Online meal delivery: Growth potential intact despite Covid-19 headwinds
The digitalization of consumption is one of the structural changes our Global Consumer Trends strategy focuses on. A major development in this area has been the advent of online meal delivery. After a period of heavy investment, this relatively young market is now quickly consolidating, thus offering both strong growth and improved profitability prospects, despite the short-term challenges raised by the Covid-19 crisis.
Speed read
- Online meal delivery market set to grow by 20% per year until 2022
- Profitability of main players now at an inflexion point
- Merger and acquisitions activity poised to continue
The online meal delivery market has been growing strongly over the past few years and is expected to continue to do so in the near term. More recently, the price war started by logistics players with very aggressive expansion plans seems to have de-escalated. The main reason for this is that the favorable funding conditions these companies enjoyed has become constrained.
The more rational behavior of existing players and the important consolidation into a number of strong players with local dominance have improved the sector’s financial prospects. Despite the short-term headwinds provided by the Covid-19 crisis, we are convinced the drivers of growth remain intact for the sector and continue to see compelling long-term investment opportunities, as part of our broader digital consumer trend.
