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>Food delivery also isn’t very practical in developed country markets without a huge increase in productivity vs labor costs.

But pizza and chinese delivery was a thing in the US long before delivery apps were a thing. Clearly it was practical at some small scale in the US. I don't see any reason why it can't be expanded to other restaurants (eg. by sharing delivery drivers so a restaurant doesn't have to have an entire FTE on payroll).

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It wasn't bad before the gig-economy middlemen stepped in, in highschool i delievered pizzas and pocketed something like $2 + tips for each delivery (this was 20 something years ago )

it scaled pretty well, I would just take 3-4 orders per-ride depending on distance ended up with a decent chunk of change just from the weekends, and there was a decent amount of downtime and socializing waiting for pizzas to be cooked

with the gig stuff drivers are shuttleing between multiple resturants non-stop in ill-defined areas to random customers and probably walking away with less cash it's a stupid system

Ya it was a thing before when labor costs were cheaper. Will It remain a thing now? We still get delivery, some Chinese places don’t even bother with a dining room, but the costs keep increasing such that I don’t see it lasting for much longer.

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