Being able to dispatch to a driver in motion depends on having a suitable driver available.
I'm still doubtful it can ever work, for the reasons people mentioned above. But the realistic game is that Uber becomes the new Yelp and strongarms restaurants for a share of their profit, in return for customer access / promotion. (Which I have pretty strong feelings about as an ethical business model, but that's just my opinion...)
What will passengers think about having their ride delayed? Lump it into Pool and partially rebate them?
What will keep restaurants from #&@$ing around with their notifications (e.g. ready) for a partner who they don't really like working with?
(Personally, I switched to Lyft and don't use Uber products anymore)
For a non-chain business, probably the key is being in a dense city where majority of your customers are within a few mile radius.
Domino's is built to deliver pizzas. They have streamlined the process of an order being placed, prepped, and handed off to delivery to try to make each step of the process as efficient as possible.
Do "horizontal" delivery companies have similar integration and benefit from similar efficiency?
In an ideal delivery situation, you want two things to be true: first, delivery people should be constantly moving. Second, orders should be handed off to a delivery person as soon as they are finished.
Is this achievable when delivery people are routed to new pick-up locations for each delivery? You want your delivery person to arrive at the restaurant right as the meal is finished -- if they arrive early, your delivery person is idle and your costs go up; if they arrive late, the food is cold and your customers are dissatisfied.
Restaurants with successful delivery components can solve this by tweaking their number of delivery people and their service areas in response to their busy-ness, so that they always have delivery people returning to pick up more food with an appropriate frequency. Have horizontal delivery companies solved these problems, either through integration with the restaurants or through some sort of big data magic?