Are you on the lookout for online food ordering trends you might want to jump on in 2026? You’ve come to the right place.

The online food ordering industry is booming, and new trends are popping up. So much is happening, and it can be difficult to keep up with what you need to do to stay competitive and thrive.

👋 In this article, we’ll filter out the noise and walk you through the online food ordering trends you should pay attention to in 2026.

By the end, you’ll know what to watch for, why you should watch for these trends, and what could work for you this coming year.

So let’s dive in right away and go over 8 online food ordering trends to watch out for in 2026.

8 online food ordering trends to watch in 2026

📈 The online food ordering and delivery industry is one of the fastest-growing industries in the global market. Statista forecasts that the online food delivery market will reach $1.2 trillion by the end of 2024 and $1.85 trillion by 2029.

Customers are ordering food online now more than ever. Because of this, more businesses are joining this space. To succeed in the fast-growing food ordering and delivery ecosystem, you need to stay on top of what’s working for industry leaders and other merchants like you.

Which is why we’re here. We’ll go over the online food ordering trends to watch for this coming year and why you should pay attention to them.

Online food ordering trend #1: The expansion of virtual restaurants and ghost kitchens

Ghost kitchens are online ordering businesses that sell food through delivery only. They go by many names, and sometimes you may hear them being referred to as cloud kitchens, dark kitchens, or virtual restaurants. Unlike traditional restaurants, they don’t have a building where customers can dine in, waitstaff, or servers.

Instead, they operate in commercial kitchen spaces where meal orders are received online, prepared, packaged, and delivered to customers.

Ghost kitchens are one of the fastest-rising trends in the industry. It’s no surprise that their operations accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic period, but they don’t seem to be going away. 

📈 In fact, research shows that ghost kitchens are expected to hold a 50% market share of the drive-thru and takeaway food service markets.

The benefits of ghost kitchens

The main reason ghost kitchens are expected to thrive in the coming years boils down to the benefits they offer restaurant operators and customers.

These include:

• Reduced startup costs. This business model eliminates much of the overhead needed to run a traditional restaurant such as rent for the premises, utilities, maintaining staff, etc. This allows you to get up and running easily. 
• Increased efficiency. Because of reduced overhead costs, ghost kitchen owners can focus on improving customer satisfaction. You can invest the money you save into optimizing your online presence and back-of-house operations to make delivery orders on time.
• It is a convenient option for customers. Whether they’re stuck in the office or don’t want to leave the house, customers can conveniently order from ghost kitchens and have food delivered to them.

📈 Last year, online food ordering was reported to be growing 300% faster than in-restaurant dining. Because of this, ghost kitchens are a profitable business venture that you might want to invest in.

How to start a ghost kitchen

To start a ghost kitchen, you’ll need to lay the groundwork just like you would for any other food business. This includes conducting market research, coming up with a business plan, applying for the required licenses, and so on.

💡 We’ve covered these steps and more in our How to Start a Ghost Kitchen guide.

Keeping in mind that a cloud kitchen only exists digitally, the most important thing you’ll need to do is establish an online presence. You can do this by creating a restaurant website where customers can visit your business.

Since you’ll be running a delivery-only restaurant, your website should accept online orders, update customers on their order progress, and accept payments from them.

For this, you’ll need Orderable – the online ordering solution for your restaurant website on WordPress. 

Add online ordering to your ghost kitchen website with Orderable

Orderable is a WooCommerce plugin that adds a complete online ordering system to your restaurant website on WordPress. With this plugin, you can start taking orders from your WordPress site, manage them from start to finish, and accept payment.

So, what makes Orderable ideal for your ghost kitchen? Here are a few reasons:

You can easily create great-looking menus

An online menu is the highlight of your ghost kitchen. With orderable, you can create great-looking menus to whet your customer’s appetite. It has ready-made menu layouts you can import and customize, so you don’t have to start from scratch.

You’ll create a delivery schedule that works for you

Orderable allows you to set up a custom delivery and takeout schedule with its time slots feature. You can set exactly when your staff can deliver orders to your customers.

You can refine this schedule by setting maximum orders per time slot, holidays, ASAP deliveries, and so on. Orderable is a useful tool if you’re planning to manage deliveries in-house.

Instead of outsourcing delivery to third-party delivery services, which could lower your profitability, you can make deliveries on your own. You’ll keep all the delivery revenue to yourself.

It has an effective order management system

This plugin has a dedicated page for viewing everything about your orders. This includes when orders come in, their status, and when they’re due for delivery.

On top of this, Orderable has great customer experience features such as a mobile app-like appearance, order notifications on SMS and WhatsApp, etc. These features ensure customers have a great time ordering from you, increasing their likelihood of returning.

