home delivery essay

• Innovation Economics

Home delivery services: innovations and emerging needs

• December 2016
• IFAC-PapersOnLine 49(12):1371-1376
• 49(12):1371-1376

• Chapman University

• Politecnico di Torino

• Università del Salento

Abstract and Figures

Discover the world's research

• 25+ million members
• 160+ million publication pages
• 2.3+ billion citations
• Arjun Sharma

• M. Rajeswari
• Aiman Magde Abdallah Ahmed
• Denny Wingstond
• Steven Ezekiel Wirawan
• Robertus Nugroho Perwiro Atmojo
• Muhammad Fariz Fahreza

• Int J Retail Distrib Manag

• Swarnima Shishodia

• J MARKETING
• Joseph Alba

• Barton Weitz

• Michelle A. Morganosky

• P. Kaminsky
• Alassane Ballé Ndiaye

• Ying-Yi Lee

• Laetitia Dablanc

• Yukai Huang
• TRANSPORT POLICY

• Mikko Punakivi
• Juha Saranen
• Recruit researchers
• Join for free
• Login Email Tip: Most researchers use their institutional email address as their ResearchGate login Password Forgot password? Keep me logged in Log in or Continue with Google Welcome back! Please log in. Email · Hint Tip: Most researchers use their institutional email address as their ResearchGate login Password Forgot password? Keep me logged in Log in or Continue with Google No account? Sign up

Appointments at Mayo Clinic

• Labor and delivery, postpartum care

Home birth: Know the pros and cons

Thinking about a planned home birth? Understand the possible risks and how to plan and prepare for the big day.

If you're considering a planned home birth, you probably have questions. Is it safe? Will you need a midwife or doula? How do you create a backup plan? Find out what's involved and what to consider as you decide if delivering your baby at home is right for you.

Why do some people choose planned home births?

The choice of a planned home birth may be appealing for a variety of reasons, including:

• A desire to give birth without medical interventions such as pain medication, labor induction, fetal heart rate monitoring, or delivery assisted with forceps or other instruments
• A desire to give birth in a comfortable, familiar place
• Dissatisfaction with hospital care
• A desire for more control of the birthing process
• Cultural or religious concerns
• Lack of access to transportation
• Lack of a local hospital

Are there situations when a planned home birth isn't recommended?

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists cautions against a planned home birth if:

• You are pregnant with more than one baby.
• Your baby doesn't settle into a position that allows for a headfirst delivery.
• You've had a C-section in the past.

What might cause the need to go to a hospital?

During a planned home birth, you might need to go to a hospital if problems develop during labor and delivery. Your health care provider might advise you go to a hospital if:

• Labor isn't progressing.
• Your baby shows signs of distress.
• Your baby is in a position other than headfirst.
• You need pain relief.
• You have high blood pressure.
• You experience bleeding.
• You develop a fever.

What are the possible risks of a planned home birth?

Most pregnant people who choose to have planned home births deliver without problems. But research suggests that planned home births are associated with a higher risk of infant death, seizures and nervous system disorders than planned hospital births.

There are several factors that might reduce the risks of these problems, including having:

• Assistance from a certified nurse-midwife
• Access to a doctor who specializes in obstetrics
• A plan for transportation to a nearby hospital, if needed

It's important to talk to your health care provider before you make a decision about a planned home birth. For some people with certain health conditions, as well as those who have not given birth before, the risks of a planned home birth may be higher than they are for others.

How do I prepare for a home birth?

One of the most important steps in planning for a home birth is finding well-trained health care providers to assist you. It is common for a midwife to provide care during a home birth. If you choose a midwife, make sure that person is one of the following:

• A certified nurse-midwife
• A certified midwife
• A midwife whose education and license meets international standards

Although it is uncommon, in some areas, doctors who specialize in obstetrics may be available to assist with home births. Make sure the health care provider you choose has easy access to doctors or specialists at a nearby hospital.

The American Academy of Pediatrics also recommends having present at least one trained person whose primary responsibility is caring for your newborn.

If you're interested in having more help, consider hiring a professional labor assistant (doula).

Consider these questions:

• Who do you want to be with you when you give birth?
• What do you want your surroundings to be like?
• What comfort measures would you like to rely on during labor?
• Will you use any specific methods to manage pain?
• Do you want to breast-feed your baby immediately after delivery?

If you haven't done so before, consider taking a childbirth class to help you prepare, so you know what to expect during labor and delivery. Such a class also can give you time to talk with other expectant parents and come up with more questions or topics to consider for your birth plan.

Discuss your birth plan with your health care provider. Go over your expectations and make a list of the equipment and supplies you'll need to meet those expectations and ensure a safe experience for you and your baby. Share the plan with others who will be supporting you during labor and delivery. This will help everyone understand what you want, so you can feel safe, supported and confident in your birth experience.

Make the following preparations for a smooth transition to a hospital, if you need it:

• Discuss with your health care provider the symptoms that might mean you'll have to go to a hospital. Talk about how that fits into your birth plan.
• Make sure you have access to transportation. Ideally, your home or other birth location is within 15 minutes of a hospital with 24-hour maternity care.
• Ask your health care provider to make arrangements with a nearby hospital to ensure that you can be promptly moved to the hospital and treated, if necessary.

Hospitals or certified birth centers are the safest settings for delivery. However, you have the right to make an informed decision about where you prefer to deliver your baby. Keep in mind that life-threatening problems can occur during labor and delivery. In those cases, the need to take you and your baby to a hospital could delay care. That could put your lives at risk. Understand the risks and benefits of a home birth before you make a decision about where to deliver.

There is a problem with information submitted for this request. Review/update the information highlighted below and resubmit the form.

From Mayo Clinic to your inbox

Sign up for free and stay up to date on research advancements, health tips, current health topics, and expertise on managing health. Click here for an email preview.

Error Email field is required

Error Include a valid email address

To provide you with the most relevant and helpful information, and understand which information is beneficial, we may combine your email and website usage information with other information we have about you. If you are a Mayo Clinic patient, this could include protected health information. If we combine this information with your protected health information, we will treat all of that information as protected health information and will only use or disclose that information as set forth in our notice of privacy practices. You may opt-out of email communications at any time by clicking on the unsubscribe link in the e-mail.

Thank you for subscribing!

You'll soon start receiving the latest Mayo Clinic health information you requested in your inbox.

Sorry something went wrong with your subscription

Please, try again in a couple of minutes

• Watterber K, et al. Providing care for infants born at home. Pediatrics. 2020; doi:10.1542/peds.2020-0626.
• American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists Committee on Obstetric Practice. Committee Opinion No. 697: Planned home birth. Obstetrics & Gynecology. 2017;129:117. Reaffirmed 2020.
• Declercq E. Planned home birth. https://www.uptodate.com/contents/search. Accessed June 28, 2022.
• Lothian JA. Preparation for childbirth. https://www.uptodate.com/contents/search. Accessed June 28, 2022.
• Stuebe A, et al. Continuous labor support by a doula. https://www.uptodate.com/contents/search. Accessed June 28, 2022.

Products and Services

• A Book: Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy
• Can vaginal tears during childbirth be prevented?
• Fetal presentation before birth
• High-risk pregnancy
• Inducing labor
• Labor pain medications
• Labor positions
• Repeat C-sections
• Signs of labor
• Stages of labor and birth
• Tailbone pain
• Vaginal tears in childbirth
• Considering VBAC
• The epidural block
• Water breaking

Mayo Clinic does not endorse companies or products. Advertising revenue supports our not-for-profit mission.

• Opportunities

Mayo Clinic Press

Check out these best-sellers and special offers on books and newsletters from Mayo Clinic Press .

• Mayo Clinic on Incontinence - Mayo Clinic Press Mayo Clinic on Incontinence
• The Essential Diabetes Book - Mayo Clinic Press The Essential Diabetes Book
• Mayo Clinic on Hearing and Balance - Mayo Clinic Press Mayo Clinic on Hearing and Balance
• FREE Mayo Clinic Diet Assessment - Mayo Clinic Press FREE Mayo Clinic Diet Assessment
• Mayo Clinic Health Letter - FREE book - Mayo Clinic Press Mayo Clinic Health Letter - FREE book
• Healthy Lifestyle
• Home birth Know the pros and cons

Help transform healthcare

Your donation can make a difference in the future of healthcare. Give now to support Mayo Clinic's research.

How Home Deliveries Change the E-Commerce Shopping Experience in 2021

The pandemic has presented some of the biggest challenges of our time, but it has also spawned innovation in the world of e-commerce and transportation. Here’s what you can expect to see more of in 2021.

Online shopping has been on the rise for years, but it was the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) that really forced businesses and consumers to jump on the bandwagon even more quickly than predicted.

It’s important to realize that this impressive growth can’t simply be attributed to more people getting comfortable shopping online. It’s happening at this scale because people are more comfortable with home delivery . 

As the pandemic rages on and people stay at home for their health and safety, home delivery has become the only way consumers can shop. And, with every click, every purchase and every successful drop at their doorstep, they’re discovering just how convenient home delivery can be. 

That’s why we’re seeing historic growth in perishables like groceries, meal kits and bottled beverages. 

Home delivery volumes – especially in food and beverage – will continue to rise

Large carriers have experienced record volumes in the past year thanks to the boom sparked by COVID-19. We’re also seeing a rise in home deliveries carried out by local businesses who have brought their delivery logistics in-house. As small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) fulfill demand with their own delivery fleets, some delivery volumes have increased as much as 2.4 times in the last year alone. 

The most significant growth stems from grocers, farms and food hubs; meal prep and meal kit companies; and businesses delivering bottled beverages like water, cold-pressed juices, wine and beer.

Consumers will continue to shop online, and have products delivered to their door

While COVID-19 helped consumers make the switch from in-person to online shopping, there is data to suggest that this new behavior is here to stay. New habits picked up during the COVID-19 pandemic will continue even after the pandemic is over, according to research from McKinsey .

Consumers discovering the convenience of home delivery are also likely to worry less about product quality and security as they gain more positive experiences, according to the Boston Consulting Group . And, as more retail stores are forced to shutter as a result of the pandemic, businesses of all kinds are being forced to reinvent themselves online or perish for good. The United States should take note of what’s happened in China -- even after the lockdown lifted, consumers did not rush back to physical stores. Instead, they kept up their online shopping and home delivery habits.

Everyone wants to support local

The campaign to support local businesses is picking up steam like never before, and the local food movement is riding that wave. Local food is experiencing a renaissance thanks to COVID-19, with local farms seeing a significant uptick in demand . 

Unhindered by global supply chains, so-called farm-to-table or farm-to-door delivery services credit their commitment to sourcing local for keeping their businesses alive during the pandemic. The pandemic has shown how large, complex supply chains can be disrupted, leaving empty supermarket shelves, food wastage, the shutdown of processing plants and terminated exports. It has also highlighted the importance of establishing strong, local food systems with transparent supply chains, which provide a multitude of benefits to producers, suppliers and consumers. 

Progressive food and beverage companies should take this opportunity to re-think the way they produce, distribute and eat food in order to help build a healthier and more sustainable world.

Customers are expecting more from the delivery experience

Did you know that 77% of consumers have a positive perception of businesses who text them important order information? Emails and SMS updates get the attention of customers because they want to know when their order will arrive and how they can best plan to receive it. They can organize a time to be home, give authority to leave the delivery at the door or organize re-delivery.

Notifications serve a number of purposes:

• They allow for a safe, clean and contactless home delivery experience.
• They are a customer expectation when it comes to home deliveries.
• They allow for the smooth and timely delivery of perishables like groceries.
• They create more opportunities for dialogue between businesses and their customers.

Giants have now set the standard for home delivery, with automated shipping and delivery notifications that come in over email or on the phone as a push notification. A system that offers a similar standard of communication is now essential for delivery companies of all shapes and sizes.

Technology is key to helping food businesses stay flexible and scale operations

Food businesses everywhere are getting creative when it comes to adapting their operations from retail to online and optimizing their logistics for home delivery. From ghost kitchens and micro-fulfillment centers, to transforming underutilized space into staging areas for home delivery packing and prep, food and beverage entrepreneurs are trying it all. 

But, when it comes to adapting to increasing e-commerce demand, the biggest game changer is leveraging technology to have full visibility of your supply chain. Businesses must start by changing their mindset and their strategies to be an online-first operation. Then, leverage technology – whether it be physical tech in your store/warehouse or software in the cloud – to help automate and optimize every step of the food logistics supply chain.

Implementing technology doesn’t need to be an expensive or daunting task. Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, hundreds of food businesses have managed to pivot their operations within a week or two – setting up an online shop, carving out space in their facility to store and pack home delivery orders and then integrating dynamic routing technology to plan and execute on hundreds of home delivery orders.

The best kind of advice is to work backwards from the time of delivery. This approach ensures that you’re prioritizing punctuality, which is so important when delivering perishables to people’s homes. 

Shattering Glass Ceilings at This Year’s Women in Supply Chain Forum

Nurturing a Sustainable Food Logistics Landscape

Unlock Your Food & Beverage Fleet's Full Potential

6 Major Supply Chain Trends and Challenges in 2024

3 Biggest Problems with Food Delivery

Uber Freight's Olivia Hu to Lead Panel Discussion at 2024 Women in Supply Chain Forum

SCN Summit: Future of the Supply Chain

How Shippers Can Stay Proactive During Active Hurricane Season

Post-Pandemic Supply Chains: An SCN Summit Recap

Logistics Managers of Life

NetLogistik Introduces TEP and WEP Tools

How Top 3PL & Cold Storage Providers Cultivate Resilience in Transportation

3PLs to See Decline as Supply Chain Market Corrects Itself

Active Seat Belt Safety System to Reduce Truck Driver Injuries

Connecting the dots in the cold chain industry.

Navigating the Complexities of Alcohol Transportation

North American Transborder Freight Down 5.6%

San Francisco Equity Partners Creates Xceed Foodservice Group

Flexibility Reigns Supreme for Gig Workers

Uber Eats to Acquire Delivery Hero’s foodpanda Deliver Service

Grip Launches Next Generation Order Management System for Perishable DTC Brands

E-Grocery Sales Reach $8.5B in April

Uber Freight Data Reveals Resilient Economy, Stable Supply Chains

Risk Management for Companies Dependent on Employee-Owned Vehicles

Ordering in: The rapid evolution of food delivery

How the world eats is changing dramatically. A little under two decades ago, restaurant-quality meal delivery was still largely limited to foods such as pizza and Chinese. Nowadays, food delivery has become a global market worth more than $150 billion, having more than tripled since 2017. In the United States, the market has more than doubled during the COVID-19 pandemic, following healthy historical growth of 8 percent.

The advent of appealing, user-friendly apps and tech-enabled driver networks, coupled with changing consumer expectations, has unlocked ready-to-eat food delivery as a major category. Lockdowns and physical-distancing requirements early on in the pandemic gave the category an enormous boost, with delivery becoming a lifeline for the hurting restaurant industry. Moving forward, it is poised to remain a permanent fixture in the dining landscape.

Even as the food-delivery ecosystem continues to expand, its economic structure is still evolving. Considerations such as brand, real estate, operating efficiency, breadth of offerings, and changing consumer habits will determine which stakeholders win or lose as the industry develops. Potential regulatory constraints, including possible changes to how drivers are compensated, will figure into the reshuffling. And while the industry has experienced explosive growth during the global pandemic, delivery platforms, with few exceptions, have remained unprofitable. As DoorDash chief operating officer Christopher Payne told the Wall Street Journal recently, “This is a cost-intensive business that is low-margin and scale driven.” 1 Preetika Rana and Heather Haddon, “DoorDash and Uber Eats are hot. They’re still not making money,” Wall Street Journal , May 28, 2021, wsj.com.

Despite such challenges, there are still major investments happening in the space, with recent fundraises, including Wolt (which raised $530 million in January 2021), REEF Technology ($700 million in November 2020), and Rebel Foods ($26.5 million in July 2020), and consolidation, including Uber’s acquisition of Postmates (for $2.65 billion in December 2020) and Just Eat Takeaway’s acquisition of Grubhub (for $7.3 billion in June 2021). Two recent IPOs—DoorDash in December 2020 and Deliveroo in March 2021—demonstrate the excitement and uncertainty still present in the sector. As the landscape shifts further in the wake of the global pandemic, new challenges, opportunities, and decision points are emerging for a complex web of players—including delivery platforms, restaurants, drivers, consumers, and other tech enablers. In parallel, the emergence of rapid delivery/quick-commerce platforms that have themselves raised significant funding, such as Getir ($550 million in June 2021) and JOKR ($170 million in July 2021), adds a new class of competitors to the fight for “share of stomach.”

Sizing the market

The most mature delivery markets worldwide—including Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States—grew twofold (in the United States) to as much as fourfold (in Australia) in 2018 and 2019 (Exhibit 1). This exponential growth continued in 2020 and early 2021 to the point where these markets are now four to seven times larger than they were in 2018. 2 Global food delivery trends 2018 vs. 2021 , Edison Trends, September 2021, trends.edison.tech.

Before the pandemic put thousands of establishments out of business, the US restaurant industry was growing 3 to 4 percent per year. Delivery sales were increasing at roughly twice that pace (7 to 8 percent). While population growth was a factor, the bulk of the increase came at the expense of the grocery sector, with millennials and Gen Zers preferring the convenience of prepared meals.

This trend toward convenience has grown more pronounced during the pandemic. Between March and May 2020, when lockdowns in Europe and the United States were the most severe, the food-delivery market spiked. Significantly, it has maintained that trajectory, continuing to grow throughout 2020 and into 2021.

