001. fast(er) food

This vulnerability is not unique to food delivery. The same pattern of leapfrogging an incumbent by dramatically expanding the potential supply-base happened in home-sharing and travel.

There’s work involved in making the shift to delivery and takeaway — time and money that a restaurant likely does not have to spend. In the best-case scenario, the model effectively turns restaurants into so-called “ghost kitchens,” eliminating the need for nearly all front-of-house staff. David Chang has called the pivot to delivery “fools gold.”

Despite these enormous acquisitions and partnerships, delivery app giants struggle to reach profitability, even while charging feeble restaurants exorbitant fees. From this viewpoint, the food delivery ecosystem is broken. It’s one of the reasons why smaller, more localized delivery services have emerged with a new focus: to help restaurants market... See more

So-called “ghost kitchens,” which have no storefront and exist only online and in delivery apps, were until recently a novelty, but are now becoming more popular. One of Your Fare’s clients managed to cram 10 different restaurant concepts into a single ghost kitchen, and each served customers on four different delivery platforms.

The takeout and delivery business needs to be rethought. I see two new popular paths emerging. They represent diametrically opposing views of this space.