Online Food Provisioning Services and Where to Find Them: Pipelines, Platforms and the Rise of Dark Stores

Using a unique data set on online food provisioning services gathered in 2019, this chapter summarises some key findings that emerged from analysing a cross-country study conducted in five European countries (Germany, Ireland, Italy, Norway and Sweden) and considers trends that have emerged during the Covid-19 pandemic. Firstly, building on Parkers and his collaborators’ (Platform revolution: How networked markets are transforming the economy and how to make them work for you (1st ed.). W. W. Norton & Company, 2016) distinction between pipelines and platforms, I provide a classification of online providers that is valid across all countries considered and illustrate some examples from each country. Secondly, I examine some central features of these models by focusing on their scope, their value commitments, and the range of food products sold. Thirdly, I briefly reflect on the rise and success of several on-demand grocery delivery companies that appeared during the pandemic and that could not be captured by our data set. In the conclusion, I outline possible research developments in the study of online food providers and highlight new possibilities to update and extend the data set.