As we move into the last quarter of 2021, with vaccinations spurring many cities to reopen even as the Delta variant becomes more prevalent, the permanent implications of the 2020 market surge should become clearer. This includes the extent to which eating habits that formed during the start of the pandemic will endure.

Emerging delivery battlegrounds

In the not-so-distant past, restaurants directly handled the limited food delivery that existed. These days, an entire ecosystem of players is involved.

The United States is one of the more complex food-delivery markets, with four active players—DoorDash, Grubhub, Postmates, and Uber Eats—at the top, each commanding certain large urban markets. As of May 2021, DoorDash prevailed in San Jose (with 77 percent of the market), Houston (56 percent), Philadelphia (51 percent), and San Antonio (51 percent). Uber’s 2020 acquisition of Postmates leveled the playing field, but only slightly. Combined, Uber Eats and Postmates led the market in Los Angeles (50 percent) and New York City (41 percent) as of May 2021 (Exhibit 2). These figures change monthly as platforms continue to vie for local markets.

As the food-delivery business continues to expand, a few key factors, from market dynamics to legal and regulatory issues, will help determine the levels of success for the various players.

Adding to this competitive environment, specialized delivery apps focusing on a single customer segment or cuisine type—such as Slice, for pizza, and HungryPanda, for Chinese—have also come to market successfully in recent years.

This pressure on traditional restaurants could be tightened further by the proliferation of “dark kitchens” (a restaurant that has no front of house for customers) and other delivery-first and delivery-only restaurant models. Since these lower-overhead businesses can afford to pay the platforms’ higher commissions, they are often featured more prominently in the platforms’ apps. They may also be able to lower the service fees placed on customers. Increasingly, a greater share of delivery volume is likely to go their way at the expense of traditional restaurants, some of which may be forced to consider whether they can afford to continue playing in the delivery space at all. At the same time, dark kitchens also present an opportunity for restaurants, which may choose to supplement their on-premises facilities with remote locations devoted exclusively to delivery.

Increasingly, a greater share of delivery volume is likely to go to dark kitchens, while some traditional restaurants may consider not playing in the delivery space at all.

• Driver compensation and benefits constitute another persistent hot-button issue . Delivery platforms rely on the gig economy, with its system of on-demand drivers offering much-needed flexibility. This model, however, is still in flux, amid an ongoing national (and international) debate about whether gig workers, particularly drivers, should be considered employees. Shifts in how independent contractors are paid, as well as what benefits they receive, could significantly shake up the economics for all major stakeholders across the marketplace.

Evolving stakeholder economics

As consumer expectations and regulations evolve over the coming years, and as emerging technologies continue to reshape the industry, the long-term economics will likely look different than they currently do. To better understand how the landscape is poised to shift, it’s helpful to delve into the economic and cultural forces affecting restaurants, food-delivery platforms, drivers, and customers.

Restaurants

Historically, restaurants have measured their profits against three basic costs: food (generally 28 to 32 percent of total costs), labor (another 28 to 32 percent), and occupancy- or real-estate-related costs (22 to 29 percent). Looking at a unit economics view of a restaurant, the business should run between 78 to 93 percent—allowing for a profit margin of between 7 to 22 percent (franchise restaurants pay additional franchise fees to corporate).

Delivery orders used to be viewed as an extra table for the restaurant, serviced by a driver instead of a waiter. Drivers were paid minimum wage by the restaurant and earned tips from customers, typically delivering several orders at a time within a set radius. Overall, delivery was intended to improve a restaurant’s revenue by increasing the utilization of its kitchen at a decent margin.

As the COVID-19 pandemic began to pose an existential threat to restaurants, delivery became a saving grace. Many restaurants that delivered through online platforms were able to grow their delivery revenue throughout 2020. Even so, their overall profits generally declined, occasionally resulting in negative margins (Exhibit 3). This trend may have been accelerated by dining restrictions imposed during the pandemic, but the gap between delivery-fueled revenue spikes and profit declines was already an underlying issue.

Realistically, restaurants’ traditional profit margins of 7 to 22 percent make covering the platforms’ delivery commissions, roughly 15 to 30 percent, unsustainable as delivery orders become a larger part of a restaurant’s business. This is less of a problem when in-house diners, who order high-margin items such as wine and other alcoholic drinks, help cover the costs of occupancy and labor. But the business model is seriously threatened when in-house dining dwindles.

With fewer in-house diners, delivery must cover a greater share of restaurants’ fixed operating costs. If the delivery business grows to such an extent that it requires more physical kitchen space to fulfill, the fixed costs could also increase.

Increasing total sales through delivery may look like a smart way to dilute fixed costs, but restaurants that focus too much on increasing deliveries could cannibalize their in-house dining and compromise the quality of the dining experience, which could eventually reduce the base over which their fixed costs are spread.

At the same time, a booming delivery business could mean that everyone has to work harder—from the cooks to the managers to the maintenance staff. Restaurants will likely need to introduce new processes and systems to accommodate high volumes of delivery orders. Ultimately, restaurants should thoughtfully balance delivery against other parts of the business to ensure that the net impact is positive. As Exhibit 4 illustrates, a typical restaurant would have to increase its total sales significantly to stay at the same profit margin it enjoyed without delivery.

The pizza segment sheds light on how the broader restaurant industry may grapple with the delivery conundrum. Most pizza restaurants have chosen either dine-in or delivery as their primary offering and have anchored their business models around it. It would not be surprising to see restaurants in other segments of the market also deciding to specialize in the experiences they offer, with those built around the dine-in experience potentially choosing not to play in the delivery space, because of their inability to compete on margin. This would leave dark kitchens and other delivery-focused businesses to compete for delivery volume.

Learn more about our tech delivery capabilities at Build by McKinsey

Restaurants that choose to continue serving both dine-in and delivery customers will need to adapt their pricing to cover delivery’s additional costs. Those that favor pricing consistency could raise overall menu prices to cover these costs, with dine-in and pick-up customers effectively subsidizing delivery. Alternatively, restaurants could create separate, higher-priced delivery menus, as some have already done. As Chipotle Mexican Grill’s chief financial officer, Jack Hartung, told Yahoo Finance Live in early February, after a 13 percent rise in delivery-app prices was announced: “It’s no surprise that delivery comes with an added cost. Our belief has been that’s a premium experience from a convenience standpoint. We want to make sure that channel covers the cost.” 4 Brian Sozzi, “Why Chipotle just raised prices,” Yahoo Finance, February 3, 2021, yahoo.com.

Delivery platforms

The pressure is on for the platforms. Despite explosive growth, they are struggling to make a profit. And, as the Wall Street Journal has reported, these companies aren’t expected to become profitable for a number of years. 5 “DoorDash and Uber Eats are hot,” May 2021. Nonetheless, there is opportunity for upside, as platforms tap into new revenue sources and curb certain costs.

Platforms’ current economics are driven largely by fees and commissions paid by restaurants and customers, as well as delivery costs (Exhibit 5). Our analysis shows an average contribution margin of around 3 percent, or roughly $1.20 on the average order.

The cost of delivery is unlikely to decline substantially, as the economics of last-mile delivery remain challenging across sectors, particularly with increasing expectations for speed (typically, 30 minutes or less). However, new technologies (such as autonomous delivery robots), improved routing, and the ability to batch or “stack” multiple orders per delivery should help.

Another important consideration is variable marketing costs, such as advertising. With multiple high-profile players competing in the market, and as restaurants and chain brands are fragmented across platforms, the current cost of attracting customers is becoming unsustainable. As platforms are being combined through acquisition, this cost should decline. Consolidation will also give the platforms an outsize influence over which of the thousands of restaurants are seen by the customer—likely resulting in the further consolidation of volume to leading restaurants, whose brands are well positioned to play in the digital marketplace.

Delivery platforms will likely not see any significant margin growth in the restaurant space, given the economic squeeze that restaurants are already facing, as well as the increasing pressure from platform commissions. But when it comes to consumer demand, delivery platforms are still only scratching the surface. As they continue to tap into this vast pool of potential demand, platforms are poised to grow their overall volume and generate profits at scale—if they can unlock the logistics, operational requirements, and challenges of last-mile delivery.

Delivery platforms are poised to generate profits at scale if they can unlock the logistics, operational requirements, and challenges of last-mile delivery.

Already, many platforms are expanding the use cases for their logistics networks. This activity is likely to increase, with platforms improving their overall economic profiles by delivering other, higher-margin products in new categories such as alcohol, pharmaceuticals, grocery, and more. These new categories attract new customer segments, increase average order value, and allow for the stacking of deliveries to help maximize efficiency of each delivery run.

They also position the platforms to become service providers to businesses beyond restaurants. As the Wall Street Journal notes, DoorDash provides delivery services for companies including Petco, Macy’s, and Walmart. 6 “DoorDash and Uber Eats are hot,” May 2021.

Delivery drivers must complete a certain number of deliveries per hour to make the economics favorable for them. In fact, time is one of the most expensive components of single-point delivery, with the physical handoff to the customer typically taking one to five minutes. As food delivery takes off in less densely populated locations, including suburban and rural areas, the service becomes more costly to both restaurant and driver.

Would you like to learn more about our Technology, Media & Telecommunications Practice ?

As previously discussed, major changes in how independent contractors are compensated would have significant ripple effects throughout the food-delivery ecosystem. Barring such changes, pay per delivery will likely continue to decline in real terms as platforms become more efficient and facilitate more total deliveries per hour. However, with substantial increases in volume, as well as enhancements in platforms’ logistics technology, it is conceivable that overall pay per hour could rise slightly for drivers over time, as they are able to complete more deliveries per hour.

The customers fueling the surge in food delivery are paying a significant premium over the cost of their average order. If a typical meal from a fast casual restaurant is priced on a delivery platform’s menu at around $25, the customer might end up paying a total of roughly $35, excluding tax (Exhibit 6). Customers’ total costs include delivery fees ($2 to $5 per trip), driver tips (usually around 10 to 20 percent), and platform service fees (which are often offset by discounts but generally come out to around $3). Customers do not directly see the service commissions that restaurants pay platforms. Some restaurants raise their delivery-menu prices to cover this cost, while others opt for pricing consistency, spreading the markup among all customers.

Even as customers are paying a 40 percent premium on the cost of their actual meal, it is worth noting that restaurants themselves receive around only 55 percent of the total customer spend.

For much of the ongoing pandemic, many people have had few other restaurant options than to order delivery and have been willing to pay a significant premium for the service. More than a year and a half into the pandemic, a growing number of consumers (particularly those who are vaccinated) are becoming more accustomed to ongoing restrictions and more open to dining out. As dining options begin to increase, customers will likely expect more from food-delivery services, prioritizing the following features:

• speed of delivery, with a goal of under 30 minutes being a differentiator among platforms
• quality of food, with an expectation of restaurant-quality meals even after transit time
• 100 percent order accuracy and completeness, for regular items as well as special requests
• variety in cuisines and meal occasions

High population density and big-ticket orders tend to make food delivery more efficient. As the footprint and economic profile of delivery expands to meet more and varied customers, platforms and restaurants will need to figure out how to serve these different population segments—for example, customers who tend to spend less money on meals, as well as those who live in sparsely populated areas, far apart from one another and from the restaurants serving them (Exhibit 7).

Moving forward, consumers will likely see the cost of their restaurant meals increase (through additional listed fees or menu markups) in order to cover restaurants’ commission costs and driver pay. These fees and markups may eventually decrease as restaurants and delivery platforms become more efficient at scale.

In one example of a market shift that could increase customer retention while also benefiting consumers, many delivery platforms have begun offering monthly subscription services, following similar models such as Amazon Prime. With DoorDash’s DashPass, for example, or Uber Eats’ Eats Pass, customers pay a monthly fee for unlimited free deliveries. These offers reduce the cost burden for customers who order frequently and make the cost of attracting customers more worthwhile for platforms, as customers become more loyal.

New opportunities and untapped revenue pools

As the way people eat continues to evolve, new revenue pools are emerging. Tapping into them will require creativity and a willingness to overhaul operating models built for a different time. The following revenue models are among the most promising:

‘Menu engineering’

Using the data generated through delivery platforms, restaurants can build custom menus for each consumer, increasing opportunistic sales, total order value, and conversion rates. End-to-end customization helps ensure that customer preferences, such as food allergies, are taken into account for every meal and that food recommendations are more accurate.

‘Dark kitchens’

Also called ghost kitchens, dark kitchens market and produce delivery orders but have no physical restaurant or storefront attached. They take delivery out of the “front of house,” allowing restaurants to expand and experiment with minimal investment risks. REEF Technology, with its Neighborhood Kitchens concept, is among the companies offering established and upstart restaurants access to dark kitchens (among other infrastructure and services).

Subscribe to the McKinsey on Start-ups podcast

Virtual brands.

These are incremental offerings targeted at new meal occasions or cuisine types, developed to increase a restaurant’s online presence and capture a different market segment. Virtual brands can help attract new customers, improve labor efficiency, and optimize order stacking for delivery platforms. YouTuber Jimmy Donaldson (known as MrBeast) parlayed his popularity into MrBeast Burger, a virtual brand whose menu items are prepared in existing restaurant kitchens across the United States and in the United Kingdom. Man vs Fries, which started as a Bay Area pop-up, has expanded its virtual brand into several cities, including Atlanta, Miami, and Seattle.

Brand spin-offs

In a digital world, restaurants that enjoy a great deal of brand loyalty in their communities have an even greater opportunity to consolidate their position and grow their business by creating spin-offs targeting new demographics or meal occasions. Au Cheval, for example, the diner-style Chicago restaurant and bar revered for its cheeseburgers, has spawned Small Cheval, which offers a simplified menu. The potential to leverage brand equity in this way is greater with digital ordering and delivery, as consumers turn to valued brands regardless of where they are located.

Consolidation points

One of the largest costs of last-mile delivery stems from poor route optimization when making multipoint pickups and drop-offs. Partnerships with nearby restaurants could help develop a “food hall”-like online market to improve the customer experience and offer more variety. Solutions such as Toronto’s Kitchen Hub Food Hall allow customers to place a single order that includes items from multiple restaurants. Families that can’t agree on what to have for dinner can include a variety of cuisines, such as burgers, sushi, and stir-fry, on the same order.

Virtual concierge

Drivers and consumers alike stand to gain from efficiencies achieved when multiple deliveries are consolidated, or “stacked.” Virtual concierge services make this possible—for example, by having a driver pick up a customer’s dry cleaning or groceries in addition to their restaurant order. These services can also stack orders from different customers who live in the same apartment building or neighborhood. Rappi, based in Bogotá, Colombia, is an example of a multivertical delivery app that combines food delivery with other errands (through services such as RappiFavor or RappiCash), while Uber Eats and DoorDash have started exploring order stacking as part of their food offerings.

Tiny restaurants

Restaurants may want to rethink their design approach in light of the growing delivery market. Burger King, for example, recently unveiled plans for a restaurant that is 60 percent smaller than its traditional outposts, accommodating the influx of to-go orders with features such as “pickup lockers” and dedicated curbside-delivery parking spots.

Innovation in customer attraction

The evolving food-delivery ecosystem requires, and will likely reward, creativity. One potential example: combining dining and television with “taste your favorite cooking shows at home” type of offerings, in which meals are delivered so that viewers can dine at home “alongside” their favorite celebrity chefs. Rachael Ray partnered with REEF and Uber Eats in 2019 to launch her latest cookbook, offering fans in certain cities the opportunity to sample her recipes without so much as turning on their ovens. “It’s me, joining people for dinner,” said Ray. 7 Kate Krader, “With Rachael Ray, Uber Eats starts virtual celebrity restaurants,” Bloomberg, October 10, 2019, Bloomberg.com.

Check, please

Though a great number of restaurants have suffered and even closed during the COVID-19 pandemic, the surge in tech-enabled delivery has been a meaningful silver lining for many. And for homebound customers, the arrival of steaming hot curry or burritos or filet mignon—summoned with a few clicks or swipes—has been revelatory.

Going forward, the food-delivery space is poised for further expansion and evolution as the “next normal” takes shape. Restaurants will need to adapt their strategies, think carefully about how to partner with delivery platforms, and experiment with new ways of doing business. Delivery platforms will need to evolve how they leverage customer data to improve the user experience and find innovative ways to reduce the costs associated with delivery. And as investors pour money into delivery platforms, dark kitchens, new brands, and other infrastructure and services, the companies on the receiving end will face substantial pressure to live up to investors’ expectations.

As these changes in the way the world eats take hold, the implications for new and established businesses, as well as for consumers, will continue to take shape. Unlocking the opportunities inherent in these shifts will require a sophisticated understanding of where the market is heading and the powerful forces shaping its trajectory.

Kabir Ahuja is a partner in McKinsey’s London office, Vishwa Chandra is a partner in the San Francisco office, and Victoria Lord and Curtis Peens are associate partners in the Miami office.

The authors wish to thank Olamide Bada, Rob Bland, Brendan Gaffey, Sajal Kohli, and Vik Krishnan for their contributions to this article.

Explore a career with us

Related articles.

The changing market for food delivery

Eating out(side): Restaurant dining in the next normal

Winning formula: How Europe’s top tech start-ups get it right

Information

• Author Services

Initiatives

You are accessing a machine-readable page. In order to be human-readable, please install an RSS reader.

