The trend of ordering food delivery online has grown in leaps and bounds over the past year, and apps like SkipTheDishes have reaped the benefits.
Sudbury has not been immune to the trend and saw an increase of 185 per cent in ordering food through SkipTheDishes from 2018 to 2019.
"Canada-wide, the food delivery industry is about a $4.1 billion industry and it's expected to grow 15 per cent every year, it's growing really fast," said Shanae Blaquiere, spokesperson for SkipTheDishes. "We served 25 per cent more customers in 2019 than we did in 2018, so there's a big uptick in consumer demand."
The Nickel City veers from the crowd however when it comes to its favourite foods to order, with the top three national favourites being butter chicken, poutine and dynamite rolls (sushi). Sudbury certainly loves its burgers, and bacon cheeseburgers were the number one most ordered item on SkipTheDishes, with more than 8,500 orders.
Coming in second were chicken nuggets, with more than 6,000 orders in 2019, followed by chicken wraps in a distant third with 3,500 orders. While the most popular food items ordered in Sudbury trend toward pub grub like burgers and chicken nuggets, the most popular restaurants were actually a pair of sushi spots, with Wonderful Sushi and Okinawa Sushi taking the top two spots. Gonga's Grill was the third most popular local restaurant.
The trend of independent restaurants taking up a large portion of the market when it comes to food delivery from SkipTheDishes is not exclusive to Sudbury, as Blaquiere says that these restaurants are adapting and jumping on board early with a food delivery service in order to expand their customer reach.
The company has more than 23,000 restaurant partners Canada-wide, with about 14,000 restaurants considered as independent. More than half (53 per cent) of all orders placed on Skip go to independent restaurants.
With more and more people seemingly foregoing a night out in favour of ordering in, restaurants are starting to adapt their service model in order to stay competitive.
"Restaurants are actually changing how they model their businesses in order to be more compatible with delivery," said Blaquiere. "Some restaurants you'll see have a delivery-only menu with items that are better for being delivered."
Additionally, SkipTheDishes and other food delivery services have become increasingly popular options when it comes to party hosting and group gatherings.
"People do a lot of group ordering, so let's say the Grey Cup which was over the weekend, you might order a big order for you and all of your friends and that's your way of bringing a snack to the group," said Blaquiere. "It's not just ordering in to your house, people order to their offices and other places."
Sudbury's biggest order in 2019 was for $340 and it included - you guessed it - 20 bacon cheeseburgers and whole lot of french fries. Somewhere in the Nickel City is a SkipTheDishes fanatic, as the most orders by one person in 2019 was 212, that's one order every second day from January 1 until now.
That number pales in comparison to Canada's biggest Skip user, who had nearly triple that number with 764 orders to date, more than two orders per day. One order out of the Greater Toronto Area topped the list as the largest single order in the country, coming in at $4,004.
SkipTheDishes is Canada's most used food delivery app, but others are cropping up on the scene, like Uber Eats and DoorDash.
"We do welcome competition because it brings more awareness to the food delivery space," said Blaquiere. "We're the most-used food delivery app in Canada and have the biggest variety of restaurant offerings with 23,000 restaurant partners coast to coast."
Sudbury was just buried under a record snowfall, and Blaquiere explained that the winter is definitely the season when SkipTheDishes sees an uptick in orders, as people shudder at the thought of having to bundle up and leave their homes if they're craving their favourite restaurant.
"We absolutely see an increase during the winter," said Blaquiere. "I think the interesting thing is you're seeing a boost to those independent restaurants like Okinawa and Wonderful Sushi. It's helping these restaurants become more visible."
