Postmates is scrapping its 15-minute food delivery service for the summer

Food delivery is a hard business - and it's even harder when it needs to be delivered within 15 minutes.

That was the promise that Postmates made with its Pop service, which launched eight months ago in San Francisco and in April in Manhattan. Customers who ordered from a short list of options could get food delivered within minutes.

But for at least the past week, all Postmates Pop dishes in Manhattan have been listed as "sold out," meaning that the service was effectively defunct.

"We're actually in the process of phasing Pop out for the summer. There will be limited supply until the end of the week but for the summer months, our focus will be on our Plus and Anywhere merchants. An improved version of Pop will be back in the fall," a Postmates spokesperson told Business Insider.

After Business Insider contacted Postmates, it put up a blog post detailing the changes.

Postmates' biggest competitor for instant food delivery is Uber, which killed its UberEats instant delivery service in April.

But UberEats Instant Delivery made a little bit of a return on Thursday.

UberEats customers in New York received an email promoting three "California-style" menu items "curated by Blink-182," the pop-punk band.

I ordered a Blink-182 salad and it arrived within two minutes. My receipt says it was an "instant delivery."

"We use Instant Delivery for special pop ups, just like the Blink 182 lunches. So the concept of Instant Delivery will always be something that we'll have for UberEATS," an Uber spokesperson told Business Insider.