All articles published by MDPI are made immediately available worldwide under an open access license. No special permission is required to reuse all or part of the article published by MDPI, including figures and tables. For articles published under an open access Creative Common CC BY license, any part of the article may be reused without permission provided that the original article is clearly cited. For more information, please refer to https://www.mdpi.com/openaccess .

Feature papers represent the most advanced research with significant potential for high impact in the field. A Feature Paper should be a substantial original Article that involves several techniques or approaches, provides an outlook for future research directions and describes possible research applications.

Feature papers are submitted upon individual invitation or recommendation by the scientific editors and must receive positive feedback from the reviewers.

Editor’s Choice articles are based on recommendations by the scientific editors of MDPI journals from around the world. Editors select a small number of articles recently published in the journal that they believe will be particularly interesting to readers, or important in the respective research area. The aim is to provide a snapshot of some of the most exciting work published in the various research areas of the journal.

Original Submission Date Received: .

• Active Journals
• Find a Journal
• Proceedings Series
• For Authors
• For Reviewers
• For Editors
• For Librarians
• For Publishers
• For Societies
• For Conference Organizers
• Open Access Policy
• Institutional Open Access Program
• Special Issues Guidelines
• Editorial Process
• Research and Publication Ethics
• Article Processing Charges
• Testimonials
• Preprints.org
• SciProfiles
• Encyclopedia

Article Menu

• Subscribe SciFeed
• Recommended Articles
• Google Scholar
• on Google Scholar
• Table of Contents

Find support for a specific problem in the support section of our website.

Please let us know what you think of our products and services.

Visit our dedicated information section to learn more about MDPI.

JSmol Viewer

Review of online food delivery platforms and their impacts on sustainability.

1. Introduction

2. overview of the online food delivery sector, 2.1. e-commerce market size, 2.2. online to offline business and online fd, 2.3. online fd providers and their delivery system, 2.4. growth of online fd worldwide, 3. methodology, 4. the impacts of online fd, 4.1. economic impacts, 4.2. social impacts, 4.3. environmental impacts, 5. discussion, 5.1. practical implications, 5.2. limitations and future research directions, 6. conclusions, author contributions, conflicts of interest.

• Purvis, B.; Mao, Y.; Robinson, D. Three pillars of sustainability: In search of conceptual origins. Sustain. Sci. 2019 , 14 , 681–695. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ] [ Green Version ]
• Five reasons Why Ecommerce is Growing. Available online: https://archive.is/ndwF2. (accessed on 24 April 2020).
• Global Ecommerce 2019. Available online: https://archive.is/K2mWg (accessed on 14 April 2020).
• The 2020 Ecommerce Stats Report. Available online: https://archive.is/KHSoO (accessed on 14 April 2020).
• Ram, J.; Sun, S. Business benefits of online-to-offline ecommerce: A theory driven perspective. J. Innov. Econ. Manag. 2020 , I77-XXVIII. [ Google Scholar ]
• Rani, N.S. E-commerce research, practices and applications. Stud. Indian Place Names 2020 , 40 , 773–780. [ Google Scholar ]
• Why Online2Offline Commerce is a Trillion Dollar Opportunity. Available online: https://archive.is/zEodV (accessed on 14 April 2020).
• Ji, S.W.; Sun, X.Y.; Liu, D. Research on core competitiveness of Chinese Retail Industry based on O2O. Adv. Mater. Res. 2014 , 834–836 , 2017–2020. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• The Mobile Economy 2020. Available online: https://archive.is/2Xhj1 (accessed on 14 April 2020).
• Roh, M.; Park, K. Adoption of O2O food delivery services in South Korea: The moderating role of moral obligation in meal preparation. Int. J. Inf. Manag. 2019 , 47 , 262–273. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• How Swiggy Works: Business model of India’s Largest Food Delivery Company. Available online: https://archive.is/JpNdK (accessed on 17 June 2020).
• Thamaraiselvan, N.; Jayadevan, G.R.; Chandrasekar, K.S. Digital food delivery apps revolutionizing food products marketing in India. Int. J. Recent Technol. Eng. 2019 , 8 , 662–665. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Online Food Delivery. Available online: https://archive.is/e7OK5 (accessed on 10 June 2020).
• Sun, P. Your order, their labor: An exploration of algorithms and laboring on food delivery platforms in China. Chin. J. Commun. 2019 , 12 , 308–323. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Watch: Foodpanda’s Crave Party is Set to Be Its Biggest Food Experience Campaign. Available online: https://archive.is/F2uxR (accessed on 14 April 2020).
• Alibaba’s Ele.me Goes on 3 Billion Yuan Summer Spending Spree to Fight Competition. Available online: https://archive.is/woZLB (accessed on 14 April 2020).
• Pigatto, G.; Machado, J.G.C.F.; Negreti, A.D.S.; Machado, L.M. Have you chosen your request? Analysis of online food delivery companies in Brazil. Br. Food J. 2017 , 119 , 639–657. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Meenakshi, N.; Sinha, A. Food delivery apps in India: Wherein lies the success strategy? Strat. Dir. 2019 , 35 , 12–15. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Investors are Craving Food Delivery Companies. Available online: https://archive.is/B5aCA (accessed on 14 April 2020).
• Li, J. Research on food safety supervision on online Food Delivery industry. China Food Saf. Mag. 2019 , 68–71. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• China’s Food Delivery King Feels the Heat from Alibaba. Available online: https://archive.is/9ENN1 (accessed on 14 April 2020).
• Investigation of Commission of Meituan: How Can Restaurants Become Tools for Platform Competition? Available online: https://archive.is/Q8AKn (accessed on 24 April 2020).
• Yin, Y.; Hu, J. The analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of the online food delivery phenomenon in universities and the research on the countermeasures—Based on the empirical study of Jiangpu campus of Nanjing university of technology and its surroundings. Pop. Stand. 2019 , 16 , 46–48. [ Google Scholar ]
• Li, F.; Zhang, J. Current consumption and problems of online food delivery of university students-A case study on students of Jiujiang college. J. Hubei Univ. Econ. (Humanit. Soc. Sci.) 2018 , 12 , 40–42. [ Google Scholar ]
• Han, M.; Zhang, N.; Meng, X. Survey on consumption of online delivered food of college students. Co-Oper. Econ. Sci. 2017 , 2 , 92–93. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Kamenidou, I.C.; Mamalis, S.A.; Pavlidis, S.; Bara, E.Z.G. Segmenting the Generation Z cohort university students based on sustainable food consumption behavior: A preliminary study. Sustainability (Basel) 2019 , 11 , 837. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ] [ Green Version ]
• Briner, R.B.; Denyer, D. Systematic review and evidence synthesis as a practice and scholarship tool. In Oxford Handbook of Evidence-Based Management ; Rousseau, D.M., Ed.; Oxford University Press: Oxford, UK, 2012. [ Google Scholar ]
• Hart, C. Doing a Literature Review: Releasing the Social Science Research Imagination ; SAGE Publications: Thousand Oaks, CA, USA, 1998. [ Google Scholar ]
• Popay, J.; Roberts, H.; Sowden, A.; Petticrew, M.; Arai, L.; Rodgers, M.; Britten, N.; Roen, K.; Duffy, S. Guidance on the Conduct of Narrative Synthesis in Systematic Reviews: A Product from the ESRC Methods Programme ; Lancaster University: Lancaster, UK, 2006. [ Google Scholar ]
• Annual Comprehensive Analysis of the Internet Catering Takeaway Market in China. 2019. Available online: https://archive.is/VKpJR (accessed on 2 April 2020).
• Why Are Food Aggregators Leveraging the Delivery-Only Model? Available online: https://archive.is/DhVHr (accessed on 2 April 2020).
• Uber Eats’s Competitors, Revenue, Number of Employees, Funding and Acquisitions. Available online: https://archive.is/iP8Ss (accessed on 14 April 2020).
• Ma, Y. Current situation and solution of online food delivery in campus—A case study on students of Anhui Economic University. Mod. Bus. Trade Ind. 2019 , 7 , 50–51. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Food Delivery People Wish “Reducing Pressure”, Hope Establishment of Association. Available online: https://archive.is/ylOfx (accessed on 14 April 2020).
• Chen, M.; Hu, M.; Wang, J. Food delivery service and restaurant: Friend or foe? SSRN 2019 . [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• ‘Not a Level Playing Field’: NZ Restaurants Speak Out on Uber Eats. Available online: https://archive.is/0hpR5 (accessed on 22 April 2020).
• Quitting Meituan: Highest Commission Goes up to 26%, Restaurant Earns 1 Yuan/Order. Available online: https://archive.is/nZaZG (accessed on 28 April 2020).
• Cannot Afford Increased Commissions and Quit Food Delivery App. Available online: https://archive.is/cuCV3 (accessed on 22 April 2020).
• UberEats to Change ‘Unfair’ Contracts with Restaurants after ACCC Investigation. Available online: https://archive.is/HMtgR (accessed on 22 April 2020).
• Daily: Catering Association and Public Media should not Moral Kidnapping Platforms to Lower the Commission. Available online: https://archive.is/kmZMj (accessed on 18 April 2020).
• Is it Safe—And Ethical—To Order Meals Online during the Coronavirus Outbreak? Available online: https://archive.is/gw6G6 (accessed on 29 April 2020).
• How Food Delivery Apps Have Changed the Game for Restaurants. Available online: https://archive.is/nzjpJ (accessed on 14 April 2020).
• Nita, C. Strategic analysis of cloud kitchen—A case study. Manag. Today 2019 , 9 , 184–190. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Uber Founder Buys More than 100 “Dark Kitchens” across London in New Venture that Allows Takeaway-Only Businesses to Rent Them for £2,500 a Month to Sell Food on Apps Such as Deliveroo. Available online: https://archive.is/jvJfl (accessed on 14 April 2020).
• Belleri, C. Deliveroo: Improving a Service Making IT 24 Hours. Master’s Thesis, EAE Business School, Madrid, Spain, 2020. [ Google Scholar ]
• What is a Dark Kitchen? Available online: https://archive.is/ap9FB (accessed on 14 April 2020).
• Food Safety Supervision and Management Measures for Online Catering Services. Available online: https://archive.is/YhTs4 (accessed on 14 April 2020).
• Chinese Ghost Kitchen Startup Secures $ 50 Million in Funding. Available online: https://archive.is/3GPYG (accessed on 14 April 2020).
• Neumark-Sztainer, D.; Larson, N.I.; Fulkerson, J.A.; Eisenberg, M.E.; Story, M. Family meals and adolescents: What have we learned from Project EAT (Eating Among Teens)? Public Health Nutr. 2010 , 13 , 1113–1121. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ] [ Green Version ]
• Schnettler, B.; Rojas, J.; Grunert, K.G.; Lobos, G.; Miranda-Zapata, E.; Lapo, M.; Hueche, C. Family and food variables that influence life satisfaction of mother-father-adolescent triads in a South American country. Curr. Psychol. 2019 . [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Liu, C.; Chen, J. Consuming takeaway food: Convenience, waste and Chinese young people’s urban lifestyle. J. Consum. Cult. 2019 . [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Meah, A.; Jackson, P. Convenience as care: Culinary antinomies in practice. Environ. Plan. A 2017 , 49 , 2065–2081. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ] [ Green Version ]
• Online Food Delivery, “Hot Topic” Hidden in the Phone. Available online: https://archive.is/Mqy7Y (accessed on 14 April 2020).
• Look, the Wonderful “Night Economy” of Online Food Delivery in Shanghai. Available online: https://archive.is/A3QhN (accessed on 17 April 2020).
• Social Eating: When Eating Together Makes the Team More Productive. Available online: https://archive.is/GDnBZ (accessed on 17 April 2020).
• Ma, Y.; Kang, J.; Zhang, J.; Zheng, F. College Students’ Consumption Behavior—A Case Study on Students in Ningxia University. Sustain. Dev. 2019 , 9 , 576. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Maimaiti, M.; Zhao, X.Y.; Jia, M.H.; Ru, Y.; Zhu, S.K. How we eat determines what we become: Opportunities and challenges brought by food delivery industry in a changing world in China. Eur. J. Clin. Nutr. 2018 , 72 , 1282–1286. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ] [ PubMed ]
• Maimaiti, M.; Ma, X.; Zhao, X.; Jia, M.; Li, J.; Yang, M.; Ru, Y.; Yang, F.; Wang, N.; Zhu, S. Multiplicity and complexity of food environment in China: Full-scale field census of food outlets in a typical district. Eur. J. Clin. Nutr. 2019 , 74 , 397–408. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ] [ PubMed ]
• Anderson, B.; Rafferty, A.P.; Lyon-Callo, S.; Fussman, C.; Imes, G. Fast-food consumption and obesity among Michigan adults. Prev. Chronic Dis. 2011 , 8 , A71. [ Google Scholar ] [ PubMed ]
• Wang, Y.; Wang, L.; Xue, H.; Qu, W. A Review of the growth of the Fast Food Industry in China and its potential impact on obesity. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2016 , 13 , 1112. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Fraser, L.K.; Clarke, G.P.; Cade, J.E.; Edwards, K.L. Fast food and obesity: A spatial analysis in a large United Kingdom population of children aged 13–15. Am. J. Prev. Med. 2012 , 42 , e77–e85. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Virtanen, M.; Kivimäki, H.; Ervasti, J.; Oksanen, T.; Pentti, J.; Kouvonen, A.; Halonen, J.I.; Kivimäki, M.; Vahtera, J. Fast-food outlets and grocery stores near school and adolescents’ eating habits and overweight in Finland. Eur. J. Public Health 2015 , 25 , 650–655. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ] [ Green Version ]
• Stephens, J.; Miller, H.; Militello, L. Food delivery apps and the negative health impacts for Americans. Front. Nutr. 2020 , 7 , 14. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ] [ Green Version ]
• Jiang, Y.H.; Wang, J.B.; Wu, S.W.; Li, N.; Wang, Y.M.; Liu, J.R.; Xu, X.R.; He, Z.H.; Cheng, Y.W.; Zeng, X.Q.; et al. Association between take-out food consumption and obesity among Chinese university students: A cross-sectional study. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2019 , 16 , 1071. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ] [ Green Version ]
• Byun, J.H.; Park, M.H.; Jeong, B.Y. Effects of age and violations on occupational accidents among motorcyclists performing food delivery. Work 2020 , 65 , 53–61. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ] [ PubMed ]
• Zhang, Y.; Huang, Y.; Wang, Y.; Casey, T.W. Who uses a mobile phone while driving for food delivery? The role of personality, risk perception, and driving self-efficacy. J. Saf. Res. 2020 , 73 , 69–80. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ] [ PubMed ] [ Green Version ]
• Zhu, J.; Li, J. Analysis of influencing factors of college students’ online takeaway behavior under the internet background. E Bus. J. 2019 , 8 , 90–96. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Delivery Platforms See Slower Sales Growth Amid COVID-19 Outbreak. Available online: https://archive.is/G1CCm (accessed on 14 April 2020).
• Wuhan Lockdown: How People are Still Getting Food. Available online: https://archive.is/5Xx6T (accessed on 14 April 2020).
• China’s Food Delivery Workers are Lifeline in Coronavirus Outbreak. Available online: https://archive.is/zwqCr (accessed on 14 April 2020).
• While Working in the Night? Here Comes Free Supper from Meituan. Available online: https://archive.is/gu1H6 (accessed on 22 April 2020).
• Grubhub, DoorDash, Postmates, Uber Eats Are Sued over Restaurant Prices Amid Pandemic. Available online: https://archive.is/0Qi30 (accessed on 18 May 2020).
• Song, G.; Zhang, H.; Duan, H.; Xu, M. Packaging waste from food delivery in China’s mega cities. Resour. Conserv. Recycl. 2018 , 130 , 226–227. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Jia, X.; Klemes, J.J.; Varbanov, P.S.; Alwi, S.R.W. Energy-emission-waste nexus of food deliveries in China. Chem. Eng. Trans. 2018 , 70 , 661–666. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Safety vs. Sustainability: Single-Use Food Packaging Use Rises Due to COVID-19—But Is It Truly Safer? Available online: https://archive.is/416ZL (accessed on 13 May 2020).
• Xie, B.; Song, W. Online catering takeout development, urban environmental negative externalities and waste regulation. J. Shaanxi Norm. Univ. (Philos. Soc. Sci. Ed.) 2018 , 47 , 79–88. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Burt, D. Single-use plastic reduction at UK higher learning institutions. Master’s Thesis, University of Leeds, West Yorkshire, UK, 2019. [ Google Scholar ]
• Li, H. The environmental hazards behind the surge in takeaway waste. Ecol. Econ. 2018 , 34 , 10–13. [ Google Scholar ]
• Food Delivery Apps Skewered for Creating Plastic Waste. Available online: https://archive.is/GaAAe (accessed on 14 April 2020).
• Qiu, Z.; Meng, B.; Lin, Y.; Chen, S. Research on the status quo of sorting and disposing of food waste from takeout of college students. Mod. Food 2019 , 5 , 187–191. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Liao, C.; Zhao, D.; Zhang, S. Psychological and conditional factors influencing staff’s takeaway waste separation intention: An application of the extended theory of planned behavior. Sustain. Cities Soc. 2018 , 41 , 186–194. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Notice of the General Office of the State Council on Forwarding the Implementation Plan of the Domestic Waste Classification System of the Ministry of Housing, Urban and Rural Construction of the National Development and Reform Commission. Available online: https://archive.is/m2N8s (accessed on 14 April 2020).
• Shanghai Releases 2020 Waste Classification Targets: The Average Daily Output of Wet Garbage is at Least 9000 Tons, and the Average Daily Disposal Volume of Dry Garbage is Less than 16,800 Tons. Available online: https://archive.is/6e8k9 (accessed on 14 April 2020).
• 2 Years Results of Meituan “Green Hill Plan”: 800Mu Trees been Planted in Yunnan and Gansu, China. Available online: https://archive.is/PSnlC (accessed on 14 April 2020).
• Food Delivery Apps are Changing the Way We Eat. Available online: https://archive.is/Y6g3L (accessed on 22 April 2020).
• Chen, S. Current situation of food waste of online food delivery and reasons of college students. China Food Saf. Mag. 2018 , 33 , 50. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Evans, D. Beyond the throwaway society: Ordinary domestic practice and a sociological approach to household Food Waste. Sociology 2012 , 46 , 41–56. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Wang, L.-E.; Liu, G.; Liu, X.; Liu, Y.; Gao, J.; Zhou, B.; Gao, S.; Cheng, S. The weight of unfinished plate: A survey based characterization of restaurant food waste in Chinese cities. Waste Manag. 2017 , 66 , 3–12. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ] [ PubMed ]
• Mittal, A.; Gibson, N.O.; Krejci, C.C. An Agent-Based Model of Surplus Food Rescue Using Crowd-Shipping. In Proceedings of the Winter Simulation Conference (WSC), National Harbor, MD, USA, 8–11 December 2019. [ Google Scholar ]
• Wen, Z.; Zhang, Y.; Fu, D. The environmental impact assessment of a takeaway food delivery order based on of industry chain evaluation in China. China Environ. Sci. 2019 , 39 , 4017–4024. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Tegeltija, S.; Ostojić, G.; Stankovski, S.; Kukolj, D.; Tejić, B. Food delivery using cargo-bikes with IoT. In Proceedings on 25th International Joint Conference on Industrial Engineering and Operations Management—IJCIEOM ; Springer International Publishing: Cham, Switzerland, 2020; pp. 483–491. [ Google Scholar ]
• Hwang, J.; Choe Ja, Y. Exploring perceived risk in building successful drone food delivery services. Int. J. Contemp. Hosp. Manag. 2019 , 31 , 3249–3269. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Goodchild, A.; Toy, J. Delivery by drone: An evaluation of unmanned aerial vehicle technology in reducing CO 2 emissions in the delivery service industry. Transp. Res. Part D Transp. Environ. 2018 , 61 , 58–67. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Hwang, J.; Kim, H. Consequences of a green image of drone food delivery services: The moderating role of gender and age. Bus. Strategy Environ. 2019 , 28 , 872–884. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]

