Fast food delivery San Francisco

California has weather and New York has delivery. Less than a decade ago, the few restaurant delivery options that existed in San Francisco were rarely anything you'd want to eat given the choice, and the idea of ordering in without having to go out and pick it up was more of a novelty than a regular occurrence.

But just as the San Francisco-based Uber transformed transportation in a city notorious for its residents' inability to flag a taxi, so too do a relatively new crop of companies — notably Postmates, Sprig, SpoonRocket, Caviar, and Munchery — aim to change delivery options, both in Bay Area and beyond. All five companies were founded and are still headquartered in San Francisco or Berkeley, even as they expand into cities across the United States. In 2014, the five services brought in a combined total of $78 million in funding. (Just last month, Postmates alone secured an additional $35 million.) But what, exactly, are these companies delivering? Is their proliferation a sign of changing food culture in the Bay Area and beyond? And why are they popping up now, after all these years of accepting SF's terrible delivery options fate?

Are apps' proliferation a sign of changing food culture in the Bay Area and beyond?

Mention instant delivery and San Francisco, and it's hard not to immediately think of Kozmo.com, the legendary service that launched in 1998 at the height of dot-com bubble. Whether you tried Kozmo or simply heard of it as a cautionary tale, the idea of getting people whatever they wanted, wherever they were in San Francisco ultimately failed spectacularly. But in retrospect, Kozmo.com was ahead of its time in tapping into a rich vein of the human condition: We want food, we sometimes want it in very specific ways, and we want it brought to us as quickly as possible.