In June, Dallas-based Wingstop Inc. inaugurated a conversational ordering platform on Twitter and Facebook Messenger that only required customers to send the word “order” to the brand to start the process.

Other restaurants were launching or experimenting with the platforms, variously called chatbot ordering, conversational ordering, social ordering or conversational commerce.

“Social ordering allows us now to actively reach out to consumers in the social media channels that they are already participating in,” said Flynn Dekker, Wingstop’s chief marketing officer. 

“We don’t require you to come to us; we’ll come you, in the two most popular social media channels,” he said. “You can transact your entire order and customize it all within the channels.”

Other brands soon embraced the so-called chatbots, including tests at Dallas-based casual-dining chains TGI Fridays and Pizza Hut.

In April, Irvine, Calif.-based Taco Bell Corp. began testing a TacoBot on the Slack real-time messaging platform. 

“Taco Bell is about food tailor-made for social consumption with friends, and that’s why integrating with a social communications platform like Slack makes perfect sense,” said Lawrence Kim, Taco Bell director of digital innovation, at the time. “TacoBot is the next best thing to having your own Taco Bell butler. And who wouldn’t want that?”

Delivery-only restaurants attracted the interest of investors in 2016.

Ando, the delivery-only restaurant from Momofuku founder David Chang, closed a $7 million funding round in November to expand the new company’s delivery reach throughout New York City. Chang also founded Maple, a New York City-based, delivery-only restaurant.

“Mobile technology has completely transformed our daily lives, and it’s certainly impacting the overall dining experience with the ease of delivery,” Chang said. 

Chang’s Momofuku and Expa, a San Francisco-based startup investment company created by Uber co-founder Garrett Camp, launched Ando in the spring.

For Ando, Momofuku provides the food made famous at its restaurants, such as ginger shrimp salad, chicken tenders and spicy tofu, and the culinary and back-of-house expertise. Expa provides the logistical, technical and startup background, along with delivery capabilities.

Ando uses data and analytics to examine how customers order food, how efficiently the kitchen is moving and the effectiveness of delivery partners.

Other entrepreneurs entered the delivery-only space as well.

At the National Restaurant Association’s Innovation Summit in Austin, Texas, in September, Jeremiah Green, co-founder and CEO of the Chicago-based Eat Purely Co., said his delivery-only restaurant company has doubled sales every month since debuting in March. Eat Purely promises organic meals delivered in 20 minutes.

And Pete Schatzberg, co-founder and CEO of the Brooklyn, N.Y.-based Green Summit Group, said he suspects food distributors like Sysco and US Foods may eventually look at providing home meal delivery services.

New York City-based Umi Kitchen, with backing from Union Square Hospitality Group’s Danny Meyer, enlists area home cooks to provide meals, ordered through an iOS app, that are delivered through the third-party service Postmates.

The platform was co-founded by Khalil Tawil and Hallie Meyer, Danny Meyer’s daughter. In February, they brought on former Tumblr engineering vice president Derek Gottfrid as a third co-founder to integrate Umi's technology into Postmates. 

With that pedigree, the Umi Kitchen app menu features four to seven options each evening, with users choosing the time slot in which they wish to have the meals delivered. Some have likened it to Etsy for dinner.

"I think very big picture, we want to affect a paradigm shift in how people eat," Tawil told Crain’s New York Business in September, when the platform launched broadly.

Umi Kitchen recruits home cooks, which it calls "umis,” through various channels, including culinary school networks and job boards. The company also reaches out to people who post photos of their home cooking on Instagram, which Meyer said was the best recruiting tool for the service so far. They are vetted and added to Umi Kitchen’s roster if they pass muster.

Meals are offered at three prices: $12, $14 and $16. Delivery is an additional $4, not including tip.

As of early fall, Umi Kitchen had raised $1.4 million. 

Umi meals also come with a low-tech, high-touch benefit: a handwritten note from the home cook who created it.

In early December, online-ordering monolith Amazon announced details of a new brick-and-mortar convenience store, to be called Amazon Go, to provide consumers with prepared foods to go, grocery essentials and convenience items, without requiring them to check out.

The 1,800-square-foot store, located in Seattle, is now open to Amazon employees who are using it in a beta test. The store will open to the public early in 2017. 

Seattle-based Amazon said the store uses proprietary technology that allows shoppers to take items and walk out — without checking out. They are billed later. 

“Our ‘Just Walk Out’ technology automatically detects when products are taken from or returned to the shelves and keeps track of them in a virtual cart,” Amazon said in a press release. “When you’re done shopping, you can just leave the store. Shortly after, we’ll charge your Amazon account and send you a receipt.” 

The company said Amazon Go offers ready-to-eat breakfast, lunch, dinner and snack options, as well as meal kits.