Larry Magid: Square Purchases Bay-Area Startup—Caviar; Enters Food Delivery Business

SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS)— San Francisco mobile-payment company, Square, has bought a Bay Area startup that delivers meals from restaurants called, Caviar, but why?

It dawned on me that Square is already in the business of helping restaurants and other merchants transact payments. So why not add a delivery service where you pre-pay? PayPal is already partnering with a company, Eat24, in a similar fashion. To me it makes sense if you're in the business of collecting money for restaurants to go ahead and take it a step further and go ahead and deliver the food.

Caviar could be compared to companies like Munchery or Waiter.com (there are plenty of others) that allow you to go online or use a mobile app to pick the food you want to eat from a variety of restaurants and have a delicious meal delivered to your door.

This obviously caters to the busy, on-the-go crowd that doesn't have time to wait in line at the grocery store or may not be into cooking, which can also be very time consuming.
What I like about ordering online or from apps is that you can see the menu in full as opposed to doing it over the phone. You can see the prices and get ideas.

We're really continuing to outsource many aspects of our lives and this outsourcing of food is certainly no exception. In fact I just heard about another app available on iOS called Push for Pizza that was developed by a group of teens. Sounds like they've got the right idea at an early age.