Food delivery service gets snapped up by Square

Square won’t say if it plans to cook your food, but it’s now equipped to help restaurants make deliveries as well as take payments.

The company said Monday that it bought Caviar, a restaurant delivery service that’s fairly new to Chicago. (We reported on its entrée here last month.) The brainchild of Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, Square makes a credit card reader that plugs into a smartphone or iPad. Its point-of-sale systems are used by businesses as diverse as Whole Foods Market, Bang Bang Pie Shop and taxi drivers.

Caviar CEO Jason Wang

Square isn’t saying how or if it will integrate Caviar into its business model, just that the two San Francisco-based companies will operate separately for the time being.

“Together we’ll double down our mission of delivering premium food through a premium delivery service with no compromises — giving buyers easy access to the food and restaurants they love so much,” Caviar CEO Jason Wang said in a blog post Monday.

Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. On Friday the New York Times, citing people with knowledge of the matter, estimated that Square is paying about $90 million for Caviar.

Founded in 2012, Caviar fancies itself a discerning online ordering platform, tapping only restaurants with top Yelp ratings and providing professional photographs along with each menu item.

In Chicago that means delivery from restaurants like Publican Quality Meats, La Sirena Clandestina and Carriage House. The fee on top of the menu prices is $9.99 plus an 18 percent tip. (There’s a $4.99 delivery promotion underway at the moment.)

Caviar says it’s different from Chicago-based GrubHub because it provides the drivers to cover a huge delivery area: from roughly Devon Avenue to the South Loop and as far west as Logan Square. Restaurants on GrubHub use their own drivers in smaller delivery zones.

How to get braised pork belly and truffled eggs delivered almost anywhere in the city

Hey, big tipper! (That’s you, Chicago.)