Postmates and DoorDash more than doubled sales in twelve months

With reports surfacing that Postmates is in the process of raising a $100 million funding round, the food delivery space is again at the center of tech conversations. Even as the industry becomes more and more crowded, Postmates stands out for its high rate of growth. Data from Slice Intelligence demonstrates that Postmates has grown faster than other food delivery services, increasing food sales by 173 percent since September 2015. DoorDash -- another relative newcomer to the delivery space -- isn't far behind, with 136 percent growth over the same time period. Meanwhile, more established players like GrubHub and Seamless have seen an average of only 17 percent growth in the last twelve months.

The growth of Postmates and DoorDash is changing the landscape of the food delivery industry. Slice data suggests that, as of January 2015, GrubHub commanded 79 percent of the industry's food sales between its GrubHub and Seamless apps. Fast forward to August 2016, and GrubHub's position is no longer so dominant. Its share of the market is down 21percent, while Postmates and DoorDash have seen their collective share grow over 23 percent during the same period.

Postmates and DoorDash have both managed to attract a group of users who place large food delivery orders. The average order size on DoorDash was $37.28 over the last twelve months, the highest among the six food delivery services analyzed. Postmates is not far behind, with an average order size of $34.17. Seventeen percent of orders on Postmates exceeded $50, while that number is even higher -- 20 percent -- on DoorDash. By contrast, less than 10 percent of orders exceeded $50 on GrubHub and Seamless.

Still, Seamless has one sizable advantage over other food delivery upstarts: the loyalty of its user base. While Postmates and DoorDash users may spend more per order, they can't match how frequently Seamless users seem to crave a delivered meal. The average Seamless user ordered a whopping 22 times through the platform in the last twelve months. Postmates and DoorDash are way back at 6.8 and 6.5 orders per user, respectively, since last September.

So why has Seamless done so well at securing repeat orders? Part of the story may lie in geography. Seamless is headquartered in New York, where many firms offer a daily food stipend to employees who stay at the office through the dinner hour. And Seamless has dominated food delivery in the Empire State; dating back to last September, 73 percent of gross food sales in the industry have gone to Seamless.

If Seamless is dominant in New York, which food delivery services have cornered the market in the other 49 states? To find out, we used Slice Intelligence data to determine each service's share of gross food sales in each state over the last twelve months. The interactive map below summarizes our results:

Seamless appears to have a tight grip across much of the Northeast and South. Its sister company, GrubHub, is strongest in the Midwest, around its home base in Chicago. Farther west, however, the GrubHub-Seamless alliance is weaker; DoorDash has a plurality in California and Texas, while Postmates is firmly entrenched in Oregon, Nevada, and Oklahoma. With such diversity across the country, it appears that the food delivery war is far from over.

With a panel of over 4 million online shoppers, Slice Intelligence gives the most detailed, and accurate digital commerce data available, and is reported daily.

Slice Intelligence is the only service to measure digital commerce directly from the consumer, across all retailers, at the item level, and over time. Our retailer-independent methodology precisely measures commerce as it happens. By extracting detailed information from hundreds of millions of aggregated and anonymized e-receipts, Slice can map the entire Purchase Graph, connecting each and every consumer to all their purchases.

Slice gets its data from e-receipts – not a browser, app or software installed by the end-user – so its measurement reflects comprehensive shopping behavior across multiple devices, over time which are key in an increasingly omnichannel retail world. Slice Intelligence is the exclusive e-commerce data provider for the NPD’s Checkout Tracking e-commerce service.