Click here to enlarge figure

Share and Cite

Li, C.; Mirosa, M.; Bremer, P. Review of Online Food Delivery Platforms and their Impacts on Sustainability. Sustainability 2020 , 12 , 5528. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12145528

Li C, Mirosa M, Bremer P. Review of Online Food Delivery Platforms and their Impacts on Sustainability. Sustainability . 2020; 12(14):5528. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12145528

Li, Charlene, Miranda Mirosa, and Phil Bremer. 2020. "Review of Online Food Delivery Platforms and their Impacts on Sustainability" Sustainability 12, no. 14: 5528. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12145528

Article Metrics

Article access statistics, further information, mdpi initiatives, follow mdpi.

Subscribe to receive issue release notifications and newsletters from MDPI journals

Health Care Comes Home: The Human Factors (2011)

Chapter: 7 conclusions and recommendations.

7 Conclusions and Recommendations

Health care is moving into the home increasingly often and involving a mixture of people, a variety of tasks, and a broad diversity of devices and technologies; it is also occurring in a range of residential environments. The factors driving this migration include the rising costs of providing health care; the growing numbers of older adults; the increasing prevalence of chronic disease; improved survival rates of various diseases, injuries, and other conditions (including those of fragile newborns); large numbers of veterans returning from war with serious injuries; and a wide range of technological innovations. The health care that results varies considerably in its safety, effectiveness, and efficiency, as well as its quality and cost.

The committee was charged with examining this major trend in health care delivery and resulting challenges from only one of many perspectives: the study of human factors. From the outset it was clear that the dramatic and evolving change in health care practice and policies presents a broad array of opportunities and problems. Consequently the committee endeavored to maintain focus specifically on how using the human factors approach can provide solutions that support maximizing the safety and quality of health care delivered in the home while empowering both care recipients and caregivers in the effort.

The conclusions and recommendations presented below reflect the most critical steps that the committee thinks should be taken to improve the state of health care in the home, based on the literature reviewed in this report examined through a human factors lens. They are organized into four areas: (1) health care technologies, including medical devices and health information technologies involved in health care in the home; (2)

caregivers and care recipients; (3) residential environments for health care; and (4) knowledge gaps that require additional research and development. Although many issues related to home health care could not be addressed, applications of human factors principles, knowledge, and research methods in these areas could make home health care safer and more effective and also contribute to reducing costs. The committee chose not to prioritize the recommendations, as they focus on various aspects of health care in the home and are of comparable importance to the different constituencies affected.

HEALTH CARE TECHNOLOGIES

Health care technologies include medical devices that are used in the home as well as information technologies related to home-based health care. The four recommendations in this area concern (1) regulating technologies for health care consumers, (2) developing guidance on the structure and usability of health information technologies, (3) developing guidance and standards for medical device labeling, and (4) improving adverse event reporting systems for medical devices. The adoption of these recommendations would improve the usability and effectiveness of technology systems and devices, support users in understanding and learning to use them, and improve feedback to government and industry that could be used to further improve technology for home care.

Ensuring the safety of emerging technologies is a challenge, in part because it is not always clear which federal agency has regulatory authority and what regulations must be met. Currently, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has responsibility for devices, and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) has similar authority with respect to health information technology. However, the dividing line between medical devices and health information technology is blurring, and many new systems and applications are being developed that are a combination of the two, although regulatory oversight has remained divided. Because regulatory responsibility for them is unclear, these products may fall into the gap.

The committee did not find a preponderance of evidence that knowledge is lacking for the design of safe and effective devices and technologies for use in the home. Rather than discovering an inadequate evidence base, we were troubled by the insufficient attention directed at the development of devices that account, necessarily and properly, for users who are inadequately trained or not trained at all. Yet these new users often must

rely on equipment without ready knowledge about limitations, maintenance requirements, and problems with adaptation to their particular home settings.

The increased prominence of the use of technology in the health care arena poses predictable challenges for many lay users, especially people with low health literacy, cognitive impairment, or limited technology experience. For example, remote health care management may be more effective when it is supported by technology, and various electronic health care (“e-health”) applications have been developed for this purpose. With the spectrum of caregivers ranging from individuals caring for themselves or other family members to highly experienced professional caregivers, computer-based care management systems could offer varying levels of guidance, reminding, and alerting, depending on the sophistication of the operator and the criticality of the message. However, if these technologies or applications are difficult to understand or use, they may be ignored or misused, with potentially deleterious effects on care recipient health and safety. Applying existing accessibility and usability guidelines and employing user-centered design and validation methods in the development of health technology products designed for use in the home would help ensure that they are safe and effective for their targeted user populations. In this effort, it is important to recognize how the line between medical devices and health information technologies has become blurred while regulatory oversight has remained distinct, and it is not always clear into which domain a product falls.

Recommendation 1. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology should collaborate to regulate, certify, and monitor health care applications and systems that integrate medical devices and health information technologies. As part of the certification process, the agencies should require evidence that manufacturers have followed existing accessibility and usability guidelines and have applied user-centered design and validation methods during development of the product.

Guidance and Standards

Developers of information technologies related to home-based health care, as yet, have inadequate or incomplete guidance regarding product content, structure, accessibility, and usability to inform innovation or evolution of personal health records or of care recipient access to information in electronic health records.

The ONC, in the initial announcement of its health information technology certification program, stated that requirements would be forthcom-

ing with respect both to personal health records and to care recipient access to information in electronic health records (e.g., patient portals). Despite the importance of these requirements, there is still no guidance on the content of information that should be provided to patients or minimum standards for accessibility, functionality, and usability of that information in electronic or nonelectronic formats.

Consequently, some portals have been constructed based on the continuity of care record. However, recent research has shown that records and portals based on this model are neither understandable nor interpretable by laypersons, even by those with a college education. The lack of guidance in this area makes it difficult for developers of personal health records and patient portals to design systems that fully address the needs of consumers.

Recommendation 2. The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, in collaboration with the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, should establish design guidelines and standards, based on existing accessibility and usability guidelines, for content, accessibility, functionality, and usability of consumer health information technologies related to home-based health care.

The committee found a serious lack of adequate standards and guidance for the labeling of medical devices. Furthermore, we found that the approval processes of the FDA for changing these materials are burdensome and inflexible.

Just as many medical devices currently in use by laypersons in the home were originally designed and approved for use only by professionals in formal health care facilities, the instructions for use and training materials were not designed for lay users, either. The committee recognizes that lack of instructional materials for lay users adds to the level of risk involved when devices are used by populations for whom they were not intended.

Ironically, the FDA’s current premarket review and approval processes inadvertently discourage manufacturers from selectively revising or developing supplemental instructional and training materials, when they become aware that instructional and training materials need to be developed or revised for lay users of devices already approved and marketed. Changing the instructions for use (which were approved with the device) requires manufacturers to submit the device along with revised instructions to the FDA for another 510(k) premarket notification review. Since manufacturers can find these reviews complicated, time-consuming, and expensive, this requirement serves as a disincentive to appropriate revisions of instructional or training materials.

Furthermore, little guidance is currently available on design of user

training methods and materials for medical devices. Even the recently released human factors standard on medical device design (Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation, 2009), while reasonably comprehensive, does not cover the topic of training or training materials. Both FDA guidance and existing standards that do specifically address the design of labeling and ensuing instructions for use fail to account for up-to-date findings from research on instructional systems design. In addition, despite recognition that requirements for user training, training materials, and instructions for use are different for lay and professional users of medical equipment, these differences are not reflected in current standards.

Recommendation 3. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) should promote development (by standards development organizations, such as the International Electrotechnical Commission, the International Organization for Standardization, the American National Standards Institute, and the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation) of new standards based on the most recent human factors research for the labeling of and ensuing instructional materials for medical devices designed for home use by lay users. The FDA should also tailor and streamline its approval processes to facilitate and encourage regular improvements of these materials by manufacturers.

Adverse Event Reporting Systems

The committee notes that the FDA’s adverse event reporting systems, used to report problems with medical devices, are not user-friendly, especially for lay users, who generally are not aware of the systems, unaware that they can use them to report problems, and uneducated about how to do so. In order to promote safe use of medical devices in the home and rectify design problems that put care recipients at risk, it is necessary that the FDA conduct more effective postmarket surveillance of medical devices to complement its premarket approval process. The most important elements of their primarily passive surveillance system are the current adverse event reporting mechanisms, including Maude and MedSun. Entry of incident data by health care providers and consumers is not straightforward, and the system does not elicit data that could be useful to designers as they develop updated versions of products or new ones that are similar to existing devices. The reporting systems and their importance need to be widely promoted to a broad range of users, especially lay users.

Recommendation 4. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration should improve its adverse event reporting systems to be easier to use, to collect data that are more useful for identifying the root causes of events

related to interactions with the device operator, and to develop and promote a more convenient way for lay users as well as professionals to report problems with medical devices.

CAREGIVERS IN THE HOME

Health care is provided in the home by formal caregivers (health care professionals), informal caregivers (family and friends), and individuals who self-administer care; each type of caregiver faces unique issues. Properly preparing individuals to provide care at home depends on targeting efforts appropriately to the background, experience, and knowledge of the caregivers. To date, however, home health care services suffer from being organized primarily around regulations and payments designed for inpatient or outpatient acute care settings. Little attention has been given to how different the roles are for formal caregivers when delivering services in the home or to the specific types of training necessary for appropriate, high-quality practice in this environment.

Health care administration in the home commonly involves interaction among formal caregivers and informal caregivers who share daily responsibility for a person receiving care. But few formal caregivers are given adequate training on how to work with informal caregivers and involve them effectively in health decision making, use of medical or adaptive technologies, or best practices to be used for evaluating and supporting the needs of caregivers.

It is also important to recognize that the majority of long-term care provided to older adults and individuals with disabilities relies on family members, friends, or the individual alone. Many informal caregivers take on these responsibilities without necessary education or support. These individuals may be poorly prepared and emotionally overwhelmed and, as a result, experience stress and burden that can lead to their own morbidity. The committee is aware that informational and training materials and tested programs already exist to assist informal caregivers in understanding the many details of providing health care in the home and to ease their burden and enhance the quality of life of both caregiver and care recipient. However, tested materials and education, support, and skill enhancement programs have not been adequately disseminated or integrated into standard care practices.

Recommendation 5. Relevant professional practice and advocacy groups should develop appropriate certification, credentialing, and/or training standards that will prepare formal caregivers to provide care in the home, develop appropriate informational and training materials

for informal caregivers, and provide guidance for all caregivers to work effectively with other people involved.

RESIDENTIAL ENVIRONMENTS FOR HEALTH CARE

Health care is administered in a variety of nonclinical environments, but the most common one, particularly for individuals who need the greatest level and intensity of health care services, is the home. The two recommendations in this area encourage (1) modifications to existing housing and (2) accessible and universal design of new housing. The implementation of these recommendations would be a good start on an effort to improve the safety and ease of practicing health care in the home. It could improve the health and safety of many care recipients and their caregivers and could facilitate adherence to good health maintenance and treatment practices. Ideally, improvements to housing design would take place in the context of communities that provide transportation, social networking and exercise opportunities, and access to health care and other services.

Safety and Modification of Existing Housing

The committee found poor appreciation of the importance of modifying homes to remove health hazards and barriers to self-management and health care practice and, furthermore, that financial support from federal assistance agencies for home modifications is very limited. The general connection between housing characteristics and health is well established. For example, improving housing conditions to enhance basic sanitation has long been part of a public health response to acute illness. But the characteristics of the home can present significant barriers to autonomy or self-care management and present risk factors for poor health, injury, compromised well-being, and greater dependence on others. Conversely, physical characteristics of homes can enhance resident safety and ability to participate in daily self-care and to utilize effectively health care technologies that are designed to enhance health and well-being.

Home modifications based on professional home assessments can increase functioning, contribute to reducing accidents such as falls, assist caregivers, and enable chronically ill persons and people with disabilities to stay in the community. Such changes are also associated with facilitating hospital discharges, decreasing readmissions, reducing hazards in the home, and improving care coordination. Familiar modifications include installation of such items as grab bars, handrails, stair lifts, increased lighting, and health monitoring equipment as well as reduction of such hazards as broken fixtures and others caused by insufficient home maintenance.

Deciding on which home modifications have highest priority in a given

setting depends on an appropriate assessment of circumstances and the environment. A number of home assessment instruments and programs have been validated and proven to be effective to meet this need. But even if needed modifications are properly identified and prioritized, inadequate funding, gaps in services, and lack of coordination between the health and housing service sectors have resulted in a poorly integrated system that is difficult to access. Even when accessed, progress in making home modifications available has been hampered by this lack of coordination and inadequate reimbursement or financial mechanisms, especially for those who cannot afford them.

Recommendation 6. Federal agencies, including the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, along with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the U.S. Department of Energy, should collaborate to facilitate adequate and appropriate access to health- and safety-related home modifications, especially for those who cannot afford them. The goal should be to enable persons whose homes contain obstacles, hazards, or features that pose a home safety concern, limit self-care management, or hinder the delivery of needed services to obtain home assessments, home modifications, and training in their use.

Accessibility and Universal Design of New Housing

Almost all existing housing in the United States presents problems for conducting health-related activities because physical features limit independent functioning, impede caregiving, and contribute to such accidents as falls. In spite of the fact that a large and growing number of persons, including children, adults, veterans, and older adults, have disabilities and chronic conditions, new housing continues to be built that does not account for their needs (current or future). Although existing homes can be modified to some extent to address some of the limitations, a proactive, preventive, and effective approach would be to plan to address potential problems in the design phase of new and renovated housing, before construction.

Some housing is already required to be built with basic accessibility features that facilitate practice of health care in the home as a result of the Fair Housing Act Amendments of 1998. And 17 states and 30 cities have passed what are called “visitability” codes, which currently apply to 30,000 homes. Some localities offer tax credits, such as Pittsburgh through an ordinance, to encourage installing visitability features in new and renovated housing. The policy in Pittsburgh was impetus for the Pennsylvania Residential VisitAbility Design Tax Credit Act signed into law on October 28, 2006, which offers property owners a tax credit for new construction

and rehabilitation. The Act paves the way for municipalities to provide tax credits to citizens by requiring that such governing bodies administer the tax credit (Self-Determination Housing Project of Pennsylvania, Inc., n.d.).

Visitability, rather than full accessibility, is characterized by such limited features as an accessible entry into the home, appropriately wide doorways and one accessible bathroom. Both the International Code Council, which focuses on building codes, and the American National Standards Institute, which establishes technical standards, including ones associated with accessibility, have endorsed voluntary accessibility standards. These standards facilitate more jurisdictions to pass such visitability codes and encourage legislative consistency throughout the country. To date, however, the federal government has not taken leadership to promote compliance with such standards in housing construction, even for housing for which it provides financial support.

