[bduerst]

Being a delivery-only restaurant isn't trying to "play the Amazon game" - it's trying to be a restaurant that only delivers.

OP is right here that the substitute good for Sprig was ordering delivery from a restaurant. Typically when you think about ordering delivery, you instantly start thinking about your favorites, meaning this industry is hard to scale because it requires building trust.

Weed and alcohol may have monopolistic characteristics brought on by strict licensing requirements, but people typically don't consume these on a daily basis so the lower delivery quantities negate the higher margins.

[walshemj]

in the UK a few restaurants are experimenting with this and years a go one of my local Indian restaurants also had a take away only kitchen.

[alaskamiller]

What even is a delivery-only restaurant? A restaurant is literally defined as a place you go to eat and pay. A fine dining experience is composed of front of house and a back of house.

So Sprig is not a place you go to eat. There is no front of house experience. It's a thing that makes something to deliver to you. That's a fulfillment service.

Here's something to think about, most restaurants don't offer take out or delivery services. Because it undermines their value. They want you to sit down and enjoy in their decor, talking to their staff, eating their food, and most importantly they want exacting control and consistency. That indeed is how you build up trust and repeat visit.

But you're also conflating two behaviors here.

When you think about ordering delivery it's because you're trying to satiate a craving. You want that one thing form that one place. Delivery is an augmented service to the restaurant. It's how DoorDash can exist. But it's also why In 'N Out Burgers sued to not have their food be delivered. And it's also why the bottom half of the DoorDash's platform are not good experiences, it's a restaurant being pulled to be something it's not.

But that's not what Sprig is. They don't offer the same thing every day, they are relying on you to trust the top level branding alone and by browsing the options. It's a production facility with a delivery network.

When you want to your favorite meal delivered and when you want to order from Sprig or SpoonRocket or Munchery are coming from two different places. The former is hacking a restaurant, the latter is purchasing products.

Then lastly, it's not about licensing requirements for weed and alcohol. It's that they're inherently different products whereby immediate fulfillment is possible aside from transporting a human being.

[vkou]

> What even is a delivery-only restaurant?

90% of pizza joints. Yes, they may have seating area, but it's greasy, uncomfortable, and small. The overwhelming majority of their business is take-out, and delivery.

Every single hole-in-the-wall place. They either deliver, or they get you to pick up your own food.

Food trucks.

Having no front isn't some amazing innovation that will afford you margins that VCs and computer programmers expect.

Yes, optimizing your logistics and supply chain in the restaurant business is a huge problem. It's also a problem that successful restaurants, by necessity, are already really good at solving. You're not going to squeeze much blood out of that rock.

[ams6110]

This is the reason it will be very difficult for anything like the Sprig concept. Food delivery is insanely competitive and it's a race to the bottom to see who can stay in business on the smallest margin. That's usually the place that operates out of a low-rent storefront and employs family members at below-minimum wage, not a glitzy well-funded commissary with acres of stainless steel and new equipment.

[Finnucane]

Restaurants and other food-related businesses tend to have an extraordinarily high rate of failure. They're really hard to sustain long-term. So the fact that a food business failed is not remarkable; that's the usual, expected outcome.

[theparanoid]

And 100k/yr developers. I never understood the excitement around food delivery start-ups. There's nothing like broiling a nice steak with onions. It's like Americans have forgotten how to cook.

[lqdc13]

>what is a delivery only restaurant?

Some restaurants don't have any seating area. Think Dominos Pizza.

>When you think about ordering delivery it's because you're trying to satiate a craving.

Or you just don't feel like cooking. Also you might want anything random - something different you don't dislike. And you don't feel like walking to a restaurant and sitting there alone waiting for food + paying tips etc.

Sprig/SpoonRocket/Munchery/doordash/Grubhub/Eat24/localpizzashop.com/any local place that is walkable distance and offers takeout are effectively direct competitors for me.

[iampims]

The definition of a restaurant is "a building where people go to eat", if you can't eat there, it's not a restaurant…

[emodendroket]

Are we really going to start splitting hairs about "delivery place" vs "takeout" vs "restaurant"? It's clear what the OP is talking about; cooking food and delivering it is not a novel concept.

[emodendroket]

On the other hand, the article says they started "experimenting" with serving food to walk-in customers at their kitchen. Which would mean at some point near the end they became a restaurant by the definition you are using.