Guide to the city's online food courier services

Digital food couriers are taking off with the arrival of several newcomers, promising diners a wide variety of takeaway menus and to-the-door delivery. We put them to the test.

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Kimbap Korean sushi, stewed beef short rib set and beef stone pot bibimbap from Delivery.com.

Published: 5:00pm, 21 Aug 2014Updated: 1:47pm, 25 Aug 2014

Digital food couriers have become big business in recent years. Foodpanda, for example, German company Rocket Internet's global restaurant aggregator, recently attracted US$60 million in growth funding from new and existing investors. The service, which expanded recently to include Hong Kong, enables diners to order takeaway through its mobile app.

The arrival of Foodpanda, along with several other online food ordering services, is fuelling a trend in the city. Local diners are developing an appetite for these services because they promise greater convenience and access to a wide variety of restaurant menus.

Ordering online, instead of by phone, also means waving goodbye to frustrating language barriers and having to sift through countless paper menus.

Rohan Muralee, who works in insurance, is a regular user of FoodByWeb.com.hk "The vast majority of the restaurants do not deliver independently, so if you want food at home, then you can get it from almost anywhere using this service." The Tsim Sha Tsui resident also finds ordering takeaway cheaper than cooking with quality ingredients at home.

Didier Bensadoun, president of newcomer delivery.com expects more urban professionals in Hong Kong to embrace the online service, which he says is growing increasingly busy here and in other cities such as New York and London.

Dining operators also have reasons for getting behind the trend. "High rents for businesses make it imperative that they source customers elsewhere, particularly online where their customers are increasingly spending their time," says Bensadoun.

Below, we test some new takeaway operators and compare them to a tried and tested phone-order-based delivery service.