Food delivery growing in the All America City

TUPELO, Miss. (WCBI) – The online food delivery market is growing rapidly.

In fact, estimates show that half of all diners in the nation have used a food delivery service in the past three months.

It has been a busy week for drivers with WAITR, the newest food delivery service for Tupelo.

WAITR started in Lake Charles Louisiana in 2015, and is now in more than 20 states.

They expect to hire 100 drivers for the Tupelo market and they currently have partnerships with more than 40 area restaurants.

“It’s going really great, we’re increasing daily, everyone loves us here, we love Tupelo and we’re glad to be here,” said Ana Moresi, a “Launcher” for WAITR.

WAITR is an app based service, with a five dollar delivery fee.

The company has been expanding rapidly and targets small to medium sized markets.   Moresi believes Tupelo is a great fit for WAITR.

“We decided to come over here and spread the WAITR love to Tupelo Mississippi, we have all kinds of different features on our app,” Moresi said.

Tupelo2Go is another business that had humble beginnings.

The Tupelo based food delivery service began more than three years ago when two business partners realized people wanted food from local restaurants, but didn’t want to dine out.

It was all about convenience and meeting a need in the market.

“I lived in Tupelo my entire life and wanted some kind of delivery I worked in the medical field so we just didn’t have very long lunch,” said Rebekah Payne, co owner of Tupelo2Go.

Tupelo2Go has seen swift growth.

They now operate out of a suite of offices on Spring Street, with as many as four dispatchers during peak times.

Customers can also use an app to order and Tupelo2Go partners with more than 50 restaurants.

Payne believes the company can not only survive, but thrive, with a loyal, and growing customer base.

“The local support has been really good to us, since day one, it’s been incredible, so we’re just going to keep doing what we have been doing, loving what we do, and we don’t plan on going anywhere,” Payne said.

Both WAITR and Tupelo2Go realize the demand has been around long before the technology and both believe there are plenty of hungry customers willing to use their services.

Both WAITR and Tupelo2Go have free apps for download to smartphones.