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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

Do DoorDash and Grubhub have the same business model? DoorDash handles logistics end-to-end; as I recall (it's been a long time since I've used Grubhub), they at one point did not, but were instead just a market front-end to a variety of different delivery services.

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I use Grubhub regularly, they almost always have their own drivers. For a few pizza places that had existing delivery services, they're just a front end onto the pizza place's delivery service.

May be regional. I'm in the Bay Area.

End to end logistics would be employing the drivers and owning and maintaining the cars used to pick up and deliver.

Whatever term you want to use, at least at one point my understanding was that Grubhub didn't actually handle the deliveries.

I have no idea if this remains true and I'm not suggesting this is why Grubhub failed; I'm asking.

I have never used any of these delivery websites, but I assumed grubhub was fungible with Ubereats/Doordash/Instacart. All of them being websites that pay independent contractors to pickup and deliver things.

https://careers.grubhub.com/drivers

Maybe this was different per region, but I used GrubHub when it first launched in Chicago and even back then they had "their own drivers" (contractors same as Uber/DoorDash).

However, I wouldn't be surprised if their roll out involved capturing businesses that already offered delivery drivers until they had a critical mass of drivers in the region or something.

I could 100% just be wrong about this!

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