What you need to know:

• Food delivery platform Deliveroo has hired The Royals in a bid to stand out in an increasingly cutthroat marketplace.
• Uber and Menulog have massive ad budgets and are vying for supremacy.
• Upstarts Milkrun and Voly are building out dark supermarkets and owning their logistics to out-sprint rivals.

The heat is on

Deliveroo is backing Sydney indie agency The Royals to help it out-smart and outfight the likes of global rivals Uber, Menulog and Doordash for share of mind and wallet, while staying ahead of local marketplace upstarts Milkrun and Voly.

The delivery – or instant commerce – marketplace battle is becoming increasingly cutthroat. One-time takeaway rivals are pushing deeper into grocery and other delivery channels just as Australia’s big retailers mull taking on Amazon directly in one of the few western markets where it remains relatively weak.

The likes of Milkrun, launched six months ago by Koala founder Danny Milham and which in January raised $75m to expand nationwide, is backing an owned logistics network, ‘dark supermarkets’, a directly employed labour force and at cost prices to disrupt delivery rivals. It is rapidly gaining traction in Sydney by getting goods to customers faster, while deploying hyper-local guerrilla ad tactics to get noticed.

Incumbent Menulog also employs its own delivery fleet, whereas Deliveroo and Uber are largely backing gig market economics to underpin their business models.

Menulog last October made a major investment in NSW and CMO Simon Cheng told Mi3 grocery delivery was top of its growth agenda, following a big brand push lifting Byron Sharp’s playbook that has seen the global platform laud Australia as its fastest growing market.

All of which means The Royals and Deliveroo have a major food fight on their hands.

Tall order, with relish

In advertising terms, the agency steps into a creative kitchen currently dominated by Uber Eats’ ‘Tonight I’ll be eating’, created and executed locally by Special Group, and Menulog’s Snoop-delivered ‘Did somebody say’, via McCann.

Now The Royals, which won brand strategy and creative via a competitive pitch, has a chance to make similarly standout work for the network and its 13,000 restaurants.

Deliveroo marketing chief Laura Wilson backed the agency to “win hearts and minds… and ultimately convert them to Deliveroo.”

The Royals managing partner Dan Beaumont said the firm relishes entering a “brand-based battlefield” of creative work in a bid for supremacy, and added that the agency has been mandated to deliver “brave, effective work to aggressively grow share”.

While that may appear a tall order, given the established incumbents and hundreds of millions of venture capital dollars pouring into new delivery marketplaces, Beaumont is confident.

“We can’t wait to stir up the food delivery market,” he added.