Gopuff Takes on Restaurant Aggregators with Launch of Pizza Brand

Gopuff is escalating its efforts to compete with restaurant aggregators with the first restaurant brand announced since the launch of as part of the Gopuff Kitchen initiative in the summer of 2021.

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On Wednesday (May 11), the company announced the launch of The Mean Tomato, a private label virtual restaurant brand focused on pizza. The launch of this pizza brand, the company’s “first fresh food brand,” is part of a longer-term strategy to create a range of restaurant brands that will further establish the company in the food-on-demand space.

“This is an exciting new category for Gopuff with great potential — we’re just beginning to test the waters in terms of what we can do in the fresh, made-to-order food space with instant delivery,” Amelia Riba, vice president of Gopuff Kitchens, said in a statement. “Gopuff Kitchen’s will continue to expand its menu by launching new brands.”

Ultimately, the success of this initiative will come down to whether or not the brand offers food that can compete with other on-demand pizza delivery options in terms of taste. Research from PYMNTS’ April study “Digital Divide The Key Factors That Drive Restaurant Choice,” created in collaboration with Paytronix, found that 66% of consumers view the taste of food as an important factor influencing their choice of restaurant, and 35% cited it as the most important, each a greater share than said the same of any other factor.

Notably, the study, which drew from a survey of more than 2,600 U.S. adults in the late spring, also found that only 0.3% of consumers cited delivery service quality as the top factor influencing their choice, and only 0.1% said the same of a restaurant being available on an aggregator.

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For Gopuff, becoming a hot food destination can embed the company’s offerings further in consumers’ day-to-day routines. In fact, according to data from the PYMNTS December report, Digital Divide: Aggregators and High-Value Restaurant Customers, also in collaboration with Paytronix, which surveyed a census-balanced panel of more than 2,100 U.S. adults about their food purchases, 46% of restaurant customers are high frequency — i.e., they purchase from restaurants at least once a week. Plus, more than half of these customers are also high spending, meaning they spend an average of more than $40 per purchase.

“As a customer-first tech company, we are the best at delivering bold and unexpected experiences that we know our customers will love,” Daniel Folkman, senior vice president of business at Gopuff, said in a statement. “Gopuff Kitchen’s success has shown that high-quality, Gopuff-made fresh products have immense staying power with our customers.”

The move comes as restaurant aggregators expand into other on-demand delivery categories and as, in turn, players that began with non-restaurant categories make moves into the prepared meals space. Instacart, for one, announced earlier this year the launch of its Ready Meals Hub, offering cooked food from grocers’ in-store prepared meals sections, positioning these offerings as “cost-effective alternatives to restaurant takeout.”

Read more: Instacart Aims to Price out DoorDash With Launch of Meal Delivery