Re:Uber starts selling ride/eats data to marketers
by abdullahkhalids on Monday December 08, 2025 @11:18AM
(#46194118)
Delivery was financially viable for decades before delivery apps. That's why restaurants did it on their own. What's not financially viable is VCs investing billions to create global oligopolies, and and then expecting outsized returns on that investment.
At the same time you have processes like increasing suburbanization and development of even more car-centric infrastructure, which makes houses and restaurants even further from each other, and makes cheaper delivery vehicles like motorbikes infeasible.
Re:Uber starts selling ride/eats data to marketers
by underlipton on Monday December 08, 2025 @03:06PM
(#46196940)
All of that is true. However, I think you don't account enough for the differences in the current and previous delivery models in delivery's viability. The old model was "drivers employed or contracted to individual restaurants, with fairly strict distance limits." Today's apps let you order from arbitrary restaurants to arbitrary delivery addresses. The other factors make the situation worse, but just this one is enough to turn a viable model into one that can't be profitable without someone involved getting scammed.
In an ideal world, you'd instead have drivers assigned to either particular neighborhoods or particular restaurants, allowing for order-stacking and predictable routes. Bonus for set-time daily deliveries (get your order in before 6 or have to wait until 9). Bigger bonus for set neighborhood drop-off points (like those consolidated mailboxes, but warming compartments). Anything more bespoke would cost extra.
Unfortunately, the balance of inefficient operations, decreasing competition, and "line go up" is that prices have to increase.