties or family get-togethers.