Daily email and local deals site LivingSocial announced this morning that it's diving into the local delivery game with thousands of restaurants in 26 cities nationwide with its new Takeout & Delivery service, putting it squarely in competition with services like Seamless.com and GrubHub. LivingSocial dubs the move an "Instant Pivot", but in reality it's going to continue the Groupon game offering local deals at the local shooting range or spa treatment. The company has been testing out some of the functionality over the past few months with its Instant service, which will be merged into the new features.
The service itself is pretty straightforward, giving you the options of location and what type of cuisine you're looking for. You can also search by cuisine type, and being that this is from LivingSocial, look for local restaurants with specials. Even though the company is well-established in NYC, New Yorkers are out of luck while Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, and about 20 other major US cities can start ordering today. Local takeout and delivery is hardly the most novel business model — even if it is connected to the web and built into your apps — but it is a way for LivingSocial to distinguish itself from the glut of daily deal services offered by everyone from Groupon to Google.