Disruptions of Food Catering Ecosystems Through Online Food Delivery Platforms—Evidence From Northern Africa

ABSTRACT Today's food ecosystem meets the needs of customers for quick and simple dining options, making it more and more pertinent but also more competitive. Organisations are responding to customer demands for sustainability and healthy living by implementing suitable practices and processes to change the way customers use to obtain food. In this context, the technological advancements through the integration of online food delivery platforms during the Covid‐Pandemic have had a particularly disruptive effect, broadening restaurant outreach and facilitating home ordering and delivery. Online food delivery platforms have nowadays established deeper interconnections with different food ecosystem actors, resulting in novel operative practices in the food ecosystem. Although ecosystem research has already addressed the case of food, it still remains empirically unaddressed how online food delivery platforms disrupt food ecosystems and restructure inter‐firm coopetition. To cover this gap, we investigate the food ecosystem in Casablanca, which can be considered a revelatory case, due to the importance of hospitality and eating together in local culture. We present insights from interviews with different food ecosystem actors coping with the manner online food delivery platforms have revolutionised coopetition. Our study enables us to recognise the evolution of delivery services, and its impacts on all parties, with the integration of innovative digital technology and improved platform features, allowing us to visualise the new competitive and cooperative models, by focusing on the online food delivery platform's role in reshaping them, including challenges and also stakeholder approaches to fit in the new food ecosystem.