• Australian delivery services have been under intense scrutiny in recent months, facing legal challenges and proposed legislative changes.
• Melbourne-based Foodifox says it is championing an alternative ‘ethical’ business path in contrast with the direct delivery model.
• Instead of direct delivery, employees make deliveries from a centralised kitchen to dedicated heated locker facilities for pickup.
• Visit Business Insider Australia’s homepage for more stories.

As food delivery services face a tide of scrutiny, an Australia startup is hoping to offer a unique alternative.

Based out of Melbourne, Foodifox has steered clear of the door-to-door delivery model championed by the likes of Uber Eats and Deliveroo. Instead, founder Shawn Yi says he recognised that the delivery model had many problems back in 2019.

“We asked ourselves if we could do something different because Menulog and all these big players are just logistics companies,” Yi told Business Insider Australia.

“They don’t produce anything, they just deliver product from the supplier to the customers and they might charge $10 delivery for a $15 meal, plus surcharging,”

Those same ‘logistics companies’ have been plagued by other problems, too. Powered entirely by contractors, companies have faced intense scrutiny for worker conditions and several legal challenges. Earning below minimum wage – riders make an average of just $10 per hour after costs – workers have little safety net while they endure risks delivering to customers.

Last year, five riders were killed in Australia in the space of just two months, leading to calls for federal government intervention.

Menulog, meanwhile, is gearing up to trial an employee model as it seeks to distance itself from the rest of the industry.

“We reviewed a lot of the problems that the delivery industry is introducing to the community like drivers on scooters and contractors,” Yi said.

On top of that he said he recognised that there were other issues associated with “random people handling food … coming in and out of [apartment] buildings” all the time.

Despite these issues, Australian customers have not turned away from the services. Yi points out that the services like Uber Eats and Menulog remain immensely popular, but adds that he saw an opportunity.

“”We knew customers want fresh quality meals but without the cost or the wait time,” he said. “We asked ourselves whether we could do something differently.”

The brainstorming led Yi to end up launching Foodifox, a decidedly different food delivery service.

Rather than copy others in a crowded and competitive field, Foodifox is throwing away the direct delivery model and carving out its own niche.

First of all, it doesn’t act as an intermediary between restaurants and customers. Instead, it cooks all of the food itself from a centralised kitchen in Melbourne’s CBD, offering lunch options all week.

“Our own chef cooks the food fresh every day,” Yi said. “All the food is made from home recipes that are inspired or borrowed from different communities.”

“While our customers eat they get to read the story of where the recipe came from – it might be someone’s Nonna. Today it’s Japanese, tomorrow it’s Korean, the next day it might be modern Australia or Italian or German or Swedish.”

“People are given two options to order, one with meat and the other vegetarian. They can choose what they like up to ten days in advance.”

Nor does it deliver ‘on demand’. Rather than hiring workers to ferry orders direct to customers, Foodifox set up specialised lockers kept at 75 degrees Celsius. Employees, not contractors, pick up the packaged meals and deliver them to 18 different Melbourne locations every morning via vans and trucks.

“By 12 o’clock a customer receives a message telling them their food is ready. They get a unique QR code and scan it to open their locker with their meal inside,” Yi said. “They don’t have to wait around for it to be delivered, they get their food hot and they can enjoy their lunch break however they like.”

It counts corporates like Carsales as partners, delivering food to its 600-person head office.

“We love the food first and foremost or we wouldn’t be ordering it, but the staff love the fact that it’s an ethical way to get your lunch,” Carsales workplace manager Alex Kelly said.

While obviously limited so far to Melbourne’s lunch crowd, Yi believes the model has huge potential for Australia and beyond. First on the expansion plans are Sydney and Brisbane, with a global expansion potentially further down the track.

“Obviously you need a certain population density and a centralised location to begin, but then you can build up a network and scale,” Yi said.

It may not displace the delivery model, but Foodifox is forging an alternative path forward.

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