Food delivery wars!

On 4/9/2024, this news was published by peaq: https://x.com/peaqnetwork/status/1831325149594800159

The message announces the arrival of Bistroo to the peaq ecosystem. Bistroo is an application, currently 100% on Ethereum, designed to compete in the food delivery management sector.

This post is purely a personal reflection on what I’ve read; it is neither a recommendation nor a market study. It’s simply for self-learning purposes, as I write what I’ve understood from various sources. Everyone should conduct their own analysis and not rely on interpretations of what is written.

Currently, this sector is dominated by major delivery companies, which according to the article, charge fees of up to 30% for managing home delivery. In addition to these fees, they control customer data, giving them additional leverage in the business. As the holders of that data, they can use it to improve their services and conduct market analysis, which doesn’t necessarily benefit the person making the food that’s being ordered. Once again, we see the curious fact that the delivery company has more market control and better knowledge of the customer than the person making the desired product. This is nothing new compared to what we’ve already seen in centralized Web2 environments.

According to the description on Bistroo’s site: https://www.bistroo.io/, their proposal is to eliminate intermediaries as much as possible, creating a direct connection between the restaurant and the customer. The product menus and prices are managed directly by the restaurant, which will receive payments and orders from the customer, and both parties will manage their own data. If they choose to share this data, they could benefit from it using the BIST token.

This is an interesting proposal to follow, as it will be competing with major players in a sector where physical presence is important. For example, they are already deployed in the Netherlands and are now expanding to Belgium. They need to grow country by country to establish relationships with local restaurants and customers. Let’s remember, though it may seem obvious, that the customers and restaurants are local… it’s not common to order a menu that arrives three days after being cooked, 2,000 km away. Therefore, in my opinion, this is not a global proposal, unlike other uses of blockchain, but a solution that must build proximity relationships. This could make the need for maximum simplicity in the user experience more critical. That is, I cannot limit my (restaurant) customer base to blockchain enthusiasts, so the solution must be network-agnostic and offer a very simple experience, without differences in user experience due to technological changes between Web2 and Web3. If I have a credit card, I should be able to pay with it, and the platform should handle token issues, transfers, exchange rates, etc. With peaq and the Polkadot ecosystem advancing as they are, I believe they are arriving at the right time. The arrival of Polkadot 2.0, alliances, and new payment systems with Mastercard, Polkadot Wallet, etc., can greatly help adoption and improve the customer experience.

There are some interesting points to resolve, which may have already been addressed, but I haven’t been able to find the information, for example: the relationship with couriers. Traditional platforms have had plenty of issues with this, and it will be interesting to see how they handle it — what kind of relationship exists, how they adapt to different regulations, etc.

I really like this project because it takes the Web3 fight directly into territory clearly dominated by Web2, without hesitation. Let’s see with proposals like these whether mass adoption happens, or if it still needs to mature. Let’s watch! Fight!