Here's how DoorDash, Grubhub, Uber Eats have adapted — and thrived — amid pandemic

Yahoo Finance's Alexandra Canal breaks down how COVID-19 has impacted the delivery space.

Video transcript

AKIKO FUJITA: Shares of Deliveroo slumping yet again in this session over in London, down about 10% there. This coming on the back of what was a very disappointing public debut. But certainly a lot of upside for delivery companies here in the US. Allie Canal is here to take a look at how these companies are increasingly looking to expand beyond their core business. Allie.

ALEXANDRA CANAL: Yes, so Deliveroo, it's not delivering over in the UK. I stole that from one of our producers. They also had demonstrations the other day with Deliveroo writers protesting poor working conditions and pay. So, not that great over in Europe, but here in the United States, delivery has just exploded. It's certainly a sector that has benefited from COVID-19 and the stay-at-home boom. So we wanted to dig into three of the biggest delivery giants-- Grubhub, UberEats, DoorDash-- to see how they performed during this time.

So here are the numbers. Let's start with DoorDash. It currently hosts over 20 million consumers on the platform with 273 million orders in 2020. That's up 233% compared to 2019, with $8.2 billion in gross order volume. Meanwhile, Grubhub saw 30 million diners spend over $9 billion in food sales in 2020. And then UberEats, which has really just been the saving grace for Uber. Despite the fact that its ride sharing business has taken a massive hit amid the pandemic, the Eats platform saw gross bookings up 130% year over year.

So all three of these platforms performing pretty well. In terms of market share, though, the latest data from Edison Trends shows DoorDash leading that trend at 53%. That's up a whopping 16% from the start of 2020. And it seems to be taking away shares from some of its competitors. Grubhub, for example, is down 7% versus start of 2020, and UberEats is down 5%.

But that doesn't mean that there's not more room to run here because a lot of restaurants are adopting these food delivery platforms very quickly. For example, data from Taste Wise, which is a food intelligence platform, shows that 73% of US restaurants are on at least one delivery platform, the bulk of them being on DoorDash at 68%. But I found this stat interesting. At the start of this year, January 2021, only 11% of US restaurants were on four of the biggest delivery giants. That also includes Postmates.

However, flash forward just three months later to today. And that number is up to 16%. So a 45% increase in a very short amount of time, and that just goes to show that as the pandemic is easing, people are going out to restaurants, that doesn't mean that the demand for delivery is diminishing anytime soon.

ZACK GUZMAN: Yeah, you got ghost kitchens playing into that mix, too. And also we've seen some pretty interesting movements beyond just restaurants being their partners here and something that we've watched DoorDash do, as well as UberEats with their Drizly acquisition. I mean, that has always been kind of the dream, right, that it wouldn't just be food delivery, it would be on-demand anything, right?

ALEXANDRA CANAL: Exactly, and UberEats announced that Drizly acquisition. They said the deal would be valued at $1.1 billion. Personally, during this pandemic, I would have loved to go into the UberEats app, order a nice bottle of red wine, maybe a bottle of tequila. But that's what UberEats is doing.

But you did mention DoorDash. And they are rapidly accelerating their offerings of convenience items. They have several partnerships, including 7-Eleven-- my personal favorite-- Wawa, Casey's General Store, and Circle K. Then in August, they expanded that to include CVS and Walgreens. And in March, we got that update that they'd be selling COVID-19 testing kits directly to consumers' doors. So a lot of opportunity for expansion, and I do think the pandemic really accelerated that type of growth.