Restaurants loved this plan to end takeout waste. Why did it fail?
By Cecilia Seiter, Berkeleyside.
Excerpt: At the height of COVID-19 lockdowns, when restaurants survived off takeout and delivery and residential trash bins were brimming with discarded to-go containers, Dispatch Goods launched a reusable container restaurant service that, many hoped, would be the long-awaited elegant solution to the scourge of ballooning restaurant refuse. ...But customer confusion and complicated logistics proved to be stubborn problems, and the company sunset the program at the close of 2022. Despite an alleged growing demand for the service, the blog post cited complicated logistics, challenging unit economics and low lifetime value of the products — all of which contributed to significant financial hurdles for the early-stage startup. ...container standardization is key to the viability of large-scale reusables rollouts. For now, large-scale reusable container standardization is still a work in progress, but many beverage containers are already quite standardized in some parts of the world. ...In Germany, for example, customers pay a small deposit when purchasing bottled beverages. They drop the empty bottles into a collection machine (found in most major supermarkets) and receive their original deposit back. ...COVID-19 turbocharged growth in both takeout and delivery and the market continues to rapidly expand. A report from Research and Markets found the North American online food delivery market, which reached $29.8 billion in 2022, could more than double to nearly $65 billion by 2028. A 2023 DoorDash study found in a typical month 77% of consumers ordered delivery and 76% picked up takeout....