Want fries with that? A food-delivery and quick-commerce service in Spain, Glovo, is testing a package of social features after users ordered mostly ready-to-eat food there.

It's also enabling restaurant partners to upload food preparation videos in spicing up the user experience by being able to push a feed of rich media at its users.

Glovo says that the new social features will enable users to discover and connect with friends that are also in the application. Powered by matching a user's phone contacts with existing Glovo users and sending permission requests to connect, it will enable users who opt in to share recommendations and discover restaurants that their friends have liked.

The other new feature called "Picks" lets Glovo users save and curate favorite restaurants by creating and managing lists. Picks/lists can be private or shareable with friends.

Food videos feature: The app is copying the popular social media apps' vertical feed in the form of TikTok to give restaurants another marketing opportunity --- a showreel of stuff they have on their menu.

The company says Glovo is not producing any of the food videos itself, but it does apply guidelines to submissions from restaurants, which the company says are intended to ensure high quality-it says it's had close to 400 submissions so far. "The content is strictly focused on the food offered and other kinds of promotions are not allowed," it noted.

Updates to the app were previewed by Glovo at its new annual product event, Glovo Next, and will first be rolled out in the firm's home city of Barcelona before becoming available in other cities in Spain this month. Assuming everything goes according to plan, the firm said it would roll it out further in all the other 22 countries in which it operates.

Food decisions just got even easier?
While the quick commerce category overall has had something of a bumpy ride over the last couple of years, going through something of a correction post-pandemic, Glovo, owned by Germany's Delivery Hero, is keen to stress that new updates aren't responding to any waning consumer interest in its delivery app.

Glovo stands out with an excellent GMV growth trajectory, +44% FY2022 vs FY2024, and strong performance across all countries," Glovo vice president product Daniel Alonso told TechCrunch.

He said he expects the company to become eBITDA-positive by some 10 percentage points compared with how the firm was running itself before being acquired by Delivery Hero late in 2021 — which he ascribes to continued growth in the profitable markets and to scaling up the less mature markets.

Glovo is expected to become adjusted EBITDA-positive in the second half of this year, Alonso added.

It also told us that its quick commerce division, which sells same-day grocery items, flowers, books, pet supplies, toiletries, and electronics picked out of stock ranged at dark stores located at the heart of the city, is growing at a clip of more than 50% year over year.

So, if growth on its pretty straightforward, transactional app is strong, why experiment with layering in social media stickiness on top? Alonso says this is about Glovo continuing its brand building efforts and looking for ways to help users with the tricky decision of what meal to order in tonight.

These features, the company hopes, will somehow improve food discoverability by tapping friend-based recommendations, it said. "We believe that building a social network inside Glovo will help users to make decisions and more in food ordering," said Alonso. "We have built an MVP to see whether this is the case, and time will tell if this is going to be successful.".

Adding up, he added: "Deciding what to order can become overwhelming with so many options". Videos discovery wall adds to that a dynamic visual element at food exploration and thereby makes the whole process easier and more engaging. So, with these videos created by local restaurants, a better idea of how dishes look and how they are prepared will be made to the users for more informed choices.

On the permissions and privacy side, Alonso claimed: "Glovo does not share or upload any data without explicit consent."

He said a user must actively grant access to their contact list in order to add friends — who must themselves provide express consent to connecting with the requested user before any information about their food delivery habits gets shared with friends.

"To see which of your friends have rated positively or have placed an order, you need to ensure that they become your Glovo friends," he noted, adding, "The shared data includes restaurants the user's friends have ordered from in the last three months."

Then, according to Alonso, users can also withdraw the consent for access to their contacts and delete friends from their social list at any moment after the contact has been added.

There is also, according to Alonso, an enabling of only those contacts who are also Glovo users to be invited to connect, so this is not that specific (notorious) growth hacking trick.