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Comment by hanging | Hacker News Reader

  GrubHub... lost $33.4 million over the last 3 months. (In fairness: COVID-19.)

I don't understand the qualifier. Hasn't Covid-19 been a boon to delivery services? If they can't profit during these artificially beneficial market conditions (boosted demand and endless supply of minions to do delivery), how can they ever profit?

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They are engineered to take a loss. If market conditions improve they ramp up costs. It’s not a game to maximize profits yet, it’s a game of trying to maximize vale extracted from losses.

"We're losing money on every sale!"

"Don't worry, we'll make up for it in volume."

Is that from silicon valley? Because I have to say that Seinfeld (Kramer) already did that bit, hilariously, many years ago.

According to this post: https://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/we_...

the original use of the joke/phrase goes back to at least 1933 and likely further.

I'm guessing it's because of so many of the restaurants being closed in urban areas during the lockdown and people having less money to spend on things like takeout.

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