Universal design, a broader and more comprehensive approach than visitability, is intended to suit the needs of persons of all ages, sizes, and abilities, including individuals with a wide range of health conditions and activity limitations. Steps toward universal design in renovation could include such features as anti-scald faucet valve devices, nonslip flooring, lever handles on doors, and a bedroom on the main floor. Such features can help persons and their caregivers carry out everyday tasks and reduce the incidence of serious and costly accidents (e.g., falls, burns). In the long run, implementing universal design in more homes will result in housing that suits the long-term needs of more residents, provides more housing choices for persons with chronic conditions and disabilities, and causes less forced relocation of residents to more costly settings, such as nursing homes.

Issues related to housing accessibility have been acknowledged at the federal level. For example, visitability and universal design are in accord with the objectives of the Safety of Seniors Act (Public Law No. 110-202, passed in 2008). In addition, implementation of the Olmstead decision (in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Americans with Disabilities Act may require states to provide community-based services rather than institutional placements for individuals with disabilities) requires affordable and accessible housing in the community.

Visitability, accessibility, and universal design of housing all are important to support the practice of health care in the home, but they are not broadly implemented and incentives for doing so are few.

Recommendation 7. Federal agencies, such as the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Federal Housing Administration, should take a lead role, along with states and local municipalities, to develop strategies that promote and facilitate increased housing visitability, accessibil-

ity, and universal design in all segments of the market. This might include tax and other financial incentives, local zoning ordinances, model building codes, new products and designs, and related policies that are developed as appropriate with standards-setting organizations (e.g., the International Code Council, the International Electrotechnical Commission, the International Organization for Standardization, and the American National Standards Institute).

RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT

In our review of the research literature, the committee learned that there is ample foundational knowledge to apply a human factors lens to home health care, particularly as improvements are considered to make health care safe and effective in the home. However, much of what is known is not being translated effectively into practice, neither in design of equipment and information technology or in the effective targeting and provision of services to all those in need. Consequently, the four recommendations that follow support research and development to address knowledge and communication gaps and facilitate provision of high-quality health care in the home. Specifically, the committee recommends (1) research to enhance coordination among all the people who play a role in health care practice in the home, (2) development of a database of medical devices in order to facilitate device prescription, (3) improved surveys of the people involved in health care in the home and their residential environments, and (4) development of tools for assessing the tasks associated with home-based health care.

Health Care Teamwork and Coordination

Frail elders, adults with disabilities, disabled veterans, and children with special health care needs all require coordination of the care services that they receive in the home. Home-based health care often involves a large number of elements, including multiple care providers, support services, agencies, and complex and dynamic benefit regulations, which are rarely coordinated. However, coordinating those elements has a positive effect on care recipient outcomes and costs of care. When successful, care coordination connects caregivers, improves communication among caregivers and care recipients and ensures that receivers of care obtain appropriate services and resources.

To ensure safe, effective, and efficient care, everyone involved must collaborate as a team with shared objectives. Well-trained primary health care teams that execute customized plans of care are a key element of coordinated care; teamwork and communication among all actors are also

essential to successful care coordination and the delivery of high-quality care. Key factors that influence the smooth functioning of a team include a shared understanding of goals, common information (such as a shared medication list), knowledge of available resources, and allocation and coordination of tasks conducted by each team member.

Barriers to coordination include insufficient resources available to (a) help people who need health care at home to identify and establish connections to appropriate sources of care, (b) facilitate communication and coordination among caregivers involved in home-based health care, and (c) facilitate communication among the people receiving and the people providing health care in the home.

The application of systems analysis techniques, such as task analysis, can help identify problems in care coordination systems and identify potential intervention strategies. Human factors research in the areas of communication, cognitive aiding and decision support, high-fidelity simulation training techniques, and the integration of telehealth technologies could also inform improvements in care coordination.

Recommendation 8 . The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality should support human factors–based research on the identified barriers to coordination of health care services delivered in the home and support user-centered development and evaluation of programs that may overcome these barriers.

Medical Device Database

It is the responsibility of physicians to prescribe medical devices, but in many cases little information is readily available to guide them in determining the best match between the devices available and a particular care recipient. No resource exists for medical devices, in contrast to the analogous situation in the area of assistive and rehabilitation technologies, for which annotated databases (such as AbleData) are available to assist the provider in determining the most appropriate one of several candidate devices for a given care recipient. Although specialists are apt to receive information about devices specific to the area of their practice, this is much less likely in the case of family and general practitioners, who often are responsible for selecting, recommending, or prescribing the most appropriate device for use at home.

Recommendation 9. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, in collaboration with device manufacturers, should establish a medical device database for physicians and other providers, including pharmacists, to use when selecting appropriate devices to prescribe or recommend

for people receiving or self-administering health care in the home. Using task analysis and other human factors approaches to populate the medical device database will ensure that it contains information on characteristics of the devices and implications for appropriate care recipient and device operator populations.

Characterizing Caregivers, Care Recipients, and Home Environments

As delivery of health care in the home becomes more common, more coherent strategies and effective policies are needed to support the workforce of individuals who provide this care. Developing these will require a comprehensive understanding of the number and attributes of individuals engaged in health care in the home as well as the context in which care is delivered. Data and data analysis are lacking to accomplish this objective.

National data regarding the numbers of individuals engaged in health care delivery in the home—that is, both formal and informal caregivers—are sparse, and the estimates that do exist vary widely. Although the Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes estimates of the number of workers employed in the home setting for some health care classifications, they do not include all relevant health care workers. For example, data on workers employed directly by care recipients and their families are notably absent. Likewise, national estimates of the number of informal caregivers are obtained from surveys that use different methodological approaches and return significantly different results.

Although numerous national surveys have been designed to answer a broad range of questions regarding health care delivery in the home, with rare exceptions such surveys reflect the relatively limited perspective of the sponsoring agency. For example,

• The Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey (administered by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services) and the Health and Retirement Survey (administered by the National Institute on Aging) are primarily geared toward understanding the health, health services use, and/or economic well-being of older adults and provide no information regarding working-age adults or children or information about home or neighborhood environments.
• The Behavioral Risk Factors Surveillance Survey (administered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CDC), the National Health Interview Survey (administered by the CDC), and the National Children’s Study (administered by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency) all collect information on health characteristics, with limited or no information about the housing context.
• The American Housing Survey (administered by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development) collects detailed information regarding housing, but it does not include questions regarding the health status of residents and does not collect adequate information about home modifications and features on an ongoing basis.

Consequently, although multiple federal agencies collect data on the sociodemographic and health characteristics of populations and on the nation’s housing stock, none of these surveys collects data necessary to link the home, its residents, and the presence of any caregivers, thus limiting understanding of health care delivered in the home. Furthermore, information is altogether lacking about health and functioning of populations linked to the physical, social, and cultural environments in which they live. Finally, in regard to individuals providing care, information is lacking regarding their education, training, competencies, and credentialing, as well as appropriate knowledge about their working conditions in the home.

Better coordination across government agencies that sponsor such surveys and more attention to information about health care that occurs in the home could greatly improve the utility of survey findings for understanding the prevalence and nature of health care delivery in the home.

Recommendation 10. Federal health agencies should coordinate data collection efforts to capture comprehensive information on elements relevant to health care in the home, either in a single survey or through effective use of common elements across surveys. The surveys should collect data on the sociodemographic and health characteristics of individuals receiving care in the home, the sociodemographic attributes of formal and informal caregivers and the nature of the caregiving they provide, and the attributes of the residential settings in which the care recipients live.

Tools for Assessing Home Health Care Tasks and Operators

Persons caring for themselves or others at home as well as formal caregivers vary considerably in their skills, abilities, attitudes, experience, and other characteristics, such as age, culture/ethnicity, and health literacy. In turn, designers of health-related devices and technology systems used in the home are often naïve about the diversity of the user population. They need high-quality information and guidance to better understand user capabilities relative to the task demands of the health-related device or technology that they are developing.

In this environment, valid and reliable tools are needed to match users with tasks and technologies. At this time, health care providers lack the

tools needed to assess whether particular individuals would be able to perform specific health care tasks at home, and medical device and system designers lack information on the demands associated with health-related tasks performed at home and the human capabilities needed to perform them successfully.

Whether used to assess the characteristics of formal or informal caregivers or persons engaged in self-care, task analysis can be used to develop point-of-care tools for use by consumers and caregivers alike in locations where such tasks are encouraged or prescribed. The tools could facilitate identification of potential mismatches between the characteristics, abilities, experiences, and attitudes that an individual brings to a task and the demands associated with the task. Used in ambulatory care settings, at hospital discharge or other transitions of care, and in the home by caregivers or individuals and family members themselves, these tools could enable assessment of prospective task performer’s capabilities in relation to the demands of the task. The tools might range in complexity from brief screening checklists for clinicians to comprehensive assessment batteries that permit nuanced study and tracking of home-based health care tasks by administrators and researchers. The results are likely to help identify types of needed interventions and support aids that would enhance the abilities of individuals to perform health care tasks in home settings safely, effectively, and efficiently.

Recommendation 11. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality should collaborate, as necessary, with the National Institute for Disability and Rehabilitation Research, the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Defense, and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to support development of assessment tools customized for home-based health care, designed to analyze the demands of tasks associated with home-based health care, the operator capabilities required to carry them out, and the relevant capabilities of specific individuals.

Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation. (2009). ANSI/AAMI HE75:2009: Human factors engineering: Design of medical devices. Available: http://www.aami.org/publications/standards/HE75_Ch16_Access_Board.pdf [April 2011].

Self-Determination Housing Project of Pennsylvania, Inc. (n.d.) Promoting visitability in Pennsylvania. Available: http://www.sdhp.org/promoting_visitability_in_pennsy.htm [March 30, 2011].

In the United States, health care devices, technologies, and practices are rapidly moving into the home. The factors driving this migration include the costs of health care, the growing numbers of older adults, the increasing prevalence of chronic conditions and diseases and improved survival rates for people with those conditions and diseases, and a wide range of technological innovations. The health care that results varies considerably in its safety, effectiveness, and efficiency, as well as in its quality and cost.

Health Care Comes Home reviews the state of current knowledge and practice about many aspects of health care in residential settings and explores the short- and long-term effects of emerging trends and technologies. By evaluating existing systems, the book identifies design problems and imbalances between technological system demands and the capabilities of users. Health Care Comes Home recommends critical steps to improve health care in the home. The book's recommendations cover the regulation of health care technologies, proper training and preparation for people who provide in-home care, and how existing housing can be modified and new accessible housing can be better designed for residential health care. The book also identifies knowledge gaps in the field and how these can be addressed through research and development initiatives.

Health Care Comes Home lays the foundation for the integration of human health factors with the design and implementation of home health care devices, technologies, and practices. The book describes ways in which the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and federal housing agencies can collaborate to improve the quality of health care at home. It is also a valuable resource for residential health care providers and caregivers.

READ FREE ONLINE

Welcome to OpenBook!

You're looking at OpenBook, NAP.edu's online reading room since 1999. Based on feedback from you, our users, we've made some improvements that make it easier than ever to read thousands of publications on our website.

Do you want to take a quick tour of the OpenBook's features?

Show this book's table of contents , where you can jump to any chapter by name.

...or use these buttons to go back to the previous chapter or skip to the next one.

Jump up to the previous page or down to the next one. Also, you can type in a page number and press Enter to go directly to that page in the book.

Switch between the Original Pages , where you can read the report as it appeared in print, and Text Pages for the web version, where you can highlight and search the text.

To search the entire text of this book, type in your search term here and press Enter .

Share a link to this book page on your preferred social network or via email.

View our suggested citation for this chapter.

Ready to take your reading offline? Click here to buy this book in print or download it as a free PDF, if available.

Get Email Updates

Do you enjoy reading reports from the Academies online for free ? Sign up for email notifications and we'll let you know about new publications in your areas of interest when they're released.

Home Delivery of Medication Research Paper

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
• As a template for you assignment

Executive Summary

Problem statement, project business requirement, description of products and services, marketing strategy, product/service market, organization and staffing, strategic management, findings and recommendations.

This paper is a feasibility study to evaluate the dynamics associated with setting up Empire Home Delivery services in the US market. Empire Home Delivery Service is a hypothetical company that deals in the delivery of medication throughout the United States (US). This paper identifies that, the supply and distribution of medications is subject to intense regulations as the main deterrent to trade.

However, this paper notes that, Empire Home delivery services, has a lot of opportunities to explore in this market (home delivery of medication) because the market is vibrant and it has few participants. However, to succeed in this business, this paper observes that, Empire Home delivery service needs to have a well-distributed drug network that will be able to deliver medications whenever they are ordered.

This requirement emphasizes the need for the company to set up drug stores in various locations where it operates.

With such infrastructural network in place, this paper observes that, a vigorous online marketing campaign would be appropriate for Empire Home Delivery services to succeed because it will ensure that, the company reaches a wide audience at very minimal costs. These dynamics withstanding, this paper recommends that, Empire should commence business.

The medications supply market in the US has often experienced several operational problems. These problems are multifaceted, but the end-user (who is often the patient) is the one who suffers most. However, the drug supply market is not immune to market changes that happen in today’s world.

The general business environment has mainly changed because of shifts in consumer tastes, preferences and technological advancements (Madura, 2006). From this understanding, the home delivery business has picked up in many business segments such as food delivery, grocery delivery ( and the likes).

Major retail companies in the world, such as Wal-Mart and Tesco, have adopted the home delivery strategy for the supply of their goods and services. Tesco has especially specialized in the delivery of groceries through an online platform where orders are placed virtually. However, the drug market is not similar to the food market, though they share the same business model (home delivery of goods).

Nonetheless, both types of businesses aim to satisfy the same consumer needs. However, for a long time, many businesses have not ventured into the delivery of medications through the home delivery business model because of the sensitive nature of the drug market and the numerous legislations that surround it (Smith, 1991, p. 61).

Conversely, drug users have experienced tedious hassles of having to frequent hospitals and drug stores to buy drugs. This situation has created an environment where there is a lot of time wastage and manpower loss because people could use their time to do other productive things, instead of making frantic trips to hospitals and drug stores to buy basic medications.

Though this environment prevails, the drug market is unique to conventional markets because its end-users are normally not in a perfect physical condition to visit drug stores or hospitals to purchase drugs. Often, most consumers at the tail-end of the drug supply chain are patients who may be ailing from a certain condition, or who are not in the right physical state to drive or walk to drug stores to get their medication.

However, considering the dynamics of the current market, most of such patients have been forced to travel long distances to buy drugs (though their physical conditions may not allow them to do so). Sometimes, some patients have been forced to miss their dosages because they were not in a good position to purchase drugs (Madura, 2006).

Also, considering the fragile nature of sick patients; emergencies (which require a prompt administration of drugs) may turn out to be fatal experiences because patients may be unable to obtain drugs when they need them most.

This situation may be further worsened by a scenario where a patient stays alone and does not have a helper. Moreover, certain drug stores have strict operating hours that are not flexible to patients’ needs. These dynamics form the basis for the venture of Empire home delivery services into the medications supply market.

The success of home delivery businesses thrive on several factors. First, there needs to be a technical infrastructure that supports the ordering and placement of goods (Wysocki, 2010, p. 1). For instance, the earliest home delivery businesses started with the creation of the telecommunications infrastructure where customers ordered for goods by phoning home delivery companies.

Today’s business environment is also characterized by the same model of business but the internet has significantly changed the entire business landscape because most home delivery businesses rely on websites for ordering. This technological platform is cheaper and more effective for today’s home businesses because it is spontaneous, and many homes are currently connected to the internet.

Confirmations for orders may also be placed through the same platform and customers can be guaranteed that their goods will be delivered to their doorsteps. For the success of home delivery businesses to be realized, such technological infrastructures need to be in place.

However, even as Empire Home Delivery service strives to adopt this technological infrastructure, emphasis will be laid on ensuring this platform is secure for payments. A guarantee for secure payments will therefore be sought because payments will have to be made online.

More importantly, research studies show that, customers always prefer a simple and effective payment option for home delivery businesses and Empire intends to live up to this expectation (Wysocki, 2010, p. 1).

The delivery of medication through the home delivery business model is however prone to several legislative guidelines which normal businesses would not experience. The drug market is excessively regulated because it is a sensitive market that touches on human health. Existing drug regulations therefore try to uphold safety standards for the good health of the citizenry.

It is also important to note that, home delivery businesses are likely to infringe on the tight safeguards implemented to observe high safety standards of drugs.

The same situation has also been experienced in the supply of alcohol (through the home delivery model) because critics have observed that, a home-based business model (in the alcohol supply market) is likely to circumnavigate existing regulations which are meant to discourage under-age drinking (Fukumi, 2008, p. 72).

For instance, it would be simple for an underage teenager to order alcohol to his (or her) residence, thereby bypassing the requirement to produce an identification card for alcohol purchasing.

The same principle applies to the drug market because some drugs are considered to be highly addictive and certain consumers may want to abuse them. Such is the situation observed in the sale of prescription drugs because people tend to abuse such drugs for non-medical reasons (Fukumi, 2008, p. 72).

Somewhat, this observation has also been made regarding the use of marijuana because it is recommend for medical use (in certain cases, such as, the treatment of cancer). However, some people have abused such regulatory provisions and consequently ordered marijuana for non-medical use (Fukumi, 2008, p. 72). Considering such dynamics, the home delivery of medications is subject to a lot of regulations.

Nonetheless, these regulations cannot be overlooked. For home delivery businesses (engaged in medical supplies) to succeed, there ought to be a keen compliance to such regulations.

Compliance to such regulations may mean that, some medications may be exempted from the array of products to be delivered because there may not be an existing legislation that governs the distribution of the drugs (in the context of the home delivery business).

