Deliveroo to invest £1m supporting partner restaurants develop healthy meals and menus: Deliveroo is to spend £1m promoting healthy eating across the UK and support partner restaurants in developing healthy meals and menus. The investment includes providing a consultancy service to restaurant partners to help them increase healthy options by identifying suitable cuisines, dishes and price points. Deliveroo will then work with selected partners to provide nutritionist support with menu design, ingredient sourcing, staff training, branding and marketing investment. The first of these new healthy menus is in partnership with Mexican brand Barburrito, which is backed by the BGF. Working with nutritionist Rhiannon Lambert, Deliveroo and Barburrito have created ‘The RhiNourish Bowl’ to enhance the existing “Twisted Health Kitchen” menu. Deliveroo is also developing a new generation of “healthy” delivery-only brands for its restaurant partners to operate from their kitchens. Deliveroo designs and creates each brand from scratch, developing everything from its name to recipes for menu items, and will provide detailed guidance to restaurants on how to run it. Deliveroo will own the name and logo of the brand, but partners will operate the brands out of their own kitchens. The first of these brands is the “Dream Burger” menu. This is a range of healthy, affordable burgers and sides, such as the plant-based burger “sweet valley vegan burger”. Each dish has been created in an exclusive partnership with Lambert. The investment comes after Deliveroo witnessed a sharp increase in demand for healthy food over the past three years, with a 181% rise in healthy orders and a 330% increase in vegan orders over the past 24 months. Deliveroo has reached the milestone of 4,000 healthy restaurants on the platform – an increase of 257% over the past three years. Research by Deliveroo showed 69% of Brits would like to be able to order more healthy options through food delivery apps (18% don’t) and 67% would order more regularly if there was a greater availability of healthy options (21% would not). The trend is not confined to London with cities such as Exeter (359%), Newcastle, (273%), Cardiff (251%), Leicester (248%) and Sheffield (205%) have seen a faster demand for healthy meals than the capital (193%) over the past three years. The desire for healthy choices on food delivery apps is particularly prevalent amongst young people, with 89% of 18 to 24-year-olds saying they would buy food for delivery more regularly if there was a wider selection of healthy meals (4% would not). Deliveroo founder and chief executive Will Shu said: “Deliveroo’s approach is simple. We want to increase the choice of delicious, healthy takeaways to our customers in 2020. That is why we are investing £1 million this year to develop a range of nutritious menus and support restaurants to offer healthy meals across the UK.” 

D&D London secures first Birmingham site: Restaurant group D&D London has secured its first site in Birmingham as it looks to expand further into the regions. The company has agreed terms on a 25-year lease with Sterling Property Ventures to launch a rooftop restaurant with panoramic views at the 103 Colmore Row development in Birmingham, which will become the city’s tallest office building. The main restaurant will be on the 24th floor, while it will run a cocktail bar and café on the ground floor. The combined cost of the venues, due to open in the autumn of 2021, is about £4m. D&D London chairman and chief executive Des Gunewardena told The Times he had been looking for a site in Birmingham for more than a decade. D&D London was established in 2006 by Gunewardena and David Loewi, and has 43 restaurants, bars as well as a hotel, in London. It has restaurants in Paris and New York and is considering expanding in America. It has agreed terms on another site in London, where its restaurants include Quaglino’s and Le Pont de la Tour. The company also has a restaurant in Manchester and four in Leeds. This year it will open a site in Bristol, with the D&D London having been granted permission by the city council for a 13,000 square foot restaurant and events venue in the Quakers Friars piazza at Cabot Circus. Glasgow, Edinburgh and Dublin are understood to be targets for the company. Gunewardena said the group was “starting to see a bit of an improvement in the past couple of weeks” after a “forgettable” December, but it was still too early to call a trend. “One swallow doesn’t make a spring,” he added.