Trend #2: Increased focus on sustainability

As customers become more environmentally conscious, sustainability will continue to be a key focus for food delivery businesses. It’s no secret that the food delivery industry has a pretty huge carbon footprint.

From refrigeration and transport to cooking, food delivery service providers consume a lot of energy. Fortunately, customers want these brands to be more responsible and reduce their carbon emissions or offset them.

📈 In fact, they reward those who do, as 55% of consumers are willing to pay more for eco-friendly brands.

How industry leaders are focusing on sustainability

This is why industry leaders such as DoorDash and Uber Eats are working to be more sustainable.

• DoorDash purchases carbon credits to offset the climate impact of their operations.
• Uber Eats emphasizes packaging food using biodegradable packaging materials.

On top of that, the climate impact regulations are getting stiffer, and brands have no choice but to comply. As an online food ordering service provider, this is something you might need to look into to attract more customers this coming year.

Online food ordering trend #3: Expansion into grocery delivery

Grocery delivery is where customers order groceries from food delivery apps and have them delivered to their homes. It is a service usually offered by supermarkets and grocery stores, but now online food ordering providers are entering this space.

📈 According to Grocery Dippio (a digital grocery insights provider), grocery delivery is expected to rise by 9.7% in 2025.

📈 Evidence of this business model’s growth is further backed by Amazon’s continuous increase in grocery ecommerce sales to the American market from 2020 to 2023. In 2024, Statista predicts that these sales will increase by over $4 billion.

Why grocery delivery is growing rapidly

It’s well-known that customers love grocery shopping because they prefer fresh produce to processed products. Grocery shopping allows them to completely control what they eat in their households.

For this reason, combining groceries with the convenience of home deliveries is a recipe for success. As an online food delivery store owner, you can offer grocery delivery as an extension of your services.

For example, if you have a secret sauce you make in-house, or ingredients that are hard to find or buy elsewhere, add these to your online store. This can boost your sales and revenue and minimize the ingredients that go to waste.

Online food ordering trend #4: The adoption of autonomous delivery vehicles and drones

The restaurant industry is constantly evolving. In recent years, we’ve seen food delivery providers utilizing drones to deliver food to customers. Back in 2021, DoorDash launched a partnership with Wing (a drone delivery service provider) to offer drone deliveries in Australia.

As a testament to this growing trend, DoorDash extended this partnership to start delivering food using drones in the US in March 2024.

Uber Eats delivery in Phoenix, Arizona with autonomous delivery vehicles

Drone deliveries aside, some food delivery platforms have gone the autonomous delivery vehicles route. Uber Eats formed a partnership with Waymo (an autonomous vehicle company) to start using Waymo vehicles to deliver food in Phoenix.

Customers in Phoenix have autonomous vehicles as a delivery option. When the vehicle arrives, customers will receive a notification, like in typical deliveries.

These forms of contactless delivery also accelerated during the pandemic, and as we can see, their adoption is only going to increase. If this is something you want to adopt for your restaurant business, you’ll be glad to know that you can simply partner with a drone or autonomous vehicle company. 

With these types of deliveries, you can enjoy benefits such as:

• Faster deliveries – given that drones take the most direct route to your customers.
• Lower operational costs – you can save on fuel.
• Reduced environmental impact – especially for electric drones.

It is important to note that drones have a limit to the weight they can carry, but autonomous vehicles can potentially solve this.

Online food ordering trend #5: Increased competition and market consolidation

The reality of the online food ordering space is that the competition is intense. The market is dominated by a few major players like Uber Eats, DoorDash, Deliveroo, and Domino’s. 

At the same time, market consolidation is quite high. Companies like DoorDash and Just Eat have been actively acquiring smaller players to strengthen their market positions. For example, Just Eat acquired GrubHub to enter the US market.

📈 To add more competition, new businesses are entering the online food delivery space. This is why it is projected to have an annual growth rate of 9% from 2024 – 2029. 

What does this mean for you as a small online food ordering business owner?

Targeting the global market and going up against the major players can be futile. Fortunately, the local market hands you a lifeline. You can optimize your business to focus on your surrounding community, where you can thrive.

How can you do this? To optimize your business for the local market, you can:

• Set up a Google Business Profile.
• Work on your local SEO.
• Leverage local events to promote yourself.

💡 There’s so much more you can do, which we’ve covered in our Local Restaurant Marketing guide.

Trend #6: The integration of AI technology

AI is everywhere, and almost every industry has already adopted it, including online food ordering. The leading food delivery providers primarily use it to improve customers’ shopping experiences.

