Deliveroo gears up to try out ultrafast grocery delivery, and major aggregators struggle to make the economics of the model work. Plus, a New York City burger chain gets ready to launch a location in the metaverse.

Deliveroo to Test Rapid Grocery Delivery in London

Deliveroo plans to trial its “Deliveroo Hop” rapid grocery service with supermarket chain Waitrose, Reuters reported Thursday (Feb. 10). Later this month, Waitrose is opening a delivery-only store in Bermondsey, London, which will be the first location that the service is offered from. For those living around the dark store location, the Hop service will cut delivery times to around 10 minutes — half of the time that traditional Waitrose deliveries take.

Delivery Aggregator Losses Point to Economic Value of Platform Model  

As food delivery services in the United States and abroad struggle to make the model work, Uber stands out at as a rare success story, at least for now. Indian food delivery group Zomato announced Friday (Feb. 11) third-quarter losses lower than the previous quarter, but still sizable at $36 million. Similarly, Swiggy, another Indian food delivery giant in the midst of a major sales decline, also saw losses narrow considerably, per multiple reports on the company’s recent regulatory filing, but these losses still came in at about $215 million.