Burger King teams up with Amazon-style delivery company WeDispatch

Sean Murray, manager director of WeDispatch. Photo / Supplied

Fast food giant Burger King has signed on to Irish software delivery company WeDispatch to enable its customer orders to be delivered.

WeDispatch, which is essentially just the driver and tracking side of Uber Eats, is an Amazon-style same-day delivery software business which provides retailers software to be able to do their own deliveries from online sales.

Online food-ordering company Menulog has been using WeDispatch technology since March 2018 but Burger King is the first retailer to sign on.

WeDispatch managing director Sean Murray said the company was in talks with eight other local food brands to use the software.

He said WeDispatch enabled merchants to "own the order" and keep their customer data, as opposed to Uber Eats owning the entire process.

"We built a driver's app and a logistics platform to manage all of these last-mile deliveries, which automates the process, but we got to a stage where we had more companies looking to use our software than actual retailers who wanted the deliveries," Murray said.

The Dublin-based firm is now focused on the software arm of the business although it does still operate a fleet of its own drivers in some markets.

In New Zealand, it has a fleet of 100 drivers, most in Auckland, and a handful of delivery companies use the software.

Murray said WeDispatch was focused on rolling out its software to food brands in New Zealand who could use their own drivers to make deliveries.

In Australia and Britain, taxi companies, online marketplaces, restaurants and retailers such as flower shops and tuxedo hire companies use the software.

For the next couple of years WeDispatch would focus only on rolling out its technology to New Zealand's quick-service restaurants, Murray said.

Unlike Uber Eats, which owns the ordering process and delivery process when a order is made through its app, WeDispatch technology is only the delivery side so the order is made through the merchants' app.

"The customer experience is in the hands of the restaurant or retailer with our software. It allows them to hold on to all of the customer data that usually Uber Eats holds onto themselves," he said.

"[Otherwise] Uber Eats will basically own that customer - they may order Burger King through Uber Eats but that should be a Burger King customer, not an Uber Eats customer.

"If the restuarant owns the order then Uber Eats doesn't have any customer information, they can't re-market to them and they gain no value from that sale. It's the same as having a customer come into their store."

Murray said he believed WeDispatch would take a share of Uber Eats' business.

New Zealand's home-delivery market is rapidly expanding, which is why Burger King wanted to use the software, marketing manager James Woodbridge said.

The fast-food chain was in the early stages of a "service transformation strategy fueled by new technology", Woodbridge said.

"Burger King's strategy is to partner with the larger delivery brands to broaden our brands accessibility," he said.

Some Burger King stores began using Uber Eats around three months ago.