That's an extra amount of work that keeps new, small players from entering the field. As with a lot of regulation, this is designed in a way that favors large incumbents.

Eh, food delivery is a pretty local business. In fact, if I wanted to compete with these VC-backed companies, I'd probably do something like partner with local restaurants whose food traveled well, come up with some good packaging, etc. Of course, that's not scalable and disruptive.

>food delivery is a pretty local business

?? Food is a pretty local business, but delivery is not. You could say that person delivery is local too, because people mostly transport locally, but e.g. Uber is still global.

To a first approximation, I only care about food delivery to my house. To a first approximation, I only use Uber for places other than around my house.

I grant that there are some economies of scale to having an app that companies in different cities can make use of. But I don't see that as requiring a nationwide company for the actual food delivery.