People have had cars, addresses, and telephones for a century. Pizza and Chinese food have been showing up at people’s doorsteps for decades. Surely it seems like everything one would need to build a food delivery contracting company existed before the internet. What was missing that prevented me from ordering tacos by phone in 1995?
In: Economics
They actually aren’t economically viable. Most of these companies don’t make profits, a few like OrderUp have already gone out of business. The rest will probably follow. And even when they totally outsource most of their costs onto their employees (employees drive their own cars and are responsible for their own gas, insurance, and maintenance) they still have to pay ridiculously low wages and wouldn’t even dream of paying for benefits like health insurance. And despite all that, these companies mostly still don’t turn a profit.
Food delivery just isn’t a viable business most of the time. If the price for delivery is low, then companies can’t turn a profit on such low margins, and if the price is high, then people just don’t order delivery very often because they can’t afford it, and then the company also can’t turn a profit.
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