The delivery company’s summary also includes payment characteristics, with its data supports the findings of Mastercard’s annual Payment Experience Report, which found that the proportion of online credit card payments is steadily increasing and more people are saving their card details in the system.
The hot dishes ordered for breakfast, lunch and dinner do not greatly differ from each other: Pizza tops the list in the morning online shopping basket between 9 and 10 a.m., followed by burgers and Hungarian-styles dishes. The order is also similar for lunchtime baskets, but for dinnertime orders, Hungarian dishes lose their place to American specialties.
Overall, pizza and hamburgers are the most popular warm dishes: 27% of all hot food orders in the last year were for pizza and 21% for hamburgers. Hungarian dishes accounted for 9% of orders, while American delicacies accounted for 8%.
In Budapest, an average of HUF 300 more was spent on hot food per order than in the rest of the country, with dinner orders in the capital’s District II standing out most from the average. Residents of District XVII tended to spend more on lunch, while residents of District XXII spent the most on breakfast.
Students Order Most
The record for the “most orders from one area” was not set in Budapest, but in the university district of Debrecen, which made a total of 11,492 orders worth HUF 47 million in one year. The students in the town of nearly 200,000 mostly ordered pizza, while McDonald’s was the best-selling restaurant food.
Orders from students peaked in the exam period, when twice as many orders were placed as at other times of the year.
But the biggest overall customer was from the capital, where one customer ordered 140 beers and 130 snacks worth HUF 50,000 from Foodpanda. Beer is not the most popular product in the range offered by the delivery service, however: in the past year, the most popular items ordered were cheese sticks, semi-skimmed milk, sugar-free cola, bananas and chicken breast fillets. Buns, milk, mineral water and energy drinks from other supermarkets available on the platform were the most frequently added to the online basket.
The number of online payments has increased steadily over the past year, up 6% from 2021 to 86% overall, with 68% of shoppers saving their card details. The number who are digitally tipping is also growing, with hundreds of thousands of users tipping at least once in October this year alone, with an average value of HUF 200. The highest single tip was HUF 20,000.
The couriers worked hard for the recognition this year, with the fastest delivery taking an unbelievable 18 seconds for a chestnut puree and a soft drink. The most active courier worked 998 shifts in the year, for a total of 4,735 hours, so spent nearly every second hour delivering.
Wolt+ Now Available in Hungary
In related if seperate news, the Wolt+ delivery service is now available in Hungary, allowing subscribers to order from an unlimited number of connected restaurants and shops without a delivery fee.
Wolt+ is a renewable, monthly subscription that allows users to order from restaurants and shops connected to the service for a monthly subscription fee of HUF 1,490, with no delivery fee. The first month is a free trial period, during which customers can test the service free of charge.
The subscription fee is recouped on average after more than two orders per month, so regular Wolt users can access thousands of restaurants and shops at a much lower price, saving hundreds of forints per order.
The subscription service currently covers just Budapest, where customers can choose from more than 700 popular restaurants and shops. The minimum purchase value is HUF 3,000 for restaurant and retail orders and HUF 5,000 for food orders from supermarkets. The distance limit for deliveries is four kilometers. In the app, a W+ icon indicates merchants who have joined the service, making it easy to find places offering discounts.
Ákos Tajta, Wolt’s managing director for the Baltic States and Central Europe
Affordable Service
“It’s important for us that Wolt continues to offer an affordable service in the current economic climate: with the launch of Wolt+, our aim is to ensure that our customers can continue to enjoy the convenience of Wolt while saving money on the delivery charge for each order,” says Ákos Tajta, the firm’s managing director for the Baltic States and Central Europe.
Wolt’s subscription service has already been successfully launched in several countries, including Finland, the Baltic States, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
“We have seen that our users are keen to switch to Wolt+ because of the savings that can be made and the number of orders from subscribers is increasing. We are excited to launch the service in Hungary, which will make the convenience of home delivery provided by Wolt even more accessible to Hungarian users,” notes Tajta.
Among the partners that have joined are popular restaurants such as Padthai Wokbár, Pizza Me, Vapiano, Wasabi, and Zing. In the grocery sector, customers can order from Wolt’s own grocery chain, Wolt Market, as well as from Auchan, Príma and Tesco, but Wolt+ partners also include other shops such as Bortársaság, Lego, Szamos Marzipán and Unipatika.
This article was first published in the Budapest Business Journal print issue of December 16, 2022.
