[rrrrrrrrrrrryan]

I wouldn't go so far as saying they're "fundamentally unprofitable". They have a couple long-term options: the often-discussed one is autonomous driving (though it's becoming increasingly obvious this is many years out), but the less discussed one is vertical integration.

It's not hard to imagine them choosing to pursue Amazon-style vertical integration where they own the "restaurants" themselves. I put "restaurants" in quotes, because it'll almost certainly just be warehouse-style kitchens, where drivers skid up out front and grab food from heated tables, and you won't be able to dine-in at all. It would fill the same role for aspiring restaurateurs as food trucks do today: a startup cost, low-barrier to entry way to build out a brand, rapidly iterate menu-items, and begin building revenue to eventually secure a business loan to open a proper restaurant.

If UberEats can really squeeze both the drivers AND the restaurants, there's no fundamental reason that food delivery can't be done profitably - pizza companies have been doing it in almost all markets for decades.

Brick and mortar retail stores got eaten by Amazon warehouses, and it seems inevitable that many brick and mortar restaurants will eventually get eaten by a massive tech company as well.

[et-al]

> If UberEats can really squeeze both the drivers AND the restaurants, there's no fundamental reason that food delivery can't be done profitably - pizza companies have been doing it in almost all markets for decades.

Pizza delivery is profitable because they sell cardboard and depend on teenager drivers relying on their parent's auto insurance.

Anyone who's actually looked at the person delivering their food would have thought twice about the margins in food delivery. To spell it out: food delivery is often performed by immigrants with few choices for under-the-table work. The margins are thin-to-none. The current system has worked because no one's investigating the thousands of independent restaurants.

Now tech companies are trying to do the same thing, but multimillion dollar corporations have a harder time hiding their labor exploitation from the public.

Going back to ryan's point, I agree that with full vertical integration (dirt cheap ingredients and centralised factory kitchens), food delivery could be profitable, but at what point is one just selling frozen food from a microwave/oven in the back of a car?

[s_dev]

>It's not hard to imagine them choosing to pursue Amazon-style vertical integration where they own the "restaurants" themselves. I put "restaurants" in quotes, because it'll almost certainly just be warehouse-style kitchens, where drivers skid up out front and grab food from heated tables, and you won't be able to dine-in at all.

The term for this is dark kitchens.

[darrenoc]

It's noteworthy that Deliveroo is already doing the kind of vertical integration you describe, it's called "Deliveroo Editions"

[zepearl]

>It's not hard to imagine them choosing to pursue Amazon-style vertical integration where they own the "restaurants" themselves.

I always wondered something about those meals that are available on airplanes:

in the past I liked quite a lot most of them (e.g. a small piece of meat/fish/other, some vegetables and/or rice, a slice of bread, a small dessert) => wouldn't it be quite profitable to have a similar delivery service for "kits/menus" like those ones (just e.g. ~4 different "kits" available to be ordered daily), cold (but pre-cooked if needed) that only need to be warmed up at home? (if 3 stewards/esses, on a moving tube, managed to warm that up for 300 people then I guess that I'll manage to do the same for myself at home)?

I admit that on one hand the "delivery"-part of the service would be related only to getting fresh (uncooked or "freshly pre-cooked") stuff (not ready for consumption), but on the other hand that way the delivery could be spread over a longer timespan (multiple deliveries per trip, better delivery organization, therefore less costs) and could be left in the mailbox (assuming at least a mediocre insulation of the package).

Here in Switzerland/Zurich I am aware of some similar services, but they deliver only the ingredients (then I would still have to actively cook). Supermarkets do have some similar pre-cooked stuff, but most (not all, but most) is quite terrible (probably because there the stuff has to be able to lie there for days/weeks - definitely not similar to what I used to eat on airplanes) and especially it never changes.

(I used to fly only in Europe using "Swiss", "Air Berlin", "Lufthansa", maybe as well "KLM"/"Air France", always to/from Zurich - your experience with other airlines / in other location might be different)

Woudln't it be nice to get back home and find in the mailbox a ready-to-be-warmed-up (maybe actually "cooked", but in an extremely simple way) menu?

The delivery, being all sourced from the same place and being spread over many hours would not be as expensive as it is currently done for hot stuff coming from multiple restaurants, and the small amount of different menus (4 as mentioned above or slightly more) would allow to buy more source material for less $.

