Sustainable successes in third-party food delivery operations in the digital platform era

In the digital era, third-party food delivery operations are very popular all around the world. However, to achieve a sustainable operation for food delivery businesses is a challenging issue. Motivated by the fact that there is a lack of consolidated view towards the topic in the literature, we conduct a systematic literature review to identify how to achieve a sustainable operation for third-party food delivery and highlight the recent advances in this important area with the discussion of real-world practices. In this study, first, we review the relevant literature and apply the triple bottom line (TBL) framework to classify prior studies into economic sustainability, social sustainability, environmental sustainability, and multi-dimensional sustainability. We then identify three major research gaps, including inadequate investigation on the restaurant's preferences and decisions, superficial understanding on the environmental performance, and limited examination on the multi-dimensional sustainability in the third-party food delivery operations. Finally, based on the reviewed literature and observed industrial practices, we propose five future areas that deserve an in-depth further investigation. They are namely applications of digital technologies, behaviors and decisions of the restaurants, risk management, TBL, and post-coronavirus pandemic.

Automated summary

Third-party food delivery operations are popular in the digital era, but achieving sustainable operation is a challenge. This study conducts a literature review to identify how to achieve sustainable operation and highlights recent advances in this area through real-world practices. The review classifies prior studies into economic, social, environmental, and multi-dimensional sustainability. Three research gaps are identified, such as inadequate investigation on restaurant preferences and decisions, limited understanding of environmental performance, and insufficient examination of multi-dimensional sustainability. Five future areas for in-depth investigation are proposed based on the literature and observed practices, including digital technology applications, restaurant behaviors and decisions, risk management, triple bottom line perspective, and post-pandemic considerations.