the problem is that you have to have constant stream of orders to justify having people who deliver on payroll. Uber basically has people who deliver and then rent them to restaurants so they never have a problem of constant load.

+1 We recently ordered food from a Chinese restaurant that insisted on their own in house app and went as far as pulling themselves off Uber eats.

We gave them the benefit of the doubt and tried the in house delivery service - food took ~2 hours to arrive, presumably because their throughput to fulfil orders was capped by the number of drivers they could afford to hire full time - it was like going back to the days of every place having delivery men.

UberEats usually takes ~35 minutes for reference.

Why would McDonald's want to do the delivery if Uber volunteers to do it losing money?

Exploiting a business partner that is operating at a loss is a bad move when said partner is providing a significant part of your revenue. You are placing that revenue in jeopardy without good reason.

But in the McDonalds/Uber case I don't think that Uner is imortant enough to McDonalds.

How does the product/revenue work when McDonald's are all franchises - does McD corporate have a first-order incentive to worry about delivery revenue?

I think they probably know they can't do it anywhere near the "cost" that Uber eats charges. It's low value orders so not much comission (my guess) and the delivery fee doesn't cover what they pay the drivers. Plus all the bad PR of running a "gig economy" fleet.

They have 247 delivery in a lot of Asian markets - and I know first hand for at least more than 10 years in China so it's not like McD HQ don't have the business experience of launching the product...

Yeah I'm from Malaysia and we have McDelivery for as long as I can remember.

Imagine my surprise when I first went to Europe and found out that McDonald's is not 24/7 and doesn't do delivery.

They do. Google "mcdelivery" - it's all through south east asia.

McDelivery is the name of the global initiative and it is implemented differently in different countries. In the US, McDelivery is fulfilled by Uber Eats.

Many fast food restaurant chains deliver in South East Asia. It's a bit different because fast food is not the cheapest option there, but it's a step up from street food.

Bad idea. Overhead from running your own delivery service is high, and the profit wouldn't be more than using the existing network of delivery services. It would probably be negative.

It does in parts of the world where costs are low. Over here it makes sense for them to let Uber/VCs subsidize the operation.

I'm noticing more chains offering delivery, I wouldn't be surprised if McDonald's is next.