[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?