Whether it's to watch a football match with friends or for a romantic dinner, food delivery is now more than a boom: home delivery of food is a consolidated habit that it affects more than one out of three Italians today and which consequently celebrates the entry into the Istat consumer basket for inflation 2020 on the new spending habits of families. To be precise, according to an analysis by Coldiretti and Censis, 37% usually or occasionally order, via smartphone or computer, pizza, ethnic dishes (especially sushi, to the point that even a single dish has just been included by Istat in shopping basket 2020) or real gourmet foods throughout the year.
The so-called food delivery, almost always paid for by the mistreated cyclo-delivery boys, or riders, is therefore a market to which 18,9 million Italians turn regularly (3,8 million) or occasionally (15,1 million) who consumed at home food ordered from restaurants and pizzerias through one of the well-known online platforms (Just Eat, Foodora, Deliveroo, Bacchette Forchette or Uber Eats, just to mention the best known), alongside which numerous local realities have developed.
At the top of the list of reasons for resorting to food delivery, the Coldiretti/Censis study finds, there is the fact of being tired and not feeling like cooking (57,3%), but there is also a 34,1% (perhaps less sincere…) who indicate that they resort to it in the event of dinners with friends and relatives to amaze the diners with quality dishes. The possibility of having ready meals delivered to your home thus facilitates the organization of moments of conviviality even when there is no time to cook.
There are also those who focus on food to brighten up their evenings at home (32,6%), those who don't have time to prepare their own meals (26,5%) and those who don't want to give up good food without having to go out (24,7%) as well as those eager to try new and original dishes (18%) and those who can't cook (6,9%). To facilitate the use of food delivery there is also the timeliness of the service, which is always increasing (to the detriment of the delivery men, who are often put under stress by the algorithm): delivery times in many cases are fixed and do not exceed sixty minutes , and it is also possible to establish a precise time slot, while to pay it is no longer necessary to raise money or worry about change, because it can be done online.
However, all that glitters is not gold: the boom in home delivery food has indeed brought it to Italian homes fierce cost competition between the different platforms with free transport offers, promotions and discounts, which sometimes risks having repercussions on the entire supply chain, from the staff to the accounts of the restaurateurs up to their suppliers of agricultural and food products. It is no coincidence that almost four out of ten Italians (38,1%) who order food on web platforms consider it a priority to improve respect for the labor rights of riders: still a few, but it is already a sign.