The supply of medication through the home delivery model is expected to be done through an online platform. Medications that require a doctor’s prescription will not be sold through this business model. The online sales strategy will be able to transcend the geographical boundaries that conventional drug stores are limited to.

This business model will also be able to capitalize on the opportunities that technology provides the healthcare sector because Empire Home delivery services will be able to market its products to new market bases, which do not fall within the limitations of conventional drug supply systems (Gay, 2007).

Through this online business model, Empire will be able to realize a positive growth projection because drug users will be able to gain access to drugs from the convenience of their homes. There will not be any significant changes to Empire’s product offing because its array of products is strongly limited by existing legislations. Therefore, any product modifications will have to be excluded from the context of this study.

Empire’s marketing strategy will be based on online techniques, where virtual marketing tools such as, e mail listings, promotional advertisements (and the likes) will be used to improve customer loyalty and seek the participation of potential customers (Gay, 2007).

Since Empire home delivery service is a new company, it is crucial to acknowledge that, it will not have the capacity to develop an internal expertise pool that is able to develop a sophisticated technological infrastructure to handle payments, orders, feedbacks, marketing services and the likes.

Consequently, this paper proposes that, such services will be outsourced to an internal market place provider who can design such a technological platform. Though this process will be outsourced, it is crucial to understand that, the technology already exists, and since it has been tested in other home delivery companies, the risks associated with its implementation will be significantly reduced (Gay, 2007, p. 2).

Regardless of the sophistication of its marketing tools, Empire home delivery services still needs to differentiate itself in the market. To do so, Empire should aim to personalize its products and services through the development of new product packaging (Meyerson, 2005, p. 23).

Currently, many medical supply companies operating the home delivery business do not personalize their packaging, and Empire aims to capitalize on this opportunity.

Empire will also adopt an e mailing list to support its online marketing strategy because it will use this platform to send product promotions, sales advertisements and similar marketing tools that complement the company’s marketing strategy. This sale strategy will not be designed to sell medications but rather, to market the company to customers (Meyerson, 2005, p. 23).

Costs will be an integral factor to be considered in the formulation and implementation of Empire’s marketing strategies. Since most of the company’s marketing strategies are electronic, minimal costs are likely to be incurred. The only (relatively) expensive marketing strategy will be the direct mailing strategy.

Nonetheless, in spite of these marketing costs, Empire expects to realize high returns from the same marketing campaigns. However, if an effective marketing strategy is to be realized, the working staff needs to be properly trained. The training costs will be considered as part of the company’s start-up costs.

The market for medications has always existed since the existence of human science. The pharmaceutical industry is perceived to be a lucrative industry of the 21 st century because of the surge in terminal illnesses and increased consumer purchasing power (Fulco, 1995).

For instance, the pharmaceutical industry is known to have low overheads of operation and a high return on investments. The high return on investments has been a common feature of the pharmaceutical industry, for a long time. For instance, among the fortune 500 companies, the pharmaceutical industry was estimated to rake more returns than the combined median of all the existing companies within the category (Fulco, 1995).

For example, during the late 80s period, statistics showed that, new drugs introduced during the period raked in close to $36 million in revenue after tax deductions. This profit margin was estimated to be two to three percent more than what other industries projected, even after considering the risks of researching and developing the new drugs (Fulco, 1995).

The market for home delivery medication is not crowded. However jurisdiction laws seem to affect the extent which independent companies can operate. The most established companies that engage in the trade (delivery of medications) include RX America, and Direct RX (Critser, 2007). Other companies that engage in the trade (delivery of medications) do not specialize in the exclusive delivery of medications.

They include the delivery of other goods such as groceries, meals and the likes. This last group of competitors is not going to be a threat to Empire Home Delivery services because they do not specialize in the delivery of medications (per se). Adopting a simpler and convenient platform for ordering and delivering service is going to be relied on as the main strategy for outperforming the competition.

This strategy will be backed by an online marketing strategy that is expected to increase the customer pool. Empire should ensure its products are distributed to different customer locations from the nearest store location, thereby ensuring timely shipping and the avoidance of bureaucracies and inconveniencies of operating one store.

The operation of several drug locations will be a costly affair (in terms of maintenance and initial setup costs) but considering the future company projections, the establishment of several outlets is still going to be a viable strategy.

Success is expected to be realized from the stocking of adequate inventories and the realization of customer satisfaction because Empire anticipates that repeated purchases and word-of-mouth marketing will sustain the company’s sales.

Empire’s focus on online marketing as its major marketing tool is expected to be independent from the company’s structural makeup. Nonetheless, the company needs to employ more staff if it intends to achieve its objectives (especially regarding customer satisfaction). A staff of 50 people will be appropriate in the early stages of the company’s lifecycle.

The main position to be filled will be the online sales manager, where directions regarding existing (and upcoming) sales opportunities will be formulated. The second (main) position to be filled will be the online marketing manager.

This office is expected to undertake a comprehensive market research that includes the identification of target markets and the identification of workable strategies to satisfy the needs of such target markets. Both positions require a direct reporting to the director of marketing.

The anticipated financial breakdown for setting up Empire home delivery service is explained in the following table.

This table accounts for all aspects of the initial operating and setup costs. However, these costs are subject to several assumptions including a constant store sales projection, and a completion of operating expenses with one year (there should be no balances carried forwards or backdating).

After weighing the findings of this feasibility study, this paper recommends that, Empire should commence business because is stands a good chance of succeeding. This recommendation is based on certain key findings. On the technical front, this paper notes that, Empire should use new technology to minimize the severity of projected operational risks.

Secondly, this paper observes that, though the medical supply market is heavily regulated, there are immense opportunities to exploit the distribution of legal and easily accessible medications. Sensitive prescriptions will therefore not be included in the group of products to be distributed.

This paper also identifies that, the home delivery of medications is not a very competitive market and Empire stands a good chance of succeeding because there is more incentive for investments in this regard.

However, considering the minimal competition that exists in the market, there is a strong need for Empire to differentiate its products and services. Through personalization of the products’ packaging and a sensitive “customer care” framework, Empire will be able to differentiate itself from other market participants.

Through this feasibility study, this paper acknowledges that, an online marketing strategy will be most appropriate for Empire because it poses several advantages to the company. First, the company will be able to reach more people at a minimal cost. Secondly, Empire will be able to gain access to markets that it would otherwise not have accessed using conventional marketing techniques.

Also, through the financial projections table, this paper identifies that; Empire will be able to break-even during its second year of operation. Moreover, from the paper’s financial projections, this paper identifies that; Empire will be able to achieve high market success if it maintains an active in-store and online presence where it can be able to communicate with its customers and amicably deliver medication to them.

Critser, G. (2007). Generation Rx: How Prescription Drugs Are Altering American Lives, Minds, and Bodies. Michigan: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Fukumi, S. (2008). Cocaine Trafficking In Latin America: EU and US Policy Responses . New York: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Fulco, C. (1995). Development of Medications for the Treatment of Opiate And Cocaine Addictions: Issues for the Government and Private Sector . New York: National Academies Press.

Gay, R. (2007). Online Marketing: A Customer-Led Approach . Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Madura, J. (2006). Introduction to Business . London: Cengage Learning.

Meyerson, M. (2005). Success Secrets of the Online Marketing Superstars . New York: Kaplan Publishing.

Smith, M. (1991). Pharmaceutical Marketing: Strategy and Cases . London: Routledge.

Wysocki, R. (2010). Effective Project Management: Traditional, Adaptive, Extreme . London: John Wiley & Sons.

• Developing Global Supply Chain Quality Management Systems
• Integrative Learning Project
• The Roman Empire vs. the Han Empire Compared
• The Ottoman Empire History: the Rise and Fall
• Empire Technology Solutions Company: Principles of Management
• The Operations Management Concept, Its Relevance and Meaning
• Logistics Management in China and West
• Implementation of ERP Systems in Sharjah Airport
• Domination Strategies of Distribution Centric Supply Chain
• Implementing an Enterprise Resource Planning System
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2019, May 15). Home Delivery of Medication. https://ivypanda.com/essays/home-delivery-of-medication-research-paper/

"Home Delivery of Medication." IvyPanda , 15 May 2019, ivypanda.com/essays/home-delivery-of-medication-research-paper/.

IvyPanda . (2019) 'Home Delivery of Medication'. 15 May.

IvyPanda . 2019. "Home Delivery of Medication." May 15, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/home-delivery-of-medication-research-paper/.

1. IvyPanda . "Home Delivery of Medication." May 15, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/home-delivery-of-medication-research-paper/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Home Delivery of Medication." May 15, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/home-delivery-of-medication-research-paper/.

We use cookies to enhance our website for you. Proceed if you agree to this policy or learn more about it.

• Essay Database >
• Essay Examples >
• Essays Topics >
• Essay on Business

What Is The Difference Between Curbside And Ordering Online For Home Delivery Essay Example

Type of paper: Essay

Topic: Business , Grocery , Online , Stores , Products , Haddon , Curbside , Services papers

Published: 05/23/2023

ORDER PAPER LIKE THIS

Business Strategy

Identity ways in which the business models of traditional grocers and Amazon are converging Traditional grocers such as Wal-Mart and Kroger are venturing into online grocery business where Amazon has been operating. On its part, Amazon is planning to build brick-and-mortar convenience stores just like the traditional grocery businesses. All of them will be offering their customers fresh foods for sale with the option of purchasing shelf-stable goods for later delivery (Haddon and Nassauer, 1). The traditional grocers and Amazon are also planning to open sites that offer curbside pickup.

Curbside pick-up entails a shopper selecting the products they wish to buy online and then pick up the products at the curb in the parking lots of the stores from which they bought. Home delivery on the other hand means that the products are ordered online and the seller makes arrangements to deliver the products at the address indicted by the customer.

Describe the changing demographic factors affecting the grocery industry

The rise in the population of millenials who prefer to shop online through mobile gadgets and with increased convenience is pushing more grocery business online. The increment in the number of parents who seek the convenience of not taking children out of car seats and wander into cavernous stores also means more business for the online-related services such as curbside services (Haddon and Nassauer, 3). More people are increasingly getting busier at work and they are choosing to shop for grocery on the way from work and as such they prefer the convenience brought about by online grocery sales such as curbside services.

Review the opportunities for growth in the online grocery business

There is projected growth of the online grocery business due to the technological improvements and the warehouse investments which enable shoppers to select products more precisely such that the deliveries of produce fresher and better tailored (Haddon and Nassauer, 2). There is an increasing number of young people who prefer to shop online and they have pushed projections for the growth of the online grocery industry to 34% in the next 5 years (Haddon and Nassauer, 2). In addition, the invention of curbside services also means more convenience for a greater number of customers and therefore more opportunities for those who want to venture into online grocery business. Stores think shoppers might buy more in stores if there is curbside service. How would this work if shoppers are not going into stores The shoppers can be driving to the stores as they make their purchases online such that as they get to the curbs in the parking lots of the grocery stores, they find their shopping readied for pick up. Since the grocery stores are working to increase the volume of products on the shelves rather than in the backroom they make it easy for employees to fulfill the orders and deliver to the shoppers at curbs with greater efficiency (Haddon and Nassauer, 3).

Discuss the challenges of the potential of expanding curbside service from the perspectives of shoppers and grocery stores

There is increasing competition as nearly all grocery business are choosing to sell online and this creates a challenge on the businesses s they have to keep innovating to overcome the competition. Some analysts claim that it is expensive to sell online and that it is just not enough to have a good application (Haddon and Nassauer, 4). The demand for excellent service at low costs by the customers is a challenge to the online grocers. The customers also face the challenge of not getting the exact quality of products delivered to them at the curb or at home because they do not get to pick up for themselves and put in the shopping basket the actual products they need. The customers have to rely on the trustworthiness of the sellers that they will get quality products delivered in a timely and professional manner. Grocery delivery is challenging because they must be kept cold and the delivery of large orders over tight schedules can be quite challenging.

Works cited

Haddon, Heather and Nassauer Sarah Wal-mart, Kroger strive to counter Amazon’s grocery challenge.

Cite this page

Share with friends using:

Removal Request

Finished papers: 2684

This paper is created by writer with

ID 262846692

If you want your paper to be:

Well-researched, fact-checked, and accurate

Original, fresh, based on current data

Eloquently written and immaculately formatted

275 words = 1 page double-spaced

Get your papers done by pros!

Other Pages

Free corporate finance case study example, good essay about critique of neoclassical economics, good example of alzheimers is divided into three stages mild moderate and severe alzheimers disease research paper, free thesis statement on the proper care of pets and other animals, perfect model research paper on long lasting effect of youth sports in improving social skills controlling negative behavior and enhancing good health, sample literature review on a critical review of the literature evaluating the uptake of, malthus and ricardo the corn laws essays example, good essay about studies, free essay about recycle, free genetically modified plants argumentative essay sample, flawless consulting a top quality essay for your inspiration, a levelcase study on blueprint and strategic priorities for free use, principles of good contract management questions answers example, good example of essay on criminal justice, free why the united states has not adopted international financial reporting standards essay sample, learn to craft reports on ethical and socially responsive business the case of ruby tuesday with this example, good example of essay on science fiction 2, global communication free sample research paper to follow, free critical thinking on colomina, good essay about academic setting, good example of essay on doctor patient relationship, learn to craft essays on my generation with this example, human development essay template for faster writing, oedipus argumentative essay template for faster writing, professors name research paper examples, free research paper on substance use disorder testing instruments, women in the us military book review to use for practical writing help, expertly crafted essay on language and identity in embassytown, expertly crafted case study on tesla motors strategy to revolutionize the global automotive industry, leadership application exercise 2 essay samples, free programming assignment on additional sample data for customer table, strategic organization report type to use as a writing model, example of this is a post of the social work class swu171 essay, example of threat and risk analysis research paper, leadership and compliments essays example, the death penalty and civil liberties in america argumentative essay template for faster writing, green human resource management report you might want to emulate, effective questioning type to use as a writing model, automotive innovations literature reviews examples, theorist florence nightingale nursing conceptual model environmental theory question answer, research questions research proposals example, proper personal statement example about statement of purpose.

Password recovery email has been sent to [email protected]

Use your new password to log in

You are not register!

By clicking Register, you agree to our Terms of Service and that you have read our Privacy Policy .

Now you can download documents directly to your device!

Check your email! An email with your password has already been sent to you! Now you can download documents directly to your device.

or Use the QR code to Save this Paper to Your Phone

The sample is NOT original!

Short on a deadline?

Don't waste time. Get help with 11% off using code - GETWOWED

No, thanks! I'm fine with missing my deadline

Academic writing service that has your back

EssayPro will help you with any task, always.

Our professional team knows what you need and how to help you achieve greatness. Trust your assignments to us today.

Trusted by 1,5M+ happy customers

Meet our team of professionals

Academic writers with years of experience are here to make your life easier and your school performance better.

A time-tested academic writing service

We know what you need and are here for you. Let us make you feel safe.

Your instructions are our law

Individual approach to every order is an EssayPro guarantee. You can trust us with the most ambiguous instructions, and we will still deliver a perfect paper.

Thousands of experts

Our team of writers will help you with any task. Each one has at least three years of practice in academic writing and real-world experience in their field.

Originality is a non-negotiable

Delivering unique papers is a must for us. Every paper goes through a Turnitin-based plagiarism checker. Claim your free originality report to confirm.

Privacy & confidentiality

You don’t have to give us any personal information except your email. Stay completely anonymous if you wish. No private data is shared with third parties.

Three easy steps to claim your perfect paper

Step 1: sign up.

Sign in or register to place your order. Give us your instructions and pay the deposit.

Step 2: Pick your expert

Writers will start bidding on your order. Choose the right expert by comparing their qualifications

Step 3: Get your paper

After receiving an email notification, read your paper and confirm receipt. Ask for revision if necessary

Read customers’ testimonials to see why they choose us

There are many academic writing services to choose from. Here’s why people choose ours:

Frequently asked questions

Is it legal to use academic writing services, do your academic writers provide original work, what exactly can you help me with, is there a way to talk to my writer, what makes academic writing so complicated.

Academic writing is not supposed to be easy. It’s a way of assessing students’ knowledge, skills and comprehension of the topic, so it’s meant to be challenging. However, for many students, it’s more than what they can handle. This is why getting academic writing help is not just for emergency situations. For many learners, it’s a lifeline that allows them to have a full life.

Finding a reputable academic writing company that can be on standby to help you solve your troubles is a great way to stay on top of your classes. Whether you need research papers writing help or assistance with essay writing, finding a team of experts is paramount. To ensure that the company is trustworthy, read their reviews on third-party websites, look at what payment options they offer and see if they have a refund option. A good, reputable service will always work with trusted, well-known payment services and will take accountability for their actions. If anything goes wrong, you need to know you will be able to get a refund. This is your safety net.

Studying is never easy, but with a reliable academic help service by your side, it can be more than doable.

Why use EssayPro for help with studying

There are countless companies that provide academic writing services these days. But, unfortunately, you can’t trust them all. Some companies will overcharge you for a mediocre product, and some will just take your money never to be seen again. Luckily for you, though, EssayPro is one of the best service providers out there. And we will tell you why in just a moment.

First of all, our team of professional academic writers is outstanding. All our writers are native English speakers with proven academic writing experience. In addition to that, they are always online and can take care of your every need.

Our prices might look too low compared to other services, but that doesn’t mean we sacrifice on quality. We’ve come up with a system that allows us to keep our prices competitive while providing exceptional quality of service.

