AI for Food Delivery: Who's Ordering Your Next Meal?
·2 min read·Intermediate
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Imagine never having to pick a restaurant, a dish, or even a delivery time again. An AI, silently and (hopefully) efficiently, might soon handle everything from menu selection to delivery.
In 30 seconds
01DoorDash dominates food delivery, processing 970 million orders and $4.5 billion in Q2 2023.
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What this means for you
Soon, we might have an AI that decides and orders our food for us, making the experience smoother or, depending on your view, less personal. This means less time spent choosing, but also less control.
Imagine feeding a PC to an artificial intelligence. This is no longer science fiction, but an open source project.
·1 min·1·Beginner
Bites, a small startup, is testing "agentic AI" that manages the entire food ordering process.
03AI could transform food delivery, potentially deciding what you eat and coordinating logistics.
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Who's the Giant, Who's the AI Challenger?
DoorDash is the undisputed behemoth of food delivery, but a tiny startup, Bites, is trying to unseat it with a completely different AI-driven approach. It's a bit like David versus Goliath, but with robots involved.
DoorDash's numbers are mind-boggling. In Q2 of this year alone, the platform handled a staggering 970 million orders, raking in $4.5 billion. That's not pocket change. It's the go-to for anyone wanting food without lifting a finger.
On the other side, there's Bites, a minuscule Bay Area startup. For now, it only has about 300 restaurants on board, a mere blip compared to the giant. Bites started operating as a pre-seed startup this summer, banking everything on "agentic AI" technology that does much more than a simple bot.
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Agentic AI: What's It Ordering For Us?
Bites' idea is for an AI to act as a full-fledged "agent" for your order. It doesn't just take your request; it decides what to eat and coordinates the delivery. Think of it as a digital butler for your dinner.
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Forget endless menu scrolling or last-minute decisions. Bites' AI is supposed to handle everything, from picking the ideal restaurant based on your tastes, to ordering the dishes, right through to managing the entire delivery process. Basically, it thinks of everything.
This "agentic" type of AI isn't just following instructions; it takes initiative. Imagine it knowing you crave sushi or pizza without you explicitly saying so. The goal is to make the ordering experience almost invisible, almost magical.
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What Changes for the Home Diner?
For us users, the impact could be twofold: extreme convenience or total loss of control. If the AI works well, we could have perfect dinners effortlessly. If it messes up, well, there goes the evening.
If Bites' AI takes off, the food ordering experience would change significantly. You wouldn't be the one choosing anymore; an algorithm familiar with your preferences would. It's a bit like having a personal shopper who always suggests the right outfit. Or the wrong one.
The stakes are high. If an AI can manage 970 million orders like DoorDash, the savings in human resources and speed could be enormous. Of course, we have to trust it really knows what we want to eat tonight. And what if we actually want to choose ourselves?
