Food Delivery Is Magical Thinking

"Will" is doing double duty in that sentence. Maybe with some futuristic delivery tech (Rainbows End-style pneumatic cannons?) that would be possible. Today, delivery costs are covered by VCs and by paying drivers less than minimum wage. (58% of California voters approve!)

The competition mentality in hospitality businesses is cut-throat and deeply ingrained. If they saw a profit margin, they would attempt to push the delivery service out of the market. If I'm a regular at Toby's Popular Take Away, it seems unlikely that Toby would sit quietly while Uber made money. He would try to muscle in on the distribution too.

It is unlikely that the market share they are fighting for is defensible. A lot of people aren't fighting for it at the moment because there is no profit to be found. The app part might get commoditised or done in a community manner or by some random dude as a side project, it wouldn't be too hard to get local businesses on side with an idea like that. It doesn't need to be a big company.

Unlikely. At least, not a non-exploitative delivery cost. Beyond the employee cost and mileage, there’s the fact that (in the US) delivery drivers are also tipped. They’re also probably more expensive for a company to insure.

I wouldn't be so sure of that. delivery is inherently less profitable for the restaurant. a single employee can serve many more dine-in and especially take-out customers in an hour than they can as a delivery driver. at the same time, you are throwing maintenance and insurance for a vehicle into the equation. you can push a lot of this cost onto the driver, but not all of it. I also doubt that the location savings are that substantial. you don't need to lease the prime real estate that everyone walks by, but you still need to be within a 15-20 minute drive of your customer base. any property within 20 minutes of a dense area tends to be expensive to rent.

there are already a few take-out/delivery only places in my area. the only ones that seem to be doing well have pretty bad food for the price.

Business model is gaining popularity as food delivery apps gain a foothold in Canada

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/ghost-kitchen-calgary...

In this covid times when I don't want to cook I simply go downstairs and order a take out from one of the tens of restaurants around, where I can get the same quality of a dine in at half the price while also supporting local businesses that are suffering.

Food delivery is overrated in my opinion and also unfair to workers.

The only reason I found to order from a delivery company is to skip the waiting line at McDonald's those rare times I feel like having junk food on a Sunday night while watching a movie and don't move from the couch.

But if I want a good pasta I simply order to the guy at the restaurant below my home from the window, don't even need to phone them, and they give me the food in a regular dish, not some lousy plastic wrap that I just return when I have time.

So for takeout, I just order food, and often just drink tap water. I also assume I'm not the only one doing that, so for the restaurants, a significant part of their profit dries up.

They'll have to adjust to that somehow, most likely by increasing food prices, or by cutting into the extra profit from rent differences that you have laid out. If they do exist, I'm not yet convinced.

That also means that there is less cash around to go to (incredibly expensive) takeout compared to cooking rice & beans at home (where people are now for much longer, without a commute).

At some point only one or two will be left standing and that's when they'll start to make a profit.

There is a very big single reason the model for last minute order has limited efficiency: how many stops can a delivery driver make before the last delivery is unacceptably late? Basically the suburbs are out of the game, places with prevalent traffic lights are out of the game, that mostly lives bikes/mopeds in the hearts of old world cities.

I don’t even get delivery directly from a restaurant, preferring to pick up takeaway myself as I can be more assured of having the food have the least possible time sitting around getting cold and mushy. If I were sick is the only remotely common case where I’ll order delivery.

Even there, I’m perfectly capable to call my local restaurant. If someone ends up dominating this field, it’ll be because the local restaurants gave up an enormous advantage they started with.

I don’t see any amount of “optimized route planning” that’s going to get customers food that’s sat around less, tastes better, or costs less which are the only things I can see durably disrupting the “I give you money and you give me food” market.

Uber and Lyft (the progenitors of this model) have been losing money hand over fist for over a decade now, and are both public companies and are still losing money.

Food delivery is incredibly unprofitable (because of the last-mile problem and the fact that it needs to be quick), and Uber have forced otherwise profitable companies to compete with their unprofitable model.

Here's a good review: https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2019/11/11/1573464859000/Deliver...

The bigger they are (WeWork, Uber) the more satisfying they are to watch get “fixed”.

The market will eventually find the price, fear not.

Plenty of other problems, but our urban/suburban sprawl presents challenges.

A fairly new addition to this are what I would say are "food aggragator services", like: https://www.damejidlo.cz/en/

The provide a common interface for restaurants that cooperate with them in a given area, so you just search the street or location you are in and it will show you the restaurants that provide deliveries in that area & their menus. The main added value is in this case convenience - you can just click what you want and have ti delivered without calling someone. They also have their own cars so they can offer deliveries from restaurants that otherwise don't offer deliveries. Also they make it possible to pay for most deliveries by card.

The downside is of course that not every restaurant that does deliveries is in their system & substantial cut they are taking from the money that goes to the restaurant to cover their services. Which most likely explains why there are restaurants missing in their list.

These delivery/logistics companies are really trying to be marketing companies rather than behind the scenes logistics.

Customers go to the delivery company to order their food rather than to the restaurant. Restaurants pay fees just to be listed. Delivery company gets a cut of every sale AND they charge the customer a delivery fee AND a "service" fee, which I've found to be roughly 2x the tax rate (which is very high here already). Restaurants a lot of the time make menu items more expensive to offset the cut of the sale that the delivery company takes... which also makes the "service fee" charged to the customer higher. Don't forget, still need to tip the driver, because they are not being paid a living wage.

It is a shit business. Companies trying to be unicorns and don't want to be relegated to being behind the scenes. Even with all the insane fees, they still don't make money.

Make a habit of asking the restaurant how they'd prefer you to place your order.

No you don't. You go to a store and buy processed ingredients that have satisfied numerous legal requirements and inspections to ensure product safety, which are enforced by a vast bureaucracy. The store you bought your ingredients from offered many product options, including food from other countries. In the medieval period you would not be able to afford anything that was not grown further than a few miles from your home unless you were rich.

You prepared those ingredients in your home, which has electricity and running water, and a stove and oven that you can turn on with a knob instead of starting a wood fire. You don't share your home with livestock.

If you are unwilling to prepare your meals with a knife (even though all of the meat has already been cut into "cuts of meat" for you), you can buy food processors, blenders, meat slicers, and other contraptions to make things as easy as possible.

To say that your food preparation is similar to the way people did it before the Industrial Revolution is ridiculous.

Which is quite an enjoyable activity and not a relic of the past.

Pre made food has been everywhere around you, you just didn't notice.

When was the last time you made your own bacon or olive oil or sugar, pepper, salt, etc etc?

(I grew up in a farm, we made all of that, except for the salt)