From Dining Out to Ordering In

How delivery apps reshaped restaurants and changed where loyalty lives

Starbucks used to call itself “the third place”—not home, not work, but the space in between where community happened. That positioning has faded. Not because Starbucks changed, but because the third place moved to your couch.

The online food delivery market is growing at 10.7% annually, reaching $173.57 billion in 2025, up from $156.75 billion in 2024. More than half of Americans—51%—consider delivery and takeout “an essential part of their lifestyle.” Gen Z and Millennials are even more dependent: 67% of Gen Z and 64% of Millennials can’t imagine life without it.

For brands, advertisers, and marketers, this isn’t a delivery trend. It’s a complete restructuring of how consumers interact with physical places, make purchasing decisions, and develop brand relationships. The implications are bigger than anyone wants to admit.

The Behavioral Shift That Changed Everything

Let’s start with what happened to consumer behavior.

Before delivery apps became ubiquitous, going to a restaurant involved choice, commitment, and transaction cost. You picked a place, got dressed, drove or walked there, waited for a table, ordered, ate, and left. The effort required meant you chose carefully. Brand loyalty mattered because switching costs were high.

Delivery apps eliminated those costs. Now you open an app, scroll through dozens of options, apply filters for cuisine and price, read reviews, and order in under two minutes. If the food is disappointing, you never order from that restaurant again. No confrontation, no explanation, just a tap to a different option next time.

The National Restaurant Association reports 51% of US consumers consider delivery and takeout essential to their lifestyle. But here’s the behavioral change that matters: 46% prefer ordering via third-party apps rather than directly from restaurants. Gen Z leads at 60% eating delivery food while looking at their phones.

What’s happening isn’t just convenience—it’s the death of dining as a deliberate choice and the rise of dining as ambient content consumption. You’re not going to a restaurant. You’re having dinner delivered while watching Netflix. The restaurant is just the supplier, not the experience.

The Economics That Killed the Third Place

The delivery economy works for consumers. For restaurants, it’s a hostage situation.

Third-party delivery platforms—DoorDash, Uber Eats, Grubhub—charge restaurants commission rates of 15-30% per order. For an industry where profit margins typically run 3-9%, that commission destroys unit economics. Restaurants don’t make money on delivery orders. They accept them because the alternative is losing visibility in the channel where consumers now make decisions.

The ghost kitchen market—delivery-only operations with no dining room—was valued at $3.54 billion in 2023 and is expected to reach $104.3 billion by 2030, growing at a 62.1% CAGR. These facilities exist purely to capture delivery demand without bearing the costs of front-of-house service. They’re restaurants stripped down to production and packaging.

But here’s what’s happening to the original third place locations: they’re struggling. Landlords are fighting Starbucks’ sudden slowdown in café openings. Foot traffic at physical locations has declined as delivery captured market share. The economics of maintaining a welcoming space with seating, wifi, and ambiance don’t work when most orders leave through the back door.

The brands that built their identity around place are discovering that consumers don’t value place anymore. They value access, speed, and selection.

What This Did to Brand Strategy

Brand loyalty in food service is fundamentally different now.

Before delivery apps, you had a favorite coffee shop, a go-to lunch spot, a regular dinner place. You were loyal because habit, proximity, and transaction costs kept you returning. Brands invested in customer experience, loyalty programs, and ambiance because those factors drove repeat visits.

Delivery apps destroyed that entire framework. Now consumers are loyal to DoorDash or Uber Eats, not to the restaurants on the platform. 40% of Gen Z diners say restaurant availability on their delivery app is more important than positive reviews or proprietary ordering platforms. Read that again: being available on the app matters more than being good.

Restaurants are scrambling to respond. 67% of diners still choose to order directly from restaurants, but that number is declining. The winners are investing in direct ordering channels—proprietary apps, websites, and loyalty programs that capture customer data and avoid platform commissions.

The problem? Consumers have to download another app, create another account, and remember to use it. Against the frictionless ease of third-party platforms with every restaurant already loaded, direct ordering is a hard sell. You’re asking consumers to be less convenient for the privilege of helping your business economics.

The Delivery-First Future Nobody Planned For

Here’s where this gets interesting for brands and advertisers:

Physical locations are becoming fulfillment centers, not destinations. Chipotle’s automation efforts increased customer visits and service speed by optimizing for delivery throughput, not dine-in experience. The dining room is a secondary consideration when 40%+ of orders leave in a bag.

Menu strategies are changing. Food that travels well gets priority. Complex presentation, temperature-sensitive dishes, and items requiring assembly don’t work for delivery. Your menu is increasingly designed for a car trunk, not a table.

Brand discovery happens in-app. When 56% of Americans have ordered a trending restaurant item from social media for delivery, brand awareness isn’t built in your location—it’s built on TikTok and Instagram. The viral moment is the product. The restaurant just executes.

