LivingSocial Gives ‘Takeout’ a Try

by InvestorPlace Staff | March 29, 2012 9:47 am

LivingSocial is trying something new to get an edge in the highly competitive daily-deals business: an Internet food-ordering service.

Called “Takeout & Delivery,” the service has been launched[1] in 26 U.S. locations, including major cities like Chicago and San Francisco, with plans to eventually expand into New York and L.A., among others.

The service, which will work for both pickup and delivery orders, should be popular, especially for time-strapped consumers. The service will be free, but users must have a LivingSocial account and put a credit card on file to pay for orders. LivingSocial then will get a cut of revenues from whatever business it generates.

Still, there already are a variety of strong competitors in the space, such as Grubhub and Seamless. And, just because they can afford to, companies like Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN[2]), Google (NASDAQ:GOOG[3]) might be threats to jump into the market, as could daily-deals rival Groupon (NASDAQ:GRPN[4]).

Still, this could be a way for LivingSocial to generate some extra revenues and create more customer loyalty. Such things will be critical if the company wants to eventually come public.

— Tom Taulli, InvestorPlace

Source URL: https://investorplace.com/2012/03/livingsocial-gives-takeout-a-try/

---