TAKEAWAYS
At the beginning of 1994, if you wanted a takeaway, you would usually need to go into the food shop, place your order with a human, wait for your food to be cooked and then take your order home. This provided opportunities for human interaction and connecting with others.
In 1994 Pizza Hut delivered its first pizza in California. This inspired a company called World Wide Waiter in 1995. In the 2000s, food delivery became really popular. Office workers liked the ability to be able order food from their desk and have it delivered to them. This office delivery concept quickly expanded to deliveries to homes.
Just Eat was created in 2001 in Kolding, Denmark and came to London in 2006. Deliveroo was launched in London in February 2013.
In 2022, Just Eat made £3 billion and had 61 million users. Also in 2022, Deliveroo did 299 million deliveries in the UK.
This table show the rapid increase in Just Eat annual orders from 2011 to 2022
| Year | Orders (mm) |
| 2011 | 14 |
| 2012 | 25 |
| 2013 | 40 |
| 2014 | 61 |
| 2015 | 96 |
| 2016 | 136 |
| 2017 | 172 |
| 2018 | 221 |
| 2019 | 286 |
| 2020 | 589 |
| 2021 | 776 |
| 2022 | 657 |
For those who still go to a restaurant for a takeaway, there is a chance that they will not have much human interaction because now many fast food restaurants have order and pay QR codes on the tables or self service kiosks. The QR code revolution isolates people who do not have a smart phone, or who do not know how to use them. Also it isolates individuals who wanted to pay by cash. At McDonalds in 1994, you had to go up to the counter to order and speak with others. However, McDonald’s first introduced touchscreen kiosks in 2014 and in 2015 the company announced that it would be putting them in all restaurants. This meant that cashiers were no longer needed to take orders and the whole process of ordering food could be done with no contact with others.
Now because of takeaway delivery services, QR order and pay technology and self service kiosks, people do not need to have any human connection to order food. Therefore, this increases human separation and atomisation of the individual.