the much scarier question is why investors apparently don't understand this rather simple fact and keep pumping ungodly sums of money into these ventures
says a lot about the level of general innovation in our society
Its no doubt that the Culinary Industry is going to morph into something else (seemingly undesirable to me) than it what it was in a Post COVID World, but given that the only ones that will survive this massive disruption will be those that either optimized their curb-side/take out menus to meet the demands, or those that simply have a ton of outside investment I can totally see that happening.
Dine-in will be few and far between with limited seating and dining options being the norm, where as everything else will just be delivered. I hope this spurs on more people to learn to cook at home and lose dependency on fast food and in turn support their local farmers and join CSA and community gardens along with it to offset the pains of a broken Global Food supply chain. We're already seeing that now, as many B2C farms are recording ATHs all over the US and selling out this early in the growing season.
As a former cook/chef and farmer, restaurants were always horrible business ventures in the best of times that relies on horrible work conditions, long hours, low wages and pervasive and culturally accepted substance abuse that often leads to severe mental health issues.
Hopefully, this gives young cooks the opportunity to take some of the Marketshare from the established players doing what they love (low wages are irrelevant then) and working from commissary Kitchens with low overhead business models. I'd rather they try an experimental business, even with failure being a real possibility, than see them waste 2-3 years of their lives and 40K+ in student debt as that model, much like 'University as an imperative to financial success,' is dead.
Why wouldnt another well capitalized business that hasn't lost tens of billions of dollars not be able to do better, since for $EPOCH + x years, that other business can actually afford to lose dollars while Uber needs to maintain its profit margin to recover the billions it lost in the pre $EPOCH era.
Additionally, Google actually competes and wins on content. It's rare that Google offers a worse search result than any of its competitors. However, my food tastes just as good if ordered through Uber Eats or Grubhub or through the restaurant's own website, and my taxi service is likely gonna be the same whether I use Lyft or Uber.
Finally, unlike Google, Uber is actually renting its location from its competitors. Apple and Google could sign deals with Lyft/Seamless to make them the default provider in Maps, Google search, Apple Search or an Apple Restaurants app.
The win is in moving people to think "I want a burger."
DoorDash has already trained me this way on Chinese food. I get Chinese food once a week. I don't know the name of the place I get it from. As long as they didn't change the food too much, I could easily migrate to a cloud kitchen.