No, it's not just catching on. In New York City, for example, thousands of restaurants of all kinds have web sites as well as taking orders for delivery over the phone. That has been the norm for several years now. I doubt there is any other city that offers as much diverse food delivery at all hours as New York. Pizza, barbeque, chinese, mexican, sushi, thai, indian, italian, vegetarian/vegan, turkish, burgers, etc. can be ordered for delivery to your door in many neighborhoods. It's my sense that well over half of all the Manhattan restaurants deliver, too -- probably about 3/4 do. The average place in Manhattan that takes orders will deliver until about 10PM, and plenty deliver until midnight. Only a few (but some!) do 24 hours delivery.
In the last few years there have been an increasing number of web services that will take orders for lots of different restaurants, since most of them are not chain restaurants -- that's what the article is about. Even those have been around for a few years now. The NY Times is just catching on.