Integrated food delivery problem considering both single-order and multiple order deliveries

The global food delivery market is rapidly growing, and leading companies in Korea have recently introduced a single-order delivery service, wherein a courier picks up customers’ food and delivers it immediately without visiting other places. Although this delivery service is associated with a high delivery fee, it is popular among customers who prefer fresh and fast delivery, unlike multiple-order delivery services, which handle orders from several customers simultaneously. Nevertheless, the coexistence of both delivery services has led couriers to prefer single-order deliveries because they are more profitable, resulting in intensified competition among couriers. Furthermore, there are cases where the courier visits other restaurants or customers without immediately delivering food to customers who use the single-order delivery service, making it a multiple-order delivery service, which leads to customer dissatisfaction. To address these issues, this study proposes a mixed-integer linear programming model for optimizing order assignment and routing in an environment where both single-order and multiple-order deliveries coexist. The tabu search was used to solve medium-sized and large-sized problems, and several food delivery models were configured by referencing the operating methods of the platforms. Through experiments, we demonstrate that the proposed model is more efficient in properly delivering food to customers for both single and multiple orders than other food delivery models. We also analyzed the impact of various variables through a sensitivity analysis, providing insights into the platform.