
Delivery Apps Like Grubhub, Seamless, and UberEats Continue to Hurt Restaurants - oftenwrong
https://www.eater.com/2019/5/29/18636255/delivery-apps-hurting-restaurants-grubhub-seamless-ubereats
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jfengel
Ugh. Restauranting is a difficult business even on the best of days. It barely
works, and any shift you make (even one with a net benefit) will throw things
off.

Adding a delivery service means you can serve more customers without having to
add wait staff or tables. But your existing overhead doesn't go down. You
still need the same kitchen and the same line cooks (or more). Your insurance
doesn't go down, or your heating and cooling costs, or ingredients. Even an
uptick in customers doesn't help if it throws off your ordering, and you start
running out of one thing and having to trash another because your customer
base changes.

I don't know if I'd blame that on the apps, exactly, though it does sound like
GrubHub is being sued over some shady practices which do sound a lot like the
kind of shady practices "disruptors" like to play. A restaurant can't just add
delivery without a significant change to its whole practice. The delivery
itself costs money (even if the provider isn't demanding dotcom-level profits,
which they probably are), and the savings aren't as immediate or massive as
you'd hope.