At EssayPro, you can get premium experience for an economy price. We provide lots of features, like Plagiarism report, premium writers and formatting for free of charge.

We follow a customer-first approach in every detail of our operation. Our refund policies are written with you in mind. These are just a few reasons why you should choose EssayPro for your next writing project.

• All Wellness
• All Skin Care
• Moisturizers
• Mineral Sunscreens
• Sunscreens for Kids
• Sunscreens for Dark Skin
• SPF Lip Balms
• Under Eye Patches
• All Hair Care
• Purple Shampoos
• Thinning Hair
• Head Shavers
• Hair Dryers
• All Oral Care
• Electric Toothbrushes
• Toothpastes
• Mouthwashes
• Water Flossers
• Meal Kit Delivery
• Gluten-Free Meal Kit Delivery
• Disposable Face Masks
• Air Purifiers
• Eco-Friendly Laundry Detergents
• Natural Deodorants
• Period Underwear
• All Fitness
• Exercise Bikes
• Walking Shoes
• Fitness Trackers
• Reusable Water Bottles
• Blackout Curtains
• Sound Machines
• Home & Kitchen
• All Home & Kitchen
• Kitchen Appliances & Tools
• All Kitchen Appliances & Tools
• Coffee Makers
• Kitchen Gadgets
• Small Home Appliances
• All Small Home Appliances
• Air Conditioners
• Space Heaters
• Humidifiers
• Bedding & Bath
• All Bedding & Bath
• Bath Towels
• Silk Pillowcases
• Duvet Inserts
• Office Chairs
• Standing Desks
• Desk Organizers
• Seat Cushions
• Under Desk Ellipticals
• All Outdoor
• Raised Garden Boxes
• Garden Hoses
• Beach Towels
• Solar Pool Covers
• Grilling Accessories
• Electronics
• All Electronics
• Wifi Routers
• Gaming Consoles
• Streaming Devices
• Instant Cameras
• Handheld Gaming Consoles
• 3D Printers
• All Headphones
• Noise Canceling
• Wireless Earbuds
• Smart Gadgets
• All Smart Gadgets
• Smart Watches
• Smart Bulbs
• Garage Door Openers
• All Computers
• Gaming Laptops
• Laptops for College Students
• Computer Monitors
• Ergonomic Keyboards
• Dog Carriers
• Litter Boxes
• Scratching Posts
• Cat Carriers
• All Pet Care
• Nail Clippers
• Flea & Tick
• All Luggage
• Lightweight
• Weekender Bags
• Accessories
• All Accessories
• Luggage Tags
• Travel Pillows
• Tech Gadgets
• Packing & Organization
• All Packing & Organization
• Packing Cubes
• Toiletry Bags
• Gift Guides
• All Gift Guides
• Valentine's Day
• All Valentine's Day
• For Any Loved Ones
• Mother's Day
• All Mother's Day
• Last Minute Gifts
• Best Mother's Day Gifts
• For Moms Who Have Everything
• Best from Amazon
• All Graduation
• For College Grads
• For High School Grads
• For Teachers
• Father's Day
• All Father's Day
• Best Father's Day Gifts
• For Dads Who Love Fishing
• Holiday Season & Christmas
• All Holiday Season & Christmas
• Gifts Under $25
• Practical Gifts
• Other occasions & loved ones
• All Other occasions & loved ones
• For Grandparents
• For Bridal Shower
• For New Parents
• For Any Occasion
• Deals & Sales
• All Deals & Sales
• Most Popular This Month
• Sales This Week
• New & Notable
• What to Buy This Month
• CNBC Select
• All CNBC Select
• Credit Cards
• Small Business
• Personal Finance
• Credit Monitoring
• Help for Low Credit Scores
• Sign up for the Select Newsletter
• Check out Shop TODAY
• Privacy Policy
• Do Not Sell My Personal Information
• Terms Of Service
• NBC News Sitemap

Follow Select

9 best prepared meal delivery services in 2024, according to our editors

After a long, busy day, cooking dinner is the last thing you want to think about. Prepared meal delivery services take the guesswork out of that daily chore with a range of low-effort, ready-to-eat meals that you can pop into your oven or microwave. Unlike meal kits, which come with individual ingredients you prepare and cook yourself, pre-made meal services can save a lot of time. They also come with unique and customizable food options to fit your personal preferences — including serving size and protein amount — while catering to dietary restrictions like gluten-free , vegetarian and low-carb.

I have tried and written about meal delivery services for the past two years. I connected with chefs and nutritionists about their favorite prepared meal delivery services and compiled a list of their recommendations below, along with services NBC Select editors use and love. Pricing, serving size and plan details are also included with each option.

SKIP AHEAD How I picked the best prepared meal delivery services | Best prepared meal delivery services | Why trust NBC Select?

Selected. Our top picks

How I picked the best prepared meal delivery services

I talked to our experts about what to consider when shopping for prepared meal delivery services. Here are the most important factors they say to keep in mind:

• Serving size: If you’re only feeding yourself, a single-serve prepared meal service is a great option. However, if you’re feeding a family or partner, you may want a meal kit plan that consists of multiple serving sizes (typically ranging from two to eight servings), instead.
• Dietary restrictions: If you’re gluten-free, vegetarian, vegan or follow any other specific type of diet, scan the service’s weekly menu to confirm that it has options to fit those dietary needs.
• Pricing: The price of meal kit delivery services are based on the quantity of meals you get per week and the quality of ingredients and recipes. More budget-friendly services might not cater to all dietary restrictions or needs, while diet- and lifestyle-specific options typically cost more.
• Delivery dates and times: Consider when you’re available to receive your meals to ensure they don’t go to waste. Most services will offer customizable delivery plans to choose what days you want to receive your weekly delivery.

select Change up your dinner plans with the best meal delivery services

Best prepared meal delivery services of 2024.

I talked to experts about their favorite prepared meal delivery services and highlighted their recommendations below across budgets and diets, including  gluten-free ,  vegetarian and vegan . All the meal delivery services below offer single-serve ,  ready-to-eat meals. Some also offer additional meal kit options.

Best variety: CookUnity

Price is based on eight meals per week.

• Great for many dietary needs
• Reusable packaging
• Varied plans
• May need extra prep work

Cookunity has multiple plans depending on how many meals you want to receive, with subscriptions ranging from four to 16 meals per week. You can make your selections from a rotating menu of ready-to-eat options each week or have them picked for you based on your preferences, including your choices of protein and any dietary restrictions like vegetarian, vegan, low-carb and gluten-free.

“The convenience is unbeatable — it also offers a ton of gluten-free and pescatarian options, so I didn’t feel limited by the menu at all,” says NBC Select associate updates editor Zoe Malin . However, Malin did have to take out a few components of meals before microwaving them, like a kale salad or coleslaw, which was tricky and caused her to do more dishes (normally, she would reheat and eat meals out of the same disposable containers they came in). “This didn’t take away from eating the meal, but it did make prep more involved — if I was in a rush or wanted to heat something up at the office, it would be frustrating,” says Malin.

Cookunity is also a favorite of NBC Select SEO editor Nikki Brown , who loves browsing and picking her meals each week. “It feels like grocery shopping, except I don’t have to push a cart or carry bags,” she says. There’s something for every type of diet, and the vegan and vegetarian options are hearty and filling, according to Brown. The meals are also easy to prepare: “All I have to do is remove the film and pop it into the oven for 15-30 minutes, depending on what it is,” says Brown.

You can flag any allergies or foods you don’t like, and the service will notify you if they appear in any meals on the menu. “I appreciate that they provide full ingredient lists, down to the individual ingredients in cheeses,” says Ariane Resnick , a special diet chef and certified nutritionist. The meals come in a reusable bag that you can send back to the company instead of having to break down boxes every week. The meals are fresh and have a refrigerated shelf life of about four to seven days, according to Cookunity.

Cost: Starting at $11 per meal with free shipping | Number of meals: 4 to 16 meals per week

Best overall: Factor

Price is based on 10 meals per week.

• Quick and easy
• Seamless delivery
• Choice of 5 plans
• Options can get overwhelming

Get $130 off, plus free wellness shots for life with code NBCSELECT130 through Factor’s website .

Factor has a weekly rotating menu of over 30 prepared meals designed by dietitians. Lisa Young , an adjunct professor of nutrition at New York University, recommends this service because it caters to a number of diets and dietary needs, including keto, paleo, low-carb, vegetarian, plant-based and high-protein. You can choose from five plans, ranging from four meals per week up to 18 meals per week.

I tried Factor after the brand sent me a few boxes, and I found the meals to be both delicious and convenient — after a long day at work, I simply popped them into the oven and they were ready to eat in less than 10 minutes. Though they don’t look the prettiest in their container , the meals are tasty and varied, which made me excited to eat dinner at the end of the day. I’m also someone who struggles with portion control, so these single-serve meals are satisfying and help me avoid that uncomfortably full feeling.

Our experts also like that the service has a great price point for the quality of meals: “Factor is incredibly reasonably priced for the quality of health-oriented food they offer,” says Resnick.

Cost: Starting at $13 per serving with free shipping | Number of meals: 6 to 18 per week

Best for most dietary restrictions: BistroMD

Price is based on 20 meals per week.

• Meets most dietary needs
• Snacks available
• High shipping cost
• Only two plans

BistroMD is a single-serve, individualized plan, so this may not be a good option if you’re looking to feed a family or yourself and a partner. It lets you choose from over 150 chef-prepared meals based on your dietary needs. Lisa Moskovitz, a registered dietitian and CEO of NY Nutrition Group , recommends this service because it has various health-conscious plans — you can pick from five different programs: signature, gluten-free, heart healthy, diabetic and menopause. Each week, you’ll be able to customize which meals you receive.

The service also has an EATS (Essential And Tasty Snacks) program that provides healthy snacking options for either five or seven days for an additional charge, as well as a Men’s Snack Program that costs an additional $53 for three snacks a day for seven days, and a Women’s Snack Program that costs an additional $35 for two snacks daily for seven days.

Cost: Starting at $7 per meal for the 7-day plan and $8 per meal for the 5-day plan, with an additional $20 for shipping | Number of meals: 5 or 7 meals for breakfast, lunch and dinner per week

Best for families: Home Chef

Price is based on four meals per week for two people/servings.

• Customizable
• Great for multi-servings
• Personalized menu
• Limited pre-made options
• Combined with meal kits

Home Chef’s weekly rotating menu has a Fast & Fresh section with multiple microwave-ready meals, as well as oven-ready meals that lets you throw pre-chopped ingredients in a pan and heat them up with minimal prep and clean up, according to the service. Keep in mind that Home Chef is first and foremost a meal kit delivery service, which means its prepared meal options — which the service calls its fast and fresh plan — are limited each week: Within its weekly menu of more than 30 meals to choose from, Home Chef will offer about 10 prepared options. However, it’s great for families who hope to rotate their meal kits with oven- and microwave-ready meals to cut down on cooking time each week, according to our experts. The service also has a family plan with 4-serving oven-ready meals. 

Before ordering, you’ll be prompted to take a quiz that personalizes your menu based on your taste, serving size and delivery preferences. When looking at individual menu options, each meal shows the estimated time it takes to heat up. Home Chef also lets you customize the type and amount of protein you want in each meal (including low-calorie and vegetarian options), which makes it a great option for people who want variety or those with certain dietary restrictions, says Ben Leonard , chef and culinary manager for GreenPan. With that said, it may not be the best option for people who are indecisive or picky eaters, says Leonard.

Cost : Starting at $10 per meal, with a minimum weekly order value of $51 (Home Chef Plan) or $83 (Family Plan) | Number of meals : 2 to 6 meals per week

Best vegan: Purple Carrot

Purple Carrot

Price is based on eight meals per week for one person/serving.

• Meal kits available
• Great for plant-based diets
• All plant-based
• Can’t choose delivery date

Purple Carrot has prepared meals (as well as meal kits), which are plant-based and include several gluten-free options. “Because it’s fully plant-based, Purple Carrot is an easy way for people to add more plant foods into their diets without having to fully convert to veganism,” says Resnick. She called the meals a perfect mix of “familiar and innovative,” with options like kimchi grilled cheese and Baklava overnight oats.

Best gluten-free: Sunbasket

• Great for multiple diets
• Not for larger families

Sunbasket has seasonal-ingredient focused meals made for those who follow specific diets like gluten-free, paleo and diabetes-friendly. On its weekly rotating menu, Sunbasket has around 10 single-serve meals, which the service calls its fresh and ready plan, that you can heat in the oven or microwave and add to your order each week. If you don’t feel like committing to prepared meals, you can mix and match with over a dozen meal kits from its menu, giving you options for days you want to cook, as well as those sporadically busy days when you just don’t have time. Each meal indicates whether it accommodates certain dietary restrictions, including gluten-free, soy-free, pescatarian and vegetarian.

Malin tried Sunbasket for a week and became a huge fan of the service. “There were almost too many delicious dishes to choose from, and each one I tried came with an easy to follow recipe — I loved that some of them also prompted me to cook with ingredients I don’t normally buy,” she says. "And don’t sleep on the fresh and ready meals: They taste like homemade meals, but all you do is warm them up in the microwave.”

These pre-made meals don’t come frozen, but you can freeze most of them to cook later (the ones that can be frozen have specific cooking instructions on them).

Cost: Starting at $10 per meal with $6 shipping | Number of meals: 2 to 5 per week

Best prepared and meal kit combo: Blue Apron

Price is based on four single-serve prepared meals per week.

• Great variety of meals
• Not for large families
• Not for certain dietary needs
• Lacks some variety

Blue Apron joined the prepared meal delivery scene earlier this year with its Prepared & Ready plan and now has over 30 single-serve meals on its rotating weekly menu. These meals heat up in the microwave in under five minutes, and they come in one tray that you can recycle afterward. You can also combine prepared and meal kit plans by adding the pre-made meals to your meal kit orders as add-ons each week. 

I tried Blue Apron’s prepared meals for two weeks and was impressed by how tasty they were, in addition to being super quick and easy to heat up when I’m feeling too lazy to cook. The options are also fairly varied each week (though you will find a lot of pastas on the menu, which can be a con for some), and I found the portions to be just right for myself. However, the meals do not come with sides, so it may be lacking in variety. Any foods that can be considered as sides, like veggies, are mixed into the meals rather than portioned off (like you would find in most other prepared meal services).

Cost: Starting at $10 per meal | Number of meals: 4 to 10 per week

Best for healthy eaters: Splendid Spoon

Splendid Spoon

Price is based on 14 meals per week.

• Healthier options
• Choose delivery frequency
• Can’t choose number of meals

Splendid Spoon has over 50 healthy ready-made and gluten-free meals and snacks, including smoothies, soups, noodle bowls and dishes. You can choose one of three plans, including a seven-, 14- or 21-meal plan per week (and you can add more meals at an additional cost). The service recommends freezing the food upon unpacking, which it says makes the meals last one to three months. “They taste as healthy as they are, which is a downside for some and a bonus for others,” says Resnick, who was sent a few boxes by the brand to try out.

While you can’t customize the number of meals you get per plan, Splendid Spoon does let you choose how often you want to receive your meals: weekly, every other week or once a month. 

Cost: Starting at $10 per meal and $85 for the plan, with an additional $13 for shipping (free if you order 10 or more meals) | Number of meals: 7, 14 or 21 per order

Malin tried Purple Carrot after the brand sent her a few pre-made options, and she loved the convenience and taste of the meals. "When it comes to prepared vegetarian and vegan meals, I often find that they’re either bland or overly seasoned to make up for the fact that they’re boring. But Purple Carrot’s were genuinely delicious," says Malin, who took the microwavable meals to work. "The pre-filled tray fit in my lunch box and I looked forward to eating it halfway through the day."

You can customize the number of meals you get per week, ranging from six to 10 frozen meals. Deliveries take place on Mondays, Tuesdays or Wednesdays depending on your shipping location, and you can choose to skip a delivery on any given week.

Cost: Starting at $13 per serving for pre-made meals with free shipping | Number of meals: 6 to 10 for prepared meals per week

Best for sensitive stomachs: Epicured

• Good for digestion issues
• Breakfast and dessert options
• Higher price point

Epicured’s meals are all gluten-free and low-FODMAP, which means they don’t have certain carbohydrates and food additives that can be hard for some people to digest, according to the service. This makes Epicured a great option for those with small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO), irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) or a generally sensitive stomach, says Moskovitz. It has a rotating menu of over 50 prepared foods spanning breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks and desserts. You can filter the menu by diet, including gluten-free, pescatarian, vegetarian and vegan — each diet has a “menu cycle,” which means it rotates every few weeks. Once you choose your meals and register, each weekly order is automatically renewed (if you don’t manually pick your meals, last week’s meals will be sent again).

Cost : Starting at around $15 per meal with free shipping for orders over $100 (the shipping cost for orders under $100 depends on the delivery location) | Number of meals : As many as you want

Meet our experts

At NBC Select, we work with experts who have specialized knowledge and authority based on relevant training and/or experience. We also take steps to ensure that all expert advice and recommendations are made independently and with no undisclosed financial conflicts of interest.

• Lisa Young is an adjunct professor of nutrition at New York University and a private practice nutritionist.
• Ariane Resnick is a special diet chef and certified nutritionist. She’s also a recipe developer and has written about nutrition, health, wellness and identity for a variety of platforms, including The Kitchn, Livestrong and Simply Recipes.
• Lisa Moskovitz is a registered dietitian and the CEO of NY Nutrition Group . She is the author of “The Core 3 Healthy Eating Plan,” a program that focuses on simple and sustainable ways to lose weight.
• Ben Leonard is a chef and educator for companies and brands nationwide, including Sur La Table, Greenpan and more.
• Abby K. Cannon is a dietitian and founder of food blog Abby’s Food Court .

