Irish start-up Vromo signs major deal with DoorDash

Irish food delivery software platform provider Vromo has agreed a major new partnership with DoorDash that opens up the possibility of its technology being used by hundreds of thousands of restaurants across the world.

DoorDash, whose share price surged 86 per cent after it listed on the New York Stock Exchange late last year, is a food delivery service which is available in more than 4,000 cities across the United States, Canada, Australia and Japan.

The company’s valuation last week surpassed that of Uber, one of its biggest rivals in the food delivery sector, reaching $75.2 billion (€64.1 billion). Overall, it has more than 20 million customers.

Vromo, which is headquartered in Dublin and has offices in Waterford and New York, has developed a dedicated software platform for food delivery that helps partners to better track deliveries by giving a bird’s eye view of fleets in real time. This allows restaurants to dispatch their own drivers with takeaway orders and thereby retain their direct relationship with customers rather than using a third party such as Deliveroo or JustEat, which take a cut of up to 30 per cent for doing last-mile deliveries.

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In a new move, however, it has created a new feature it calls Overflow which allows restaurants to call on third-party services for extra help when required.

The feature enables restaurants to dispatch DoorDash drivers during times of peak demand, such as when big sporting events are on, and also when they want to expand to more distant delivery areas not covered by their in-house teams.

Papa Gino’s, a New England chain that has close to 100 restaurants across Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Rhode Island in the US, has just completed a trial of the service. Following the success of the trial, DoorDash has opted to provide it to all its restaurant chain clients.

Partners

“We’re excited to team up with Vromo to create even more options and functionality for restaurants who wish to fulfil delivery orders on their own. Through this integration, we hope restaurants can reach even more customers in order to strategically build their off-premises business,” said DoorDash Drive vice president Casey North.

Prior to the DoorDash deal, Vromo was already live in more than 250 cities and had more than 9,000 restaurants as customers. Its other partners include Burger King.

The Dublin-headquartered start-up, which announced an $8 million (€6.8 million) investment just last week, said it intends to triple headcount to 60 people as part of the deal.

Founded by Alan Hickey and Brian Hickey (no relation), Vromo was itself founded as a delivery service provider called WeBringg. However, as it expanded outside Ireland it found itself unable to find a software solution that could track hot food deliveries. It therefore bought a start-up called Spatula and pivoted towards managing fleets instead.

Speaking to The Irish Times, Brian Hickey, the company’s president, stressed that the partnership with DoorDash is not exclusive, leaving the option open for it to work with other delivery service providers. Moreover, he added that the partnership with DoorDash could also expand as the US company eyes opportunities in Europe.

Vromo operates on a subscription service basis with a ballpark cost of about $240 (€205). About 80 per cent of its revenues are derived from the US.

“The overflow feature allows restaurants to retain that critical relationship with customers and high levels of service while also giving it options to do so more,” said Mr Hickey.