The spot, created by Mother LA, shows Martha teaching Gen Yers how to make dishes like carbonara and Thai chicken in the usual cookery show setting. Atypically, for a Stewart cooking segment, things go awry as one amateur chef discovers his flatmate ate all the eggs, and another ends up forgetting the sweaters she kept in the oven, which end up getting incinerated. A flummoxed Stewart instead suggests they “Postmate it” and order delivery. The popular “anti-Amazon” service – according to CEO Bastian Lehmann – added over 1,000 cities in 2019, to a total of over 3,500 in 50 states, and currently partners with over 500,000 restaurants, retailers and grocery and convenience stores.

Gen Y is known to love food. But research shows they are lacking cooking skills, with less than one-third of them saying they feel unconfident in the kitchen, and one in three tending to stick to a handful of dishes they know well. As Gen Y's lifestyle and precarious social conditions don’t really match the homely, ready-for-everything Martha Stewart narrative, delivery offers a valuable and convenient alternative. This ties in with research from the USDA’s Economic Research Service showing “the clear, overarching trend with millennials is that spending on groceries is down, and spending on food outside the home is up.” Brands should take note as food is a vital component of Gen Zers’ social lives. It’s where they splash out the most, accounting for 23% of their spend versus a surprisingly lower amount (20%) on clothes.

Edoardo Biscossi is a behavioural analyst at Canvas8. He has a degree in Politics and an MSc in Consumer Behaviour. He’s interested in culture, people, art, the future, the niche, and the mass.