How delivery apps are gaining on the restaurant business
An Uber Eats delivery employee. Photo: Akio Kon / Bloomberg via Getty Images
Delivery apps may put your favorite restaurant out of business, per The New Yorker's Elizabeth Dunn, writing in the "Annals of Gastronomy."
The big picture: Brick-and-mortar retailers have been clobbered by the rise of e-commerce giants like Amazon. Delivery apps could prompt a similar implosion in the restaurant business.
"In 2016, delivery transactions made up about seven per cent of total U.S. restaurant sales. In a research report published last June, analysts at Morgan Stanley predicted that that number could eventually reach forty per cent of all restaurant sales, and an even higher percentage in urban areas and among casual restaurants."
"Companies like GrubHub maintain that the revenue they bring restaurants is 'incremental' ... exposing potential new customers who might convert to lucrative in-restaurant patrons."
Why it matters: "[A]s consumers use services like Uber Eats and Seamless for a greater share of their meals, delivery orders are beginning to replace some restaurants’ core business instead of complementing it."
What's next: At Sweetgreen, 40% of orders are "placed for pickup through a proprietary app, and the company is about to pilot a delivery service."
AI researchers are in high demand, and their salaries prove it
U1208 Lab at Inserm, which studies cognitive sciences and robot-human communication. Photo: BSIP/UIG via Getty Images
The top researcher for a new non-profit lab called OpenAI made more than $1.9 million in 2016, and two other researchers at the company made hundreds of thousands of dollars despite joining in March and June of that year, The New York Times reports.
Why it matters: The lucrative salaries illustrate the growing demand not only for artificial intelligence but also for those who understand the technology behind it. However, as the NYT points out, the trend also poses a major problem for universities and government agencies who need AI expertise, both to train the next generation and to integrate the technology into everyday life.
Snapchat will allow users to buy products via augmented reality
Photo by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images
Snapchat is letting users buy products through a new advertisers' augmented reality feature in its app called "Shoppable AR."
Why it matters: It's one of the most sophisticated uses of augmented reality for marketing that's been rolled out to date — and now that people can buy things directly using the tool, it's likely to spur more investment in the technology.
The bigger picture: Until now, AR has mostly been used to do marketing at the top of the "funnel" by driving awareness around brands. By making it possible to buy things through AR, the tool can now be used closer to the bottom of the funnel, all people to actually buy products.
How it works: When brands buy an AR "lens" or animated image/video that pertains that can be overlaid on any picture or video taken by a Snapchatter, they can now also add a button that allows users to buy things directly from the moveable image.
Four brands have already begun using the feature: Clairol, Adidas, King, and STX Entertainment.
"We no longer live in a world where it has to be either brand or commerce, consumers don’t think that way and neither should we,” says Chris Murphy, Head of Digital Experience, adidas US.