Why trust NBC Select?

I am an updates editor at NBC Select who has extensive experience covering meal delivery services, including gluten-free and vegetarian options. For this article, I spoke to six experts about what to consider when shopping for a meal delivery service and how to determine the best one for you. They also shared their favorite meal delivery services to try out.

Catch up on NBC Select’s in-depth coverage of personal finance , tech and tools , wellness and more, and follow us on Facebook , Instagram , Twitter and TikTok to stay up to date.

Mili Godio is an updates editor for Select on NBC News.

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

Guest Essay

A Bat Flew Into My Bedroom and Reminded Me of All We Take for Granted

By Belle Boggs

Ms. Boggs is the author of “The Art of Waiting: On Fertility, Medicine and Motherhood” and other books.

One night a few weeks ago I went to bed early, bothered by the oppressive heat and dismayed by that week’s political news — President Biden’s lackluster ABC News interview and Donald Trump’s claim earlier that day that he knew “nothing” about Project 2025 . I was tired, too, from explaining the recent daily news broadcasts to my two daughters — one 6 and the other one 10 — including what the phrases “hush money” and “porn star” meant. My husband stayed up working, and very early the next morning a bat flew into our bedroom, through a screen door left open by accident. What happened over the next few days restored my faith in the systems in our country that keep us safe.

“Bat!” I told my husband, sleeping beside me. Though it was still dark, the thick flapping was unmistakably the sound of Earth’s only flying mammal.

“It’s one thing after another,” my husband said, clambering out of bed to grab something to catch it with.

This happened to us before, about five years ago, which is when we learned about the need to isolate and trap any bat that invades our sleeping space for rabies testing. Though bats are beneficial insectivores, they’re also our highest risk for contracting rabies, a fatal disease carried by about 6 percent of bats tested in the continental United States.

We isolated the bat in our bedroom, making sure it couldn’t get upstairs where our daughters sleep, but it escaped through the door to the porch. To decide what to do next, we consulted every resource. Richard, my husband, read the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website. I called our health care after-hours line and spoke to a nurse who also consulted the C.D.C. We called our county’s animal control center, and an officer was at our house within 10 minutes. He searched the house and garage for bats, found none and put in a report to our county’s public health department.

“How deep a sleeper are you?” the county health nurse asked Richard when she called us on the next evening. She was assessing our risk of being bitten or scratched while we slept.

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and  log into  your Times account, or  subscribe  for all of The Times.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber?  Log in .

Want all of The Times?  Subscribe .

An official website of the United States government

Here’s how you know

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

• Report Fraud
• Read Consumer Alerts
• Get Consumer Alerts
• Visit ftc.gov

View all Consumer Alerts

Credit, Loans, and Debt

Learn about getting and using credit, borrowing money, and managing debt.

View Credit, Loans, and Debt

Jobs and Making Money

What to know when you're looking for a job or more education, or considering a money-making opportunity or investment.

View Jobs and Making Money

Unwanted Calls, Emails, and Texts

What to do about unwanted calls, emails, and text messages that can be annoying, might be illegal, and are probably scams.

View Unwanted Calls, Emails, and Texts

Identity Theft and Online Security

How to protect your personal information and privacy, stay safe online, and help your kids do the same.

View Identity Theft and Online Security

• Search Show/hide Search menu items Items per page 20 50 100 Filters Fulltext search

Free COVID test kits are back: Here’s how to get yours

Starting November 20, every U.S. household can again place an order to receive four more free COVID-19 rapid tests delivered directly to their home. If you didn’t order tests since the program reopened in September, the site will let you place two orders for a total of eight tests. Order your test kits through  COVID.gov . Orders will ship free starting the week of November 27, 2023.

The kits will include  instructions on how to verify extended expiration dates . Many kits have had their expiration dates extended beyond what may be printed on the packaging.

You don’t have to pay for shipping, and you’ll never be asked for a credit card or bank account number. You only need to give a name and shipping address. If you’d like an email confirmation and delivery updates from the U.S. Postal Service, you can submit your email address. Anyone who asks for more information than that is a scammer. So, remember:

• Only go to COVID.gov  to order your free test kits from the federal government. When you click to order, you’ll be redirected to  special.usps.com/testkits . If you’re following a link from a news story, double-check the URL that shows in your browser’s address bar.
• No one will call, text, or email you from the federal government to ask for your information to “help” you order free kits. Don’t give out your credit card, bank account, or Social Security number. Do not respond. Instead, report it to the FTC at  ReportFraud.ftc.gov .

This blog, originally posted on September 25, 2023, has been updated to reflect the extension of free COVID test kits through  COVID.gov .  

Read Our Privacy Act Statement

It is your choice whether to submit a comment. If you do, you must create a user name, or we will not post your comment. The Federal Trade Commission Act authorizes this information collection for purposes of managing online comments. Comments and user names are part of the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) public records system, and user names also are part of the FTC’s  computer user records  system. We may routinely use these records as described in the FTC’s  Privacy Act system notices . For more information on how the FTC handles information that we collect, please read our privacy policy .

Read Our Comment Policy

The purpose of this blog and its comments section is to inform readers about Federal Trade Commission activity, and share information to help them avoid, report, and recover from fraud, scams, and bad business practices. Your thoughts, ideas, and concerns are welcome, and we encourage comments. But keep in mind, this is a moderated blog. We review all comments before they are posted, and we won’t post comments that don’t comply with our commenting policy. We expect commenters to treat each other and the blog writers with respect.

• We won’t post off-topic comments, repeated identical comments, or comments that include sales pitches or promotions.
• We won’t post comments that include vulgar messages, personal attacks by name, or offensive terms that target specific people or groups.
• We won’t post threats, defamatory statements, or suggestions or encouragement of illegal activity.
• We won’t post comments that include personal information, like Social Security numbers, account numbers, home addresses, and email addresses. To file a detailed report about a scam, go to ReportFraud.ftc.gov.

We don't edit comments to remove objectionable content, so please ensure that your comment contains none of the above. The comments posted on this blog become part of the public domain. To protect your privacy and the privacy of other people, please do not include personal information. Opinions in comments that appear in this blog belong to the individuals who expressed them. They do not belong to or represent views of the Federal Trade Commission.

Thanks for helping us stay safe!!

In reply to Thanks for helping us stay… by Estelle Lumer

In reply to positive by Margaret Dyer

My husband and I would like to have the new Covid vaccine. What should we do?

In reply to My husband and I would like… by Carol Cardon

Free covid tests

In reply to Free covid tests by Margo Xidis

This is for Covid testing

Free covid Test

In reply to Free covid Test by Kim Frye

I need some tested

In reply to I need some tested by Sandra kelly

Need some tested

In reply to Need some tested by Sandra kelly

I have heart issues and my son was around someone who has covid. I can't get him to the Dr right away.

I would like free COVID test kits for I was diagnosed on December 19,2023

I just got over covid used all my free test

Need COVID test

Free Covid test

I need Covid tests

Looking for free covid tests

Husband isn’t feeling well and has symptoms. I have a the new shots

Free Covid home tests

In reply to Free Covid home tests by CYNTHIA L Monroe

I am 79 years old and asking for free at home covid testers

I need tests

I would love free COVID home test

In reply to Free covid tests by Jose Medellin

I would like the free Covid test kits

In reply to I would like the free Covid… by Pearl vernon

I would like some free tests please.

In reply to I would like some free tests… by Candy Hazen

I would like some free Covid test kits.

In reply to I would like some free Covid… by James Gailey

I need2 covid tests

We are in need of 4 Covid test

In reply to We are in need of 4 Covid… by Melba Hill

In need of covid tests for home

I like to have covid test please

I would like some free covid tests to take on a trip.

My husband and I would like free Covid test kits

I would like the free COVID tests

please send me free covid test kits

Schedule a new Covid vaccine at your local drug store chain online. I got mine at CVS.

In reply to Schedule a new Covid vaccine… by Trisha Szymanski

Glad to hear that Trish!

See your pharmacist. They should be able to give you your vaccines, flu, covid and possibly RSV.

Go to your pharmacy ?

Just find out who has the vaccine you want here: https://www.vaccines.gov/ . Your insurance ought to cover it.

I would like to have the Free Covid Testing Kit

In reply to I would like to have the… by Peter M Smith

I would free Covid Test

Bee exposed to COVID

Need to see if I have covid

I need to test. I have symptoms of covid

Go get it done if u need to and to be safe

You can ask your healthcare provider or any pharmacy will offer them as well. Hope this helps

Would like some new covid tests

I would like new Covid tests

As senior citizens we would like a free covid test.

Carol, I get mine from the county health dept where you don't have to pay.

• Election 2024
• Entertainment
• Newsletters
• Photography
• AP Buyline Personal Finance
• AP Buyline Shopping
• Press Releases
• Israel-Hamas War
• Russia-Ukraine War
• Global elections
• Asia Pacific
• Latin America
• Middle East
• Delegate Tracker
• AP & Elections
• 2024 Paris Olympic Games
• Auto Racing
• Movie reviews
• Book reviews
• Financial Markets
• Business Highlights
• Financial wellness
• Artificial Intelligence
• Social Media

911 operator calmly walks expectant mom through a surprise at-home delivery

A frantic 911 call captured a mother suddenly going into labor at home in Nashville, Tennessee. 911 operator Kaitlyn Kramer’s calm voice coached the bystanders and mother through a successful delivery of a healthy baby boy. (AP video: Kristin M. Hall)

This image provided by the Nashville Department of Emergency Communications of Emergency, show dispatcher Kaitlyn Kramer, who helped a mother over the phone as she gave birth at home after suddenly going into labor on July 7, 2024. (Nashville Department of Emergency Communications of Emergency via AP)

• Copy Link copied

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — When a 911 call came in saying a woman in Nashville was experiencing sudden labor, emergency operator Kaitlyn Kramer says her training kicked in as she successfully coached the expectant mom and bystanders through delivering a healthy baby boy.

Audio of the July 7 call reveals Kramer’s calm voice guiding the process even as the voices on the other end grew frantic as the mother’s water broke and the baby’s head started crowning.

Kramer is a training officer for Nashville’s Department of Emergency Communications .

“Whatever the call comes in, you have to be able to maintain control,” Kramer said, adding that she had to remember to stay calm herself.

“We’re going to do this together,” Kramer told a friend of the mother’s over the phone. Moments later, the caller is yelling with excitement that the baby arrived but mentioned that the cord was wrapped around his neck.

Kramer said the bystanders were able to free the baby and soon enough, Kramer could hear his first wails over the phone.

“When I think of a baby being first born, the biggest thing for me is I want to hear them cry,” said Kramer. “And he did that on his own.”

The whole call lasted about eight minutes before the ambulance arrived and Kramer got to congratulate the mother and bystanders on a job well done. The family did not respond to a request for an interview.

“I think my favorite part about this whole situation was there was also another younger child in the room, maybe between the ages of seven and 10 years old,” Kramer said “She started talking to the baby, welcoming him to the world. And that absolutely just melted my heart.”

Kramer said this is the second time she has helped during a delivery over the 911 hotline.

“We get a lot of sad here. Our job is hard,” Kramer said. “This is one of the reasons that remind me that what I do is important ... it just it makes me happy to do what I do.”

What are you looking for?

Most popular topics.

• Sustainable aviation fuel (SAF)

07 August 2024

Cathay group orders the a330neo.

Toulouse, 7 August 2024 - Hong Kong’s Cathay Group has placed a firm order with Airbus for 30 A330-900 widebody aircraft. The order follows a thorough evaluation by the airline under its mid-size widebody fleet renewal programme.

The newly-ordered aircraft will enable Cathay to modernise its earlier generation A330-300 fleet and expand its operations on high capacity regional routes. The aircraft will also offer flexibility to serve longer range destinations. As with all A330neo aircraft, the fleet will be powered by the latest generation Rolls-Royce Trent 7000 engines.

Ronald Lam, Cathay Group Chief Executive Officer said: “As Cathay completes the final stretch of its rebuilding journey, we are turning the page to modernisation and growth, both in terms of scope and quality. We are delighted to announce this new order for state-of-the-art A330neo aircraft. This substantial investment reflects not only our immense confidence in Hong Kong’s leading international aviation hub status, but also represents our commitment to fostering our home city’s ongoing development.”

“The A330 is an aircraft type that has been serving Cathay Pacific well for nearly 30 years. These new aircraft will principally serve our regional destinations in Asia, while also providing the flexibility to serve longer-haul destinations as required. The improved fuel efficiency of these A330neos, together with their high standards of comfort, will enable us to further elevate the experience we provide for our customers while also contributing towards our goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.”

Christian Scherer, Airbus Chief Executive Officer, Commercial Aircraft said: "This latest order from Cathay, one of the world’s most experienced A330 operators, is a major endorsement of the latest generation A330neo. It is the natural successor for existing A330 fleets, bringing the highest levels of technical and operational commonality, and significant reductions in fuel consumption and carbon emissions. In addition, the award-winning Airspace cabin provides a whole new flight experience.”

“At Cathay, the A330neo will become the backbone of its regional widebody operations, with the versatility to operate on longer routes. Together with its A320 Family and A350 fleets, the airline will be able to take full benefit from the unique synergies of the latest generation Airbus product line.”

The A330-900 is capable of flying 7,200 nm / 13,330 km non-stop and features the award-winning Airspace cabin, offering a superior flight experience. As with all Airbus aircraft, the A330neo is already able to operate with up to 50% Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF), with the aim to increase this to 100% by 2030.

At the end of July, the A330 Family had won 1,805 firm orders from more than 130 customers worldwide, with 1,469 aircraft in service on long, medium and short haul routes around the world.

@Airbus @CathayPacific #A330neo #A330-900

Your contact

Communications - Airbus Asia-Pacific

Justin Dubon

External Communications - Commercial Aircraft

Airbus Press releases

Register to receive Airbus' latest press releases

Cathay orders 30 A330neo

Pdf 430.22 KB

Cathay Pacific A330neo rendering

Jpg 1.85 MB

• Cathay Pacific
• Cathay Group

Discover more news

French A400M in Pitch Black: flying a few feet off the ground

Pacific Skies 24: How Airbus serves air forces around the world

Croatia Airlines takes delivery of its first A220 in new livery

Tom Cruise performs 'epic stunt' at Olympics closing ceremony

The Olympics closing ceremonies have always served as a nice sendoff for one of the world's biggest sporting events. However, this year's formalities had something extra special on display as well: Tom Cruise.

Earlier this week, it was reported that the legendary actor and stuntman would be performing an "epic stunt" as part of the closing ceremonies.

According to reports , Cruise would rappel into Paris' Stade de France , during the closing ceremonies. That would be followed by a pre-recorded video of Cruise skydiving onto the Hollywood sign in Los Angeles. That report is accurate now in hindsight.

Cruise, 62, is known for taking stunts to the next level, and given that Los Angeles will be hosting the 2028 Olympics , it was assumed that someone representing the city would be in attendance to take the Olympic flag, as is tradition. Here's how the stunt went down live.

Olympics News: Diana Taurasi has 6 Olympic golds. Will she be at LA2028? Yep, having a beer with Sue Bird

Cruise's stunt

IT'S A BIRD. IT'S A PLANE. IT'S TOM CRUISE! 🤯 #ParisOlympics | #ClosingCeremony pic.twitter.com/5v4j8pOwBF — NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) August 11, 2024

Tom Cruise flew into the Olympics closing ceremony 😎 pic.twitter.com/iGxYnZI3jy — SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) August 11, 2024

The 62-year-old rappelled down from the top of the Stade de France, greeting Olympians after landing safely.

We then witnessed a surprise appearance from Simone Biles at the closing ceremony, playing a part in the passing of the Olympic flag from Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo to Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass.

The two gave the Olympic flag to Cruise who rode a motorcycle in a pre-filmed sequence that ended with the actor soaring above Los Angeles in a skydiving stunt.

Internet reacts to Cruise's stunt

Tom Cruise did it again.. didn’t he? pic.twitter.com/XPTW8hhAxM — Pat McAfee (@PatMcAfeeShow) August 11, 2024

One thing about America is that they know how to put on a show. I’m excited for the LA 2028 Olympics. Also no matter what you might think of Tom Cruise, his star power and talent can’t be denied #ClosingCeremony pic.twitter.com/zx9t6DQNOE — Emi Eleode (@EmiEleode) August 11, 2024

How’d that lady almost make out with Tom Cruise on international TV 😂 #ClosingCeremony pic.twitter.com/IxtmIUPdcA — Georgia Rose 🇿🇦 🍉 (@Rasheeda_S) August 11, 2024

Okay LA, we’re off to a good start pic.twitter.com/oVASURnrPJ — J.A. Adande (@jadande) August 11, 2024

Has Cruise done anything like this before?

Yes, actually.

In 2004, Cruise participated in the Olympics' opening ceremonies, helping carry the Olympic torch through Los Angeles as it made its way around the world before resting in Athens, Greece, where the games were taking place that year.

And speaking of the #Olympics , let's go with this one of #TomCruise running with the Olympic torch in his hand in 2004, Athens @TomCruise @BigCityKnight #sfankhauser pic.twitter.com/qeHypR5O23 — ƧΛПDY F 😎 (@SandyFankhause4) July 27, 2024

Thomas Schad contributed to this report