To be fair I said 10-20 mi round trip

While I don't doubt your positive experience, it would be atypical for a suburb to have significant independent restaurants within 5mi of any given point, at least in most of the United States.

In the case of chain restaurants in particular, the food isn't always coming from the place you might think. Deliveroo have been setting up "dark kitchens" in London - a kitchen in a shipping container making brand recipes for them to deliver.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/oct/28/deliveroo-d...

> it would be atypical for a suburb to have significant independent restaurants within 5mi of any given point

Some cities, like Dallas, seem to have a higher percentage of chain restaurants than the average suburb. Other cities, like Seattle, have a ton of restaurants that seem independent but are actually part of a portfolio of restaurants owned by one person, private equity, or a corporation experimenting.

I expect uber eats will scale very well in the suburbs if they can get multiple orders in the same car efficiently. Restaurants are experimenting with food that travels better.

I don't know. The proposition to a non-chain restaurant in the suburbs, of which there are very few to begin with, reminds me more of a Groupon situation where the restaurants come out on the short end. In this case, it's not because they have to discount, it's because it's their reputation that takes the hit for Uber taking too long to deliver. Plus, a lot of local restaurants' margin comes not from the markup on the food, but the markup on the drinks. Many already offer carryout anyway.

> In this case, it's not because they have to discount, it's because it's their reputation that takes the hit for Uber taking too long to deliver.

I haven’t used UberEats but at least with GrubHub/Eat34, this was a big problem and they would routinely lie about it, hoping most people won’t call the restaurant to learn that “the kitchen is busy” meant “your food has been waiting for a driver for 45 minutes”.

Food delivery makes more sense the more people do it. Imagine a situation where an entire street of houses orders delivery at the same time. One driver could make a few stops to pick up food and deliver it all at once. Far more efficient than each family driving to a restaurant separately. I wonder how one could structure incentives to encourage that sort of thing.