Contribution to the Sustainability Challenges of the Food-Delivery Sector: Finding from the Deliveroo Italy Case Study

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I liked this paper and would like to compliment the authors for an interesting and relevant study of linkages between food delivery and sustainability. I have some recommendations, however: 

The interview was used as a primary method to collect information. In lines 174-180, you list the topics discussed during the interviews. Please emphasize two issues: 1) were all four interviews structured in a similar way along those six sections? 2) was there any scale used to assess the significance of each of the six factors and to compare the evaluations made by the four experts?

In the paper title, you say about challenges to sustainability. In the introduction, it would be good to 1) discuss what sustainability is (in relation to food supply), 2) present your definition of sustainability in food supply and delivery, and 3) summarize the challenges (a list, a table, anything). Then, in the Discussion, you could discuss how your findings fit these challenges.

I do not see a specific rationale in separating the Introduction into sections, they could be easily merged.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

I would like to thank you for the time you put for the evaluation of our manuscript titled “Contribution to the sustainability challenges of the food-delivery sector: finding from the Deliveroo Italy case study” and for your precious comments and suggestions.  

We modified our paper in order to address your comments and suggestions. All changes are clearly highlighted using track changes function in the manuscript.

Below your comments and our replies.

Sincerely,

The Authors

I liked this paper and would like to compliment the authors for an interesting and relevant study of linkages between food delivery and sustainability. 

AR: Thank you very much for appreciating our study.

I have some recommendations, however:     

The interview was used as a primary method to collect information. In lines 174-180, you list the topics discussed during the interviews. Please emphasize two issues: 1) were all four interviews structured in a similar way along those six sections? 2) was there any scale used to assess the significance of each of the six factors and to compare the evaluations made by the four experts? 

AR: Thank you very much for your suggestion according to which we emphasized that we used a semi-structured interview (Lines 195-197).

AR: In particular, we used open-ended questions and not a scale allowing us to compare for the six-factor studied, the evaluation of the four respondents

In the paper title, you say about challenges to sustainability. In the introduction, it would be good to 1) discuss what sustainability is (in relation to food supply), 2) present your definition of sustainability in food supply and delivery, and 3) summarize the challenges (a list, a table, anything). Then, in the Discussion, you could discuss how your findings fit these challenges.          

AR: Thank you very much for your comment according to which we emphasized in section "introduction" the concept of sustainability in the food delivery sector (lines 50-55), included a definition of sustainability for this specific sector (lines 81-85). In addition, we summarized the main challenges that emerged in previous studies (lines 71-80). These main challenges were discussed in the section discussion and conclusions (lines 317-320 and 347-355)

I do not see a specific rationale in separating the Introduction into sections, they could be easily merged.

AR: According to your suggestion we removed the sub-sections in the first paragraph.

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors investigate the factors which enable and/or hinder the adoption of sustainable strategies in the food delivery sector, analyzing a key player —Deliveroo— and particularly focusing on adopting electro-mobility and reducing emissions. They find that while there is a strong commitment from the company to move towards sustainability targets, there is also a need for institutions to become even more involved to enable this.

I find the issue interesting and timely. The article addresses a growing societal demand. I think the methodology is appropriate and the paper is overall well-written. However, I miss the results based on the secondary data collected to achieve data triangularization, to which the authors refer in the data collection and analysis section. In my opinion, including the secondary data could improve a lot the article.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

I would like to thank you for the time you put for the evaluation of our manuscript titled “Contribution to the sustainability challenges of the food-delivery sector: finding from the Deliveroo Italy case study” and for your precious comments and suggestions.  

We modified our paper in order to address your comments and suggestions. All changes are clearly highlighted using track changes function in the manuscript.

Below your comments and our replies.

Sincerely,

The Authors

The authors investigate the factors which enable and/or hinder the adoption of sustainable strategies in the food delivery sector, analyzing a key player —Deliveroo— and particularly focusing on adopting electro-mobility and reducing emissions. They find that while there is a strong commitment from the company to move towards sustainability targets, there is also a need for institutions to become even more involved to enable this. I find the issue interesting and timely. The article addresses a growing societal demand. I think the methodology is appropriate and the paper is overall well-written.      

AR: Thank you very much for appreciating our study

However, I miss the results based on the secondary data collected to achieve data triangularization, to which the authors refer in the data collection and analysis section. In my opinion, including the secondary data could improve a lot the article.     

AR: Thank you very much for your comments according to which we improved our study considers other secondary data on the topic. In particular, to the secondary data of the original version (references 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 65, 66) we added other secondary data (references 56, 57, 63, 64), allowing us to reinforce our results.

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

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