UberEats, McDonald's and DoorDash were the the top 3 most-downloaded apps in the food and beverage category in 2020, according to Apptopia, a firm that tracks App Store data. Starbucks, which took the sixth spot on the list, was the only other restaurant brand besides McDonald's to make the global Top 10 list. The rest were food delivery apps.

The data, created and written by Adam Blacker and Madeline Lenahan, revealed the most downloaded apps in the United States as well as the world in a variety of categories, including shopping, travel and entertainment.

Each data set followed a couple specific rules, including:

  • Combined iOS + Google Play data except for data from China, which was iOS only.
  • If an app has a "lite" version, that data was included in the respective app's data.

Globally, the top three apps in the food and beverage category in 2020 were the same in 2019. In the US, category, however, Instacart boosted into a top spot from a very strong surge in downloads in March and April.

A noteworthy aspect of the study was that McDonald's, Starbucks and Just Eat Takeaway, have different apps for different countries, so Apptopia combined them all but did not combine owned properties with a different namesake. For example, downloads of the Seamless app were not included in Grubhub's downloads, and Grubhub's downloads were not included in Just Eat Takeaway's downloads.

Another category that restaurant operators may find interesting was the the delivery category, in which the authors studied apps whose primary function was the delivery of prepared food. That explains why Instacart didn't make the list, for example.

"And yes, you can order delivery through an app like McDonald's, but that is not its primary function," the company wrote in its blog. DoorDash has taken over Uber Eats as the most downloaded food delivery app in the U.S. this year. It comes in as the second-most downloaded app globally even though it is only available in the U.S., Canada and Australia.

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