There is a local company (morecambeeats.co.uk) that was set up during the covid lockdowns to provide -just- centralised online ordering to local businesses that already had delivery drivers.

I first learned about them because I ordered a kebab on Just Eat and my order arrived with a flyer inside saying "please use them next time, they charge us less."

The site is honestly a bit janky and regularly annoys me slightly ... but only slightly, and I'm happy to deal with that to have all the revenue go to a local company and my favourite food places - and the cost is at worst identical to the venture capitalist subsidised companies and sometimes lower.

I have a possibly misplaced hope that they'll survive the collapse of the VC players. I intend to live in hope anyway though because (a) I much prefer my money to stay local (b) they're the easiest way I've found to order from the chinese place with the best prawn toast I've ever had.

If they disappear at some point I'm going to have to go back to phone calls and paying cash on delivery, and while I love the places I order from enough to do that if I have to I'd really rather not.

Curious why you think it is inevitable? The convenience of having the whole city available for delivery for consumers, and for restaurants to have access to a broad base of on-demand drivers and these customers, seems like an intractable modern day invention.

Recession means less money available for a luxury service like delivering your food.

The cost right now is subsidised by VCs to get everyone to switch.

With the incoming recessions VC will spend less money, especially on a business model which doesn't feel novel anymore.

It's not. This was working in Columbus Ohio since at least the 1990s...and probably elsewhere and for longer. Just didn't have an app.

The issue isn't the delivery, we've always had local food delivery and it's a subsidised bundled service to sell the main product. The issue is whether they can run a tech company off the margins of delivery, where they take the risk setting the physical infrastructure to do delivery, but have little to no control over the actual restaurants providing the products.

Individual delivery is different and it's here to stay

A centralised "we pick your food for you"? Unlikely