Pricing power shifts to platforms. Dynamic pricing, surge pricing, and service fees are controlled by delivery apps, not restaurants. Your brand might have premium positioning, but the platform is training consumers to hunt for promotions and discounts. 82% of delivery customers say the option to get a daily special, discount, or value promotion is important when choosing a restaurant.

Customer data belongs to platforms. When someone orders through DoorDash, the restaurant knows what they ordered. DoorDash knows what they browsed, what alternatives they considered, their order frequency, price sensitivity, and preferred cuisines. Guess who has more value from that relationship?

The Sectors Getting Disrupted

This isn’t just restaurants. The delivery infrastructure is expanding into adjacent categories:

Grocery delivery hit $327.90 billion in 2025 in the US alone. Instacart, Amazon Fresh, Walmart+, and third-party platforms are replacing weekly store trips with recurring deliveries. The implications for CPG brands are enormous—shelf placement mattered when consumers walked aisles. Algorithm placement matters when they’re browsing apps.

Meal kit delivery is approaching $25 billion globally by 2027. HelloFresh holds 74% market share in the US. These aren’t restaurant competitors—they’re replacing both grocery shopping and restaurant delivery with a third option that provides convenience without cooking skills.

Alcohol delivery is normalizing. 80% of Americans who order alcohol for delivery have ordered low- or non-alcoholic beverages in the past six months, with 82% year-over-year growth in non-alcoholic beer orders. Liquor stores, like restaurants, are becoming invisible suppliers behind platform interfaces.

Dark kitchens are multiplying. Multiple brands operating out of single locations, optimized purely for delivery volume. No parking, no signage, no customer-facing presence. Just production capacity located near delivery zones.

The pattern is consistent: physical retail becomes invisible infrastructure while customer relationships move to aggregator platforms. For brands, this means losing direct access to customers in exchange for volume through intermediaries.

What Actually Works Now

Some brands are figuring out the new rules:

Own the direct channel but don’t fight the platforms. The 67% who order direct will stay direct if the experience is better. Make your app faster, your loyalty program more valuable, and your menu optimized for pickup. But stay on the platforms because that’s where discovery happens.

Optimize for virality, not footfall. The restaurant that goes viral on TikTok gets orders from people who’ve never been there and never will visit. Social content drives delivery demand better than location, ambiance, or service.

Build for delivery-first economics. Menu engineering, portion sizing, packaging, and pricing should assume delivery is the primary channel, with dine-in as the secondary option. Not the other way around.

Invest in sustainability signaling. 84% of consumers consider sustainability and ethical sourcing important when deciding where to order. Gen Z (92%) and Millennials (87%) even more so. This isn’t philanthropy—it’s table stakes for brand positioning.

Create exclusive platform offers. If you can’t avoid the commissions, use the platforms’ marketing tools. Exclusive items, first-look launches, and platform-only promotions help you capture attention in crowded interfaces.

Master the algorithm. How platforms rank restaurants, what triggers promotions, which photos perform best—this is the new SEO. Your head of marketing needs to understand platform algorithms as well as they understand Google search.

The Advertising Implications

For advertisers and agencies, the delivery economy fundamentally changes how campaigns work:

Location-based targeting makes less sense. If consumers order from anywhere in a 5-mile radius, your geo-targeted ads need to cover broader areas with different messaging. “Visit our location” doesn’t work when they’re not visiting.

Mobile-first isn’t optional. 98% of consumers have ordered delivery to satisfy a cravings. Those orders happen on phones, often impulsively. Desktop doesn’t matter. In-store doesn’t matter. Mobile experience is everything.

Social content drives transactions. When 56% have ordered trending items from social media, your social strategy isn’t brand building—it’s direct response. Every TikTok video is shoppable.

Loyalty programs need restructuring. Points for visits don’t work when there are no visits. Delivery-specific rewards, exclusive menu items, and early access programs work better. But they have to integrate with platform ordering, which is complicated.

Performance creative matters more than brand creative. Beautiful brand ads build awareness. Urgent, craving-driven creative drives orders. In delivery, you’re competing for immediate decisions against dozens of alternatives. Your ad needs to make someone want your food right now.

The Forecast Nobody Wants to Hear

The third place has faded for most brands. The few that survive will become premium-priced experiences—you’re paying for the ambiance and experience, not the food. Everything else becomes delivery infrastructure.

For marketers, this means rethinking entire strategies:

Foot traffic is not a KPI. Online orders are.

Store design is not brand differentiation. Algorithm placement is.

Customer experience happens on phones, not in restaurants. Optimize for what actually matters.

The consumer behavior shift is permanent. People discovered during COVID that staying home is easier, cheaper, and often more enjoyable than going out. Delivery made that viable for more categories. The economic pressures on restaurants—labor costs, rent, food inflation—make delivery attractive even when the commissions hurt.

This isn’t a trend that reverses. This is the new baseline. The companies that adapt will capture the delivery generation. The ones that keep investing in beautiful dining rooms and “experiential retail” will struggle to explain why consumers aren’t showing up.

The third place has transformed. Your couch won. Plan accordingly.