UK"s appetite for gourmet takeaway fuels restaurant delivery boom

“You don’t need a silver fork to eat good food,” the late celebrity chef Paul Prudhomme once said. But these days, you don’t even need to leave the comfort of your living room, as more and more restaurants offer take-out options to cash in on the growing market for fine dining at home.

The demand for home deliveries of ready-to-eat food grew 10 times faster than for dining out last year, according to figures released on Thursday, and food delivery apps specialising in restaurant-quality meals have seen a huge jump in popularity.

According to analysts NPD Group, the delivery sector rose almost 10% to 599m visits in the UK last year, while total visits to restaurants and other dining venues rose by just 1%. The delivery channel was worth £3.6bn last year, a 6% increase on 2015 and 50% more than in 2008.

NPD noted that even pubs were part of the home-delivery revolution by partnering with brands such as Deliveroo, Just Eat, Hungry House and UberEats. While British pubs only accounted for 4% of the delivery market, they increased their delivery visits by 59% over the previous year.

Deliveroo, which was founded by William Shu and Greg Orlowski in 2013 and now operates in 120 cities in 12 countries, said its orders grew by 650% in 2016. This included 20% more lunch orders, 20% more deliveries on a Monday, 10% more deliveries on Monday to Wednesday, and a 34% increase in people ordering healthy dishes, suggesting restaurant-style deliveries were seen less and less as an indulgent weekend treat.

The company is partnering with new restaurants every week and employs more than 1,000 people. Popular chains that have joined Deliveroo in the last 12 months include Five Guys, Cafe Rouge, Franco Manca, Ottolenghi, Farmacy, Sticks’n’Sushi and Pizza Pilgrims.

Restaurant chains such as Franco Manca are taking advantage of the surge in demand for food delivery. Photograph: Michelle Grant/Rex/Shutterstock

The latter’s management say they joined Deliveroo to try new technology and make customers happier. “For some people pizza is the ultimate takeaway, while others see it as a casual dining out option, so working with Deliveroo just allowed us to please as many people as possible,” said Michael Dench, the chain’s operations director.

One restaurant group, London rotisserie Clockjack, opened a delivery-only kitchen last year to cater solely for Deliveroo orders.

The NPD study found the average bill for delivered food was just £1 lower than for a meal eaten on the premises. However, the difference was bigger for some operators such as local Indian, Thai, Chinese, Japanese, Greek, Italian or Mexican restaurants at £12 for a meal on the premises versus £6.90 for delivery.

Cyril Lavenant, NPD’s UK food service director, said: “Ordering ready-to-eat food for delivery via an app or by phone is growing so fast that eating in is becoming the new eating out. It goes beyond getting delivery of conventional takeaway food because full-service restaurants are offering delivery too.”

A spokesman for Deliveroo said it was not replacing the dine-in experience, rather complementing it by bringing a new breadth of choice to the delivery market. “We work with thousands of restaurants that traditionally did not offer food delivery, creating £200m in added revenue for the restaurant industry in 2016,” he said.

But it’s not all good news. Cancer Research UK has warned of the risks of weight gain and obesity linked to the consumption of fast food and ready meals, which tend to have a high calorie content and higher levels of fat and sugar.

Figures released on Friday by the charity show that at least 79m ready meals and 22m fast-food and takeaway meals are eaten weekly by adults in the UK. Young adults aged 18-24 are more likely to rely on convenience meals, and are seven times more likely to indulge in fast food and takeaways at least once a week compared with the over-65s.

Alison Cox, Cancer Research UK’s director of prevention, said the figures showed that “grab and go” foods and a growing appetite for takeaways and ready meals were helping to propel people towards an epidemic of larger waistlines.

“The whole food industry needs to step up and commit to working with government to cut the amount of fat and sugar in our food. This would make it that bit easier for all of us to become healthier and reduce our cancer risks,” she said.

UK"s appetite for gourmet takeaway fuels restaurant delivery boom

AA Gill opens restaurant review with cancer diagnosis

Restaurant critic AA Gill has been diagnosed with “an embarrassment of cancer, the full English”, breaking the news in his regular “Table Talk” dining column.

The 62-year-old Sunday Times writer said he was alerting readers who follow his restaurant recommendations and who ought to know if there were “any fundamental, gastro, epicurean personal changes that would affect my judgment”.

Gill, a father of four, also announced he is to marry his long-term partner, Nicola Formby, after 23 years together.