Let’s take Uber Eats as an example. It has an AI assistant in the Uber Eats app that customers can chat with as they shop.

It helps customers:

• Discover new ideas for meals – For instance, you can ask it to suggest popular dinner spots near you.
• Find deals or budget-friendly meals – Such as buy one get one deal offers.
• Complete tasks such as reordering food efficiently.

In 2026, more online food ordering service providers are expected to adopt AI for use cases like these.

DoorDash is using AI to combat employee harassment and abuse

But we know that with AI, the possibilities are endless. This year, DoorDash introduced us to a new way of using AI to improve the experience of DoorDash employees (dashers).

DoorDash introduced a SafeChat+ feature that detects any abuse or harassment against dashers on the DoorDash platform in real-time. Then, it allows them to cancel these orders without negatively impacting their ratings.

Apart from this, AI is tipped to have a role in several other online ordering functions, such as dynamic pricing, automated order processing, consumer demand forecasting, etc. We have to watch if these functions will come to life in 2026.

Online ordering food ordering trend #7: A surge in special diet delivery

Consumer preferences are shifting toward special diets. Driven by concerns for health, the environment, and animal welfare Millennials and Gen Z are increasingly seeking out meat alternatives and dairy-free options.

📈 One study found that the number of vegans in the UK increased by 1.1 million between 2023 and 2024.

How will food delivery platforms respond to the increasing special diet customers?

Because of this growing trend, restaurant delivery platforms are expected to expand their special diet offerings to tap into this customer base.

This includes options such as keto, paleo, vegan, lactose-free, gluten-free, and so on. Most of these are pretty much mainstays in the restaurant industry. We can expect more online food ordering platforms to start offering these options.

If you want to jump in on this food delivery trend, you’ll want customers looking for these special diets to find them quickly and easily. For this, you’ll need Orderable.

Highlight special diet foods on your menu with Orderable’s product labels

Customers don’t always know what is in your products, but they know what they want. And they’re always looking for an easy way to identify your food product’s properties. With Orderable’s product labels feature, you can create visual icons to help customers easily identify special diet foods in your menu.

You can create product labels for any special diet food, including the common ones we’ve mentioned above and the less common ones, such as halal and kosher.

Orderable gives you complete control over designing these icons. You can edit the color, text, and icons to suit the type of food the icon will represent. When you’re done, you can display them anywhere on the product card in just one click.

Trend #8: Advanced order customization

Order customization is when you allow customers to adjust your offerings and cherry-pick what they want.

This includes:

• Adjusting spice levels – Choosing from mild to extra spicy to suit their taste preferences. 
• Adjusting portion sizes – Selecting smaller or larger portions to minimize food waste.
• Adding or removing add-ons – If you’re selling Pizza, you can allow customers to include extra Pepperoni, BBQ, or any other toppings.
• Picking their preferred sides – For example, choose between fries, mozzarella sticks, or onion rings to go with burgers or chicken wings.

We expect food delivery platforms to provide more granular customization options, with customers’ need for personalization being the driving force behind this.

As an online food ordering services provider, you can get ahead of this with the help of Orderable.

Allow customers to customize their orders with Orderable’s product add-ons

One of Orderable’s best features is product add-ons. You can use this to create add-ons for your main dishes, such as special sauces, toppings, or sides. With Orderable, you can add as many add-ons as you like to any product and make them customizable.

This means customers will be able to pick the add-ons that work for them. Let’s say you’re offering Ice Cream Sundae as a side dish.

You can have several toppings such as the following as your add-ons:

• Sprinkles.
• Nutella.
• Marshmallows.

You can also add hot chocolate, whipped cream, and caramel as sauces. Customers can choose to add one or all of these options to their Ice Cream Sundae.

Other product add-ons you can create with Orderable

It’s not just toppings and sauces alone. You can also allow customers to select the sizes they want. For this, Orderable allows you to set different prices for different sizes so that customers pay more for larger sizes.

With Orderable’s product add-ons, you’ll improve your customers’ shopping experience and generate more revenue per order while you’re at it.

Get ahead of online food ordering trends today

A lot is happening in the online food ordering industry. It can be difficult to keep up with everything from ghost kitchens, autonomous delivery vehicles, and the integration of AI to special diets.

We hope this guide has helped. We’ve covered the trends you should watch out for moving into the next year and why you should pay attention to them. We’ve also covered how you can get ahead of these trends with the help of Orderable.

It allows you to add an online ordering solution to WordPress and jump in on profitable trends such as:

• Operating ghost kitchens.
• Delivering special diets to diet-conscious customers.
• Allowing consumers to customize their orders.

Leverage Orderable today to get ahead of online food ordering trends and have a successful year.