Latest news with #fooddelivery
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Darden Restaurants lifts sales forecast, beats quarterly estimates on casual dining demand
(Reuters) -Darden Restaurants forecast annual same-store sales above estimates after strong quarterly results on Friday, banking on demand driven by food delivery and advertising efforts at its casual dining chains such as Olive Garden. Shares of the company rose about 3% in premarket trading after the company also announced a new $1 billion share repurchase program. Casual dining and fast casual restaurant chains, including Olive Garden and Shake Shack, have benefited from menu innovations and promotions to entice customers, offsetting the impact of consumers turning to home-cooked meals to save money. Meanwhile, fast food chains including burger giant McDonald's, Starbucks and Domino's Pizza have been struggling with tepid demand. Darden expects annual same-store sales to grow in the range of 2% to 3.5%, midpoint of which is above analysts' estimates of 2.64%, as per data compiled by LSEG. Initiatives such as home deliveries with the help of Uber Direct and "buy one, take one" offerings at Olive Garden have further helped the restaurant chain operator. Its consolidated same-store sales were up 4.6% in the quarter compared to a year ago, with Olive Garden sales rising 6.9%. The company posted fourth-quarter sales of $3.27 billion, edging past estimates of $3.26 billion. It logged adjusted profit of $2.98 per share for the quarter ended May 25, above estimates of $2.97 per share, owing to moderate price hikes and lower input costs. However, the company forecast annual earnings per share between $10.50 and $10.70, compared with estimates of $10.75 per share.
Bloomberg
11 hours ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
The Fight in China's $80 Billion-Plus Food Delivery Market
Does China have the world's best and cheapest food delivery apps? As revives its fight in the country's $80 billion-plus food delivery market, Bloomberg's Allen Wan puts three apps to the test to see who will deliver his Shake Shack lunch order the fastest. (Source: Bloomberg)
Bloomberg
16 hours ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
JD.com Billionaire's Viral Stunt Reignites China's Food-Delivery Feud
One unusually warm evening in April, Richard Liu revved his scooter through Beijing's traffic-snarled streets alongside other delivery workers, and then personally handed food orders to surprised customers. Later that night, over spicy hotpot and ice-cold beer, the Inc. founder welcomed a pair of riders from two rival delivery firms to his company. The publicity stunt, broadcast on viral online videos, reignited a fight for China's $80 billion-plus food delivery market. In just a few months, JD, China's largest online retailer by revenue, amassed 25 million daily takeout orders across 350 cities, capturing more than half the volume of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. 's the runner-up to market leader Meituan. Neither saw Liu coming.
Washington Post
a day ago
- General
- Washington Post
A chicken salad tartine with fruit and care on the side
This column comes from the Eat Voraciously newsletter. Sign up here to get one weeknight dinner recipe, tips for substitutions, techniques and more in your inbox Monday through Thursday. In the summer of 2024, I was struggling to make sense of my life as a new mother. Every day was filled with uneasy wonder: How did I get here? What was I doing, and why did this new facet of my life, this ancient human experience, seem impossible? One day, I remember putting my son in his crib for a nap and feeling so grateful that I could now, finally, lie down in bed and stare at the ceiling. I cried with relief, then guilt, then sadness. Eventually, I wiped away the tears, and, because I knew it might make me feel better, I opened a food delivery app and started to order lunch. Moments later, there was a knock at the door. When I opened it, I found a blue-and-white paper plate holding an open-faced chicken salad sandwich with mango on the side. Get the recipe: Chicken Salad Tartines My dear neighbor, a mother of three, had made me lunch. The mango seemed to glow in the dim hallway light, its fragrance mingling with the smell of the pungent, herb-flecked dressing on the chicken. I brought the food back to bed and ate it in blissful silence. Then, I cried again. This time it was out of deep gratitude and love. I rummaged around for my phone to send my neighbor a thank-you note. She had texted: 'Chicken salad with lots of red onion — because I like it that way, and because when you eat a lot of raw onion people leave you the hell alone!!! ❤️ Love you!' Just as no two people are the same, no two pregnancies or birthing experiences are the same. Without sufficient support, any mother's individual experience can be extremely isolating. It was only when I started to notice the care other mothers offered to me and each other that I started to feel like maybe, just maybe, I could do this. For a lot of reasons, I never thought I would become a parent. But here I was, and here, too, I eventually discovered, was a club I now belonged to, one full of generosity and reciprocity, of unspoken care and deep love: motherhood. Inspired by my neighbor's chicken salad sandwich, here's a recipe for Chicken Salad Tartines. There's red onion and cucumber for crunch and flavor, plus tarragon and lots of lemon. Yogurt and mayonnaise keep it light and creamy. I highly recommend fresh, juicy fruit on the side for a burst of sweetness. Get the recipe: Chicken Salad Tartines
South China Morning Post
a day ago
- Business
- South China Morning Post
Meituan's food delivery market dominance in China remains stable at 70%, report says
Meituan, the Chinese on-demand delivery giant, is maintaining a steady hold on its 70 per cent market share in domestic food delivery, despite intensifying competition from and Alibaba Group Holding 's as daily orders reached 90 million in recent days, according to a report by Chinese tech media outlet citing internal data. Meituan did not comment on the report. If confirmed, it would show the challenges Meituan's rivals face in changing consumer habits, after a price war broke out in the instant delivery market amid sluggish consumer spending in the world's second-largest economy. Daily orders on rival service have reached 25 million, the company announced on June 18. It launched a food delivery service in February, expanding its instant delivery offering, which aims to bring items to customers' doors typically within an hour. Alibaba said last month that the combined daily orders on and its Taobao Instant Commerce reached 40 million. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post. Leiphone reported the numbers based on 'exclusively obtained' Meituan data. The delivery giant, founded by entrepreneur Wang Xing in 2010, has not publicly disclosed operational data. Since entering the food delivery market, billionaire founder Richard Liu Qiangdong has been aggressively recruiting delivery crew, even donning a delivery uniform himself and sharing hotpot with couriers.
