An Interview With The CEO Of Delivery.com, An Underrated GrubHub Competitor

In a report issued Wednesday morning, Axiom analyst Victor Anthony profiles Delivery.com, an online order delivery service that allows users to purchase and get delivered food, alcohol, groceries, and laundry, directly from local merchants. According to their site, every day more than one million customers "explore their communities and order from more than 10,000 local businesses while at home, at work, or on the go." Axiom had a long conversation with CEO Jed Kleckner, who told them about Delivery.com's platform, how it is differentiated, and about what his long-term growth plans are. Below, the main highlights: - The product mix allows the company to manage the seasonality inherent to food delivery. While the latter works as an entry point for customers, it is alcohol, groceries and laundry that are steadier. - The company plans to win, long-term, by "building an end-to-end technology-enabled platform (…) [which] will allow their platform to be embedded inside the merchant's systems. Over time, the plan is when a consumer places an order, that order flows into the merchant's point-of-sale (POS) system. The merchant can confirm by way of the POS and they can select to do the delivery themselves or by way of the API, in real-time, select to have the delivery handled by a third party," the report explains. - "The entire platform is built on an API and they believe that they have the most comprehensive API for local commerce in the U.S. That allows them to run their own business on top of it –so they run their own direct channel (desktop web, mobile web, and the native apps) on top of the API. However, the API is open on both the demand and supply side. That allows them to expose their merchant content to other demand aggregation content providers like Yelp and others to come in the months ahead (we will have to assume Google)." - The company is testing its platform in Hong Kong, as well. Although there are no plans to expand further, for now, this is a good first step towards international expansion. - Delivery.com plans to incorporate new verticals, like pet supplies, food supplies, and office supplies. - The company has an omni-channel approach to marketing, which allows it to take advantage of several strategies.