Healthy Eating Made Easy, Simple, and Convenient

Tom Peters, Global Director, New Businesses, Deliveroo

Eating well isn’t about limiting the kind of food you eat or denying yourself certain foods. Eating well is enjoying your favourite foods in a balanced manner. The joy of Deliveroo is the array of options on offer-from munching a poke bowl one night to devouring a stone-baked pizza the next. We help customers celebrate their choice of food.

Increasing the variety and amount of healthy food on Deliveroo is something I personally and passionately champion. My mission is to make access to healthy food simple, easy, and convenient.

Fortunately, my colleagues share this enthusiasm. We were proud to launch a healthy eating drive in January as a focus for the company for 2020. This was supported by a £1m pledge to promote healthy eating.

This drive was the culmination of much work to support our customers who wanted to access healthy food. 

We have seen a clear rise in interest in this. In the last three years, the number of healthy orders on Deliveroo has shot up by 181 per cent. A 2019 poll that we commissioned revealed, seven in ten adults want more healthy options on food delivery apps.

As the public’s appetite for healthy and meat-alternative food increases, we are committed to helping people access the food they love as quickly as possible

To match this demand, we’ve launched some great initiatives. These include helping our restaurant partners to curate ‘delivery-only’ brands from scratch and supporting existing brands to bring nutritious and tasty items to their well-loved menus.

We also look to support our vegan and vegetarian customers. A great way to include variety in a diet is through plant-based foods. We have noted the increasing popularity of this diet and ensured we matched our offering to suit the demand. As a result, we have seen a spectacular rise of 300 per cent of vegan orders over the past year. We have also added ‘vegan’ and ‘vegan friendly’ filters onto the Deliveroo platform so that customers can easily find their ideal food.

An unexpected phenomenon that is impacting our healthy eating drive is the Covid-19 pandemic. 

During this time, shoppers are craving healthier dining options and are turning to Deliveroo for fresh food. Since March, we have seen a sharp rise in the order of fruits and vegetables through our grocery partners, such as Co-op and Morrisons, with strawberries the number one choice during lockdown!

We have also launched some exciting partnerships with well-known retailers, such as Holland and Barrett, Daylesford Organic, and Farmdrop. These partnerships allow us to provide our customers with an even wider variety of healthier food.

As the public’s appetite for healthy and meat-alternative food increases, we are committed to helping people access the food they love as quickly as possible. Our work over 2020, with the investment in healthy brands, the new partnerships with healthy food providers, and the development of our in-app functions, has gone part of the way to support the growing interest in healthy options.

Healthy eating is an intrinsic part of Deliveroo, as is enjoying all kinds of food. The convenience of Deliveroo, coupled with our commitment to offering variety, means that customers can dine at home with every kind of food, from an end of the week takeaway treat to a tasty, healthy option. I am proud of the initiatives we have created this year–Deliveroo now has a unique and varied selection of food, and I am excited to keep building on this success.