Actually there’s whole business models that are based on nonsense. Like the idea that people will pay someone to drive over to Subway and bring back a terrible $3 sandwich, and that this scheme will somehow be systemically profitable.
Maybe not a $3 Subway sandwich but the delivery of pizza in particular was pretty widespread before the current VC cash bonfires so I'm not sure it has to be "nonsense."
I expect a lot of people 20 years or so ago would think that the idea you could get many, many types of things delivered to your door in a day or two for a reasonable price pretty out there.
The delivery aspect of the pizza business does not need to be profitable as a stand-alone endeavor, whereas the delivery part of Uber Eats does. And it's the driving part that doesn't make any sense. Obviously people have been delivering food in dense and compact cities like New York for decades.
- Call local pizza joint, tell them to make a pizza
- Pizza joint cooks pizza
- Pizza joint tells young kid/local burnout to bring me pizza
- Hand young kid/local burnout $$ for pizza, $$ for tip, have pizza.
Now:
- Tell a publicly traded company to to tell your local pizza joint to make a pizza
- Pizza joint cooks pizza
- Multinational logistics monopolist-wannabe tells young kid/local burnout to bring me pizza
- Take pizza from young kid/local burnout.
You may notice a couple insertions that don't seem to make a whole lot of sense, but nevertheless are taking a significant percentage of the, well, not the pie in this case. The pie isn't getting here faster nor does it taste better. Neither the pizza joint nor the young kid/local burnout are making more money. It isn't more convenient.
Taking cash out of the transaction legitimately does reduce certain risks. That is an advantage to those who aren't reliant on cash, but note that neither Uber nor Grubhub are required to do that.
