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IMO, this is a more sophisticated article on the unit economics of food delivery. (However, it is a little older): The Food Delivery Death Star (2016) https://medium.com/@review/the-food-delivery-death-star-85f9...

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Agreed, that is a better article, but even so - every time I read about this space I get more confused. I get that very smart people are throwing large sums of money at it, so there's obviously some logic that I'm not getting. For example, the Medium piece says that Uber has a lucrative monopoly, but then goes on to say that it loses 700M per quarter. How is that lucrative? And self-driving cars are held up as the solution to thin margins but to me it seems that the only saving grace for these companies is that they get drivers to bring their own cars, do their own maintenance, pay their own insurance, etc. Considering how expensive driverless cars will inevitably be when they first appear and the sheer number that these companies will require to actually replace their contractors/partners/whatever they call their drivers, 2030 seems a very optimistic target for profitability. But then I'm just some schmuck - surely the VCs have all had those thoughts and are ploughing on regardless because they know something else?

More detail and more examination of the difficulties but their concluding paragraph is still optimistic:

> In the emerging food delivery wars, the stakes are high, the margins are slim, and the competition is vast. Some will fail. Others will quit. But a few of them might just end up delivering the billion-dollar goods.

I doubt it. I think food delivery is something that can only work where the food makers are in control, not the food deliverers.

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