> For myself, I usually prefer to just go and pick up myself; that's almost always the fastest option.
Most people don't care about getting the absolute fastest option, or if they do, they will still compromise for convenience.
[1] https://www.thestreet.com/story/13248764/1/amazons-got-its-s...
In your mind if Amazon was optimising for their convenience alone they'd just pocket your money and not bother to ever deliver anything? Because that would the most convenient option for them.
That's called fraud and isn't generally considered a business model so much as a criminal enterprise
Your assumption runs contrary to the core idea of Amazon. Customer experience is the absolute most important thing.
Can you give some examples of times when Amazon HASN'T put the desires of the vast majority of customers first?
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2015/10/01/amazon_blocks...
For people with small kids, driving to pick up food can be a huge production, with car seats, diaper bags, strollers, etc. Curbside pickup helps, but delivery is so much easier, and sometimes just as fast.
When I cook it usually takes an hour or so. So getting food delivered frees up that hour.
Sometimes theres no dinner ready and in the hecticness of life, we forget to cook the night before so we get into an unfortunate situation of either going hungry until the game ends or cooking and miss the game.
Delivery solves this issue. Take out is definitely faster, but that usually means missing part of whatever game is on. My case obviously isn't universal but given the popularity of sports and how primetime games are only an hour or so after you get home from work, Id think there's a non negligible amount of people with similar situations.
It's not about being the fastest, though, it's about being more convenient.
And even fastest depends on the area. Where I live (near a city centre) I can chose among 300 restaurants from a centralized meta-ordering service, and have their food delivered in 20-40 minutes.
It will take me 20 minutes to even decide to get up, find my keys, drive around, order and wait for the food.
For myself, I usually prefer to just go and pick up myself; that's almost always the fastest option.