[falcolas]

Honestly, those delivery companies are probably underpaying their employees for delivery. I've worked at a pizza delivery company, and including tips, I earned about $140 a day (inflation adjusted, post-taxes) for delivering pizza all over town. It was certainly not enough to provide for a long-term living, given the vehicle upkeep costs and gas.

[atdrummond]

If I worked that full time, I could easily afford my apartment and other expenses. (Castletown, Isle of Man.)

Now, if I still lived in London? Different story.

Certain restaurant types (high margin, food well suited for delivery) and locales (high population density) seem well suited for delivery. The local steak house? Probably not, for a number of reasons:

- The main profit generator at many sit down venues, drinks, are unlikely to be ordered.

- Impulse add-ons, especially dessert, are less likely. Even with dark pattern upsells on apps. Dining out has many minutes or hours during which additional ordering opportunities are available. Ordering out is a single discrete event.

- On platforms that don’t work with the restaurant, the option of a higher margin delivery-only menu doesn’t exist. Items with low or negative margin can go out the door that otherwise wouldn’t.

- Delivery services seemingly take more for merchant processing than many restaurant chains I’ve helped secure acquiring for. Likely due to much higher chargeback/fraud on digital apps than through traditional delivery or in-restaurant. This is a killer on a low margin vertical such as dining.

[falcolas]

My only real comment here is that you do also have to put anywhere between $5,000 to $15,000 into your car yearly. Between elevated maintenance costs, additional fuel (somewhere around a tank every 2-3 days), and replacing the vehicle when it fails, it eats into the money pretty quickly.

At least, that was my experience.

[atdrummond]

No disagreement. The car would actually eat more of my budget than housing.

[iso1631]

When I think of "Uber", 'well-compensated employee' is not something that comes to mind.

[falcolas]

In personal opinion territory: And that’s a damned shame. Contract drivers should be able to survive on their full time work (and afford any of the externalities pushed on them by Uber) like any other full time worker.