Just Eat is rolling out in-car food ordering across Europe, so motorists can arrange for a takeaway or groceries to arrive at their destination when they do, or have a hot meal delivered to their electric vehicle while they wait for it to charge.
Customers in the UK as well as Ireland, Spain and Italy – with Germany and Austria rolling out in the coming weeks – can now use text and touch commands to place orders using their vehicle’s in-car entertainment system. The feature is initially available in the Mercedes-Benz in-car app store for customers of certain models including the car maker’s new CLE and E-Class. The aggregator app is working with other manufacturers to add the option to more vehicles.
“We see the adoption of electric vehicles as a trend in the market, and it’s changing the way people spend their time travelling,” Just Eat Takeaway.com chief product officer Jessica Hall told The Grocer. “What was a few minutes fuelling up at the petrol station is now potentially 45 minutes or an hour sitting at a charging station.
“How can we respond to that trend by providing customers with something that they want so that they can use their time efficiently? We want to fit seamlessly into the lives of our network so we’re always looking at how best to evolve our technology to make using our platform as convenient as possible.”
Just Eat understands the development – which began testing in the UK in December – to be the very first in-car food ordering app.
Hall – who prior to joining Just Eat in 2021 worked at Sainsbury’s, Argos and Tesco, where she digitised the supermarket’s Clubcard offering – said the current iteration of the feature was “just the beginning”. It had plans to “improve that with traffic data and linking it to your satnav” so an order’s delivery would be timed precisely to “when you’re going to arrive home”, she added.
The feature is expected to prove particularly popular in mainland Europe – where Just Eat has a presence in multiple markets – and where longer, cross-border car journeys were more common, Hall explained. “As our customers are doing these long drives, we are there by their side wherever they stop,” Hall said. “We’re making a bet that this is something customers want and we’re seeing positive signs already.”
The rollout is the latest in a flurry of innovation from the aggregator app. It recently introduced ‘group ordering’, which allows users to create a shared basket and invite friends and family to add items and make edits, with the order initiator “having full visibility before checking out and paying”. The company has also enhanced discovery of items on the app through carousels “to make it even easier for customers to find what they’re looking for, whether that be a grocery shop, flowers, or their favourite takeaway”.
“Essentially, we’re creating a digital high street, so whether you’re looking for petfood or a favourite takeaway, we’ll deliver it to you,” Hall said.
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