EDIT: I admit of not having any clue how the companies that prepare meals/menus for airlines operate => there might therefore be some important details that make the whole concept crumble... :)

[rrrrrrrrrrrryan]

Switzerland is strange because restaurant food is so tremendously expensive there compared to the rest of the world. In most cities in America, for $5 you can get a half-decent meal that's quite a bit more palatable than airline food, and for $10 you can get something from (mostly immigrant-run) restaurants that's somewhat nutritious as well.

There are meal-delivery services here that are basically what you describe, but they usually deliver food weekly and they're kind of pricey. They're mainly targeting time-strapped single people who are trying to eat healthier and don't want to do all the mental work that goes into grocery shopping, meal prepping, cooking, etc.

[ithinkinstereo]

It's getting harder and harder these days to get a good meal in the US for under $10 all-in w/ tax outside of rural super low COL areas.

In any of the major urban areas in the states, a $5 budget would limit you to various street foods (a couple of tacos, a banh mi, maybe a slice of pizza) or a couple of items from the dollar menu at the various fast food chains. Frankly, your typical airline meal is more filling and nutritious (but not as tasty, unless you're flying a middle eastern or flagship asian airline, of course).

A decent McDonald's meal for example, would blow up your $5 budget pretty easily.

[zepearl]

Thanks for the reply - I agree & disagree with you.

On one hand you are absolutely correct stating that swiss restaurants are in general more expensive than anywhere (subjective - e.g. a 30$ small menu might be ok here, but we do have as well a higher income and going to the restaurant is not something that people do often), but on the other hand I did like airline food (which you basically describe as being "the worst" while for me was on par with one offered by restaurants), therefore we have a mismatch of our experiences.

(talking about restaurants, I must mention that Stockholm was for me a lot more expensive than Zurich)

Personally, I would have all kind of doubts about a $5 meal (in most parts of the world, if it's not something extremely simple).

> There are meal-delivery services here that are basically what you describe, but they usually deliver food weekly and they're kind of pricey. They're mainly targeting time-strapped single people who are trying to eat healthier and don't want to do all the mental work that goes into grocery shopping, meal prepping, cooking, etc.

I'm not currently aware of something like that in my area , but my profile is very similar (and I did try to cook different stuff, but the failure rate is quite high and the overall quality quite low). Still, I think that the concept that I described was a bit different than that?

[rrrrrrrrrrrryan]

I can expand upon the $5 - $10 meal by example.

I'm from southern California. I worked in Wellington, New Zealand for a stint, and I found that restaurants were priced about the same as back home. That is to say, an average sit-down restaurant meal of equivalent quality was roughly the same price in USD.

However, in America, there's an entirely different class of much cheaper food (takeout food), and younger people in metropolitan areas eat this food very often. These were usually powered by cheap immigrant labor, often paid under the table to skirt taxes and mandatory benefits.

Labor protections in New Zealand are much higher, of course, and without an easily exploitable underclass, this food simply can't exist there. There weren't really regular kiwis who ate out 1 - 2x per day - virtually all of them cooked most of their meals at home themselves.

This is the environment in which these food delivery companies are operating. These restaurants already have extremely thin margins, consumers are price-sensitive, and as long as the delivery company is just a middle-man, they'll struggle to do this thing profitably. If they lose access to their cheap labor by having to re-classify drivers as actual employees, it might be impossible.

[zepearl]

Interesting! Thank you :)

[curryst]

I use a company called Snap Kitchen for that (no affiliation). They have a menu, I pick what meals and how many I want. Twice a week they cook the food, package it up, and deliver it to my door. Let's you pick how many calories per day you're aiming for, and if you're on one of a couple dozen diets they support they'll limit the auto-suggested meals for you.

The food tastes pretty good. It's better than frozen food, but still a far cry from a freshly cooked meal. It's not terribly cheap either. If I did all 3 meals from them 5 days week, it cost somewhere around $8 a meal. I ended up quitting because of the price. It's too expensive to use for many meals, and has to short of a shelf life to keep around as a backup if I don't want to cook.

[zepearl]

Yes, eating only this way would end up becoming expensive - but I would do it as well ~2-3 times per week, at least to have a break from cooking and to eat something different.