Describing how the disease, diagnosed in the summer, had spread, he wrote: “There is barely a morsel of offal that is not included. I have a trucker’s gut-buster, gimpy, malevolent, meaty, malignancy”.

Gill, who was married to home secretary Amber Rudd during the 1990s, is the latest of a number of high-profile journalists and celebrities to have chosen to go public about cancer and chronicle their journeys.

Early pioneers to have written newspaper diaries about their cancer include Ruth Picardie, journalist and mother of two, whose Observer column was published as the memoir Before I Say Goodbye after her death in 1997 aged 33 from breast cancer. Broadcaster and journalist John Diamond, husband of Nigella Lawson, who died after being diagnosed with throat cancer in 2001 aged 47, won a What the Papers Say award for his weekly column.

The Vanity Fair columns written by author, essayist and journalist Christopher Hitchens, who died aged 62 in 2011 from esophageal cancer, were published at book length entitled Mortality after his death.

Sun columnist Jane Moore, a friend of Gill, told the Andrew Marr show she had urged him to write about his illness “because I thought it would be the definitive article on having cancer”.

Experts have long applauded those who share their experiences publicly for helping break the taboo of talking openly about the disease. Martin Ledwick, Cancer Research UK’s head nurse, said: Although over recent years attitudes have begun to change, cancer is still a subject that people find difficult to discuss. When people in the public eye are open about their cancer diagnosis it can be extremely helpful in demonstrating that it is OK to talk about it”.

Broadcaster and journalist Steve Hewlett, 58, who earlier this year was diagnosed with cancer of the oesophagus, charts his journey through broadcast interviews and an Observer column. He said his decision to go public came after deciding to be entirely open with his family, especially his children. By doing so, he allowed them to find support networks they might not otherwise have found, he said.

Writing about it also helped him stay in control, and not mired in a negative mindset. “I have something of a public profile anyway. I am naturally drawn to storytelling,” he said. “I didn’t go into it expecting to generate any reaction. I just thought it really interested me. My own case began to interest me as a story very early on.”

In his quest for information about his illness and treatment, he stumbled across things he thought others might need to know and wanted to share. “There remains for some people, and it is not irrational, a significant taboo about discussing cancer.

“The reaction has been absolutely extraordinary,” he said. “I honestly had no idea what to expect, but I certainly didn’t expect what happened. I have been contacted by well over 3,000 people, offering help, or support, people sharing their own stories, and a lot just saying ‘thank goodness someone is doing this’,” he said.

“I have come to the conclusion that it is helping people. It is extraordinary that it has touched.”

In an interview in the Sunday Times, Gill, said he had no regrets about his diagnosis. “I realise I don’t have a bucket list; I don’t feel I’ve been cheated of anything. I’d like to have gone to Timbuktu, and there are places I will be sorry not to see again,” he said.

Gill, who gave up alcohol when he was 30, added: “But actually, because of the nature of my life and the nature of what happened to me in my early life – my [alcohol] addiction, I know I have been very lucky.”

AA Gill opens restaurant review with cancer diagnosis

Salmonella scare closes Melbourne restaurant soon after diners fall ill

More than a dozen men and women have fallen sick after consuming at a Melbourne restaurant that has been shut down after a salmonella scare.

Well being authorities closed the Hao Phong restaurant in Footscray on Tuesday after two diners have been taken to hospital for salmonella poisoning, a Victorian wellness department spokesman mentioned.

The Maribyrnong city council confirmed a quantity of men and women had fallen sick following consuming at the restaurant between December 27 and 31.

There had been up to 13 suspected circumstances involving men and women who ate at the restaurant, the council confirmed.

Maribyrnong’s mayor, Grant Miles, stated it was worrying for those who had eaten at the restaurant but that the incident was currently being effectively managed.

“Well being inspectors are functioning with the owners to carry the restaurant back up to normal for re-opening,” Miles advised AAP.

“It is totally worrying, even if it is well more than a week in the past. If you ate at the restaurant and have flu-like signs I would inspire you to go and see a physician.”

Miles stated the restaurant had in no way had an incident of this nature prior to and was popular with locals.

Food cooked at the restaurant was taken away for testing and all implements that had come into get in touch with with contaminated meals had been destroyed.

The premises were closed for a thorough clean-up but would open early up coming week. Miles stated Hao Phong would not re-open till the council was pleased it met health laws.

There were only two confirmed salmonella instances at the moment, he explained.

The investigation is ongoing and the council is presently considering what even more action need to be taken, including prosecution.

Salmonella scare closes Melbourne restaurant soon after diners fall ill