1. Is spot on, these types of businesses really only make sense in a few North American markets, ie NYC.
The other issue is that to actually provision enough service to meet customer expectations on availability and speed, you need to economically over provision your workforce.
Cities used to restrict the supply of taxi drivers intentionally in order to maintain driver wages.
What are y'all talking about? There's been food delivery in the suburbs for pretty much as long as we've had phones and cars. It's perfectly viable as a business. It's just not a 100 billion dollar business.
It’s been a fairly limited enterprise to specific cuisines with limited competition. Flooding the market with supply and including restaurants who aren’t oriented directly towards a delivery model destroys margins.
The other issue is that to actually provision enough service to meet customer expectations on availability and speed, you need to economically over provision your workforce.
Cities used to restrict the supply of taxi drivers intentionally in order to maintain driver wages.