Tokyo’s Food and Delivery Apps

Mar 28, 2023

Tokyo’s Food and Delivery Apps

We’ve all noticed that Tokyo has a surplus of delivery persons riding around the metropolis on bicycles, but have you ever wondered what they were delivering? Being Japan, it’s most often food in those carry cases. With all the dining options from fine dining to alleyway ramen, you may be wondering why people would need food via delivery, but at some point, you will realize why it exists seemingly everywhere. Even though you’re in Tokyo, one of the world’s best cities to dine in, you’ll eventually run out of meal ideas or want to stay home and relax. Maybe you’re not in the mood for crowds, lines, or smoke. Enter a plethora of delivery services. Even with language barriers, there is plenty of options for an English speaker to start making orders everywhere, from your favorite curry shop to that sandwich shop that always has a line out front. Over the years, multiple service providers have come and gone, but a few big players are still going strong. We’ve compiled some of the best English options and significant players in the market broadly if you are comfortable navigating in Japanese and want even more selection.

Uber Eats

Yep, the same Uber famous for turning ordinary folks and their cars into on-demand taxis has re-purposed their app for food delivery services in Tokyo. The ride-sharing app never panned out here, but food delivery sells like nobody’s business. If you’ve already set up an Uber account, things will look similar for you when you log in, aside from the menu, complete with the GPS tracking of your delivery to your home. Central Tokyo and a good portion of the greater metropolitan area are covered. Better, though, is that their service area is getting larger all the time.

www.ubereats.com/jp-en 

Wolt

Wolt is both a new player and an old player simultaneously. The Finnish company acquired the old standby Doordash last year and is now powering food delivery all around Japan. Wolt’s easy-to-use English interface and an easily understandable delivery fee system are quickly gaining the service popularity in Japan.

wolt.com/en/jpn 

Demaekan

This app boasts over 10,000 stores linked to its system; not just restaurants but services such as handyman and cleaning can be ordered, making it the app with the most amount of services (or so it’s advertised). They’ve tied up with Amazon Pay here, meaning you can use your Amazon account and those handy Amazon prepaid cards found in most convenience stores to pay for things. The iOS version also lets you use Apple Pay, Line Pay, and PayPay.

demae-can.com

円周率３パーセント, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons