Wait, why are those bad? How is a "waiter" as a middle-man between my mouth and the restaurant better? If you're a restaurant owner, aren't these apps (pun not intended) better for you? You could just have a bunch of delivery people and fire all your wait staff? I'm missing something here, what am I missing?
The Uber Eats site is very vague about all this:
"How much does it cost?
We collect a service fee, which is calculated as a percentage of your sales on Uber Eats. Have more questions? Fill out the interest form and a Uber Eats team member will be happy to answer them for you."
It is hugely unfair, as the restaurant-owners get caught in a winner-takes-all situation for the middle-men, and are forced into a race-to-the-bottom.
I think it serves well as a prototypical example of what's wrong with the digital economy. This is something everybody should be thinking about. Some people are already reporting about it though: [1]. Quoting:
> Our focus here is the “uberisation” of the economy by which we mean the destructuration of the value chain by new intermediaries which, through the use of digital technologies (mainly apps, smartphones and online payment systems), capture part of the value at the detriment of traditional operators. Not only taxi companies, hotels, restaurants, retailers, but also insurers, banks, travelling services (beyond the reservation services) , operators in the agri-food chain, etc. are likely to be challenged, with many more sectors thereafter.
[1] http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/newsroom/image/docum...
2) Your food becomes a faceless commodity
Yes they are. Enter food-ordering apps that are a middle-man between restaurant and customer. Now the margins are even lower. And there's no way out, as these apps become the de facto portal for these customers. The misery of the Uber-concept is not restricted to transportation.