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Five companies now control over 90% of the restaurant food delivery market

marketsaintefficient.substack.com

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Re: Five companies now control over 90% of the restaurant food delivery market

#131

Post by fasterik »

klabb3 wrote: post #127
fasterik wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a George Carlin bit about politicians. The punchline is "the problem isn't the politicians, it's the people." His point is that nothing emerges from a vaccuum. Politicians are people just like everyone else, they're just responding to incentives created by a majority vote. Tech companies are just like any other company, except a lot more people are willing to pay for their goods and services. If Carlin were a…

> My theory is that if you're extremely pessimistic about technology or politics, you probably won't like anything that happens when large groups of humans make collective decisions. There's an air of let's go back to the good old days when we were hunter gatherers to the whole thing. Hunter gatherer is the only alternative to a society under total dominance by mega-corps? This reminds me of individual stories from l…

"Local communities" existed for millennia and didn't manage to reduce the child mortality rate and extreme poverty rate to effectively zero. I know neoliberalism is a dirty word, and there are plenty of problems with the modern world, but I would rather live in a neoliberal global society than the "local" world of 200 years ago.

Re: Five companies now control over 90% of the restaurant food delivery market

#132

Post by alisonatwork »

fasterik wrote: post #106
budududuroiu wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don’t have to go back to hunter gatherer societies, just do some antitrust. I dislike the commentary that any pushback against tech companies means you’re a Luddite

Anti-trust for an industry where there are at least five companies doing well in any given space? That's not called a monopoly, it's called competition. Edit: I wasn't accusing everyone who is critical of tech of being a Luddite. The attitude that nearly every tech company is a net negative for society goes quite a bit beyond criticism.

Now imagine you live in one of the other 190 countries of the world who do not or no longer have significant players in the industry because they were crushed by those five foreign companies. It's not competition when the wealth and power is so disproportionately held by the same people in the same places.

Re: Five companies now control over 90% of the restaurant food delivery market

#133

Post by bko »

daedrdev wrote: post #23

I think the truth is restaurant food delivery is a luxgury good, literally “private taxi for your burrito” yet many people spend like it isnt.

It didn't used to be. I delivered pizza in the early 2000s, and the fee was $1 and tip, which was usually $2-3. It was pretty normal people ordering the stuff.

And the funny thing is I made about $20 an hour (unadjusted for inflation, ~4 deliveries per hour + $5 an hour). Today the drivers still around that amount, the restaurants pay more and the companies operating are often operating at a loss.

Something very strange happened in the last 20 years.

Re: Five companies now control over 90% of the restaurant food delivery market

#134

Post by rangestransform »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #129
fasterik wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a George Carlin bit about politicians. The punchline is "the problem isn't the politicians, it's the people." His point is that nothing emerges from a vaccuum. Politicians are people just like everyone else, they're just responding to incentives created by a majority vote. Tech companies are just like any other company, except a lot more people are willing to pay for their goods and services. If Carlin were a…

Here's the bit on Youtube (I couldn't find an Archive link): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrSAxtIYM08 This is the right conclusion, and I love sharing that video for that reason. As of 2025 everyone globally has everything they need to make the world a great place for everyone. Instead, people continue to take the lowest energy route for their personal actions, which means they do not even think about the external…

The job of a union in the non-sectoral-bargaining structure of the US is to shove more money into the pockets of their members, period, end of story, and that is exactly what their members pay them to do

Re: Five companies now control over 90% of the restaurant food delivery market

#135

Post by rangestransform »

alisonatwork wrote: post #132
fasterik wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anti-trust for an industry where there are at least five companies doing well in any given space? That's not called a monopoly, it's called competition. Edit: I wasn't accusing everyone who is critical of tech of being a Luddite. The attitude that nearly every tech company is a net negative for society goes quite a bit beyond criticism.

Now imagine you live in one of the other 190 countries of the world who do not or no longer have significant players in the industry because they were crushed by those five foreign companies. It's not competition when the wealth and power is so disproportionately held by the same people in the same places.

As a software engineer in the US, I like that the US sucks up money from the rest of the world, that’s why my dollar goes so far when I travel and why I can retire in a non-reserve-currency country for cheap

Re: Five companies now control over 90% of the restaurant food delivery market

#136

Post by fasterik »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #129
fasterik wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a George Carlin bit about politicians. The punchline is "the problem isn't the politicians, it's the people." His point is that nothing emerges from a vaccuum. Politicians are people just like everyone else, they're just responding to incentives created by a majority vote. Tech companies are just like any other company, except a lot more people are willing to pay for their goods and services. If Carlin were a…

Here's the bit on Youtube (I couldn't find an Archive link): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrSAxtIYM08 This is the right conclusion, and I love sharing that video for that reason. As of 2025 everyone globally has everything they need to make the world a great place for everyone. Instead, people continue to take the lowest energy route for their personal actions, which means they do not even think about the external…

I think there are some organizations doing good in the world. The trend is not as bad as you would imagine.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-population-livin...

https://www.givewell.org/

Re: Five companies now control over 90% of the restaurant food delivery market

#137

Post by jarpadat »

fasterik wrote: post #101
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #11

This is essentially the story of tech companies across nearly every industry where they have come to dominate. This is one reason that I see most tech companies as essentially a net negative for society at large, as the goal is nearly always to control a large monopoly (and this is fully admitted by many tech leaders, e.g. Thiel) which the Internet makes possible. Pre-Internet you would see the same dynamics, but usu…

There's a George Carlin bit about politicians. The punchline is "the problem isn't the politicians, it's the people." His point is that nothing emerges from a vaccuum. Politicians are people just like everyone else, they're just responding to incentives created by a majority vote. Tech companies are just like any other company, except a lot more people are willing to pay for their goods and services. If Carlin were a…

My theory is that is what is latent in the terrain of human psychology is a propensity to view misconceptions about which problem it is, as evidence there isn't one. When I stop to think about it, I realize that the misconceptions are evidence there is.

With that in mind: in what way should we terraform the latent terrain of human psychology to fix this problem? Because breaking up the tech companies seems like a way, but you seem to have a different one in mind.

Re: Five companies now control over 90% of the restaurant food delivery market

#138

Post by Tostino »

ks2048 wrote: post #125
Tostino wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've worked in the industry for over a decade and food distributors can squeeze the manufacturers more than the other way around. That's a very silly statement if you read it with any knowledge of the space.

I certainly don't know anything about the space, but by "matters more", I was thinking about caring more about what I am eating as opposed to how it was distributed. I suppose both are important, though.

The fact is literally no one in this space cares what you're eating. They just want to make money. Doesn't matter what side of it they're on.

Re: Five companies now control over 90% of the restaurant food delivery market

#139

Post by wayeq »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #129
fasterik wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a George Carlin bit about politicians. The punchline is "the problem isn't the politicians, it's the people." His point is that nothing emerges from a vaccuum. Politicians are people just like everyone else, they're just responding to incentives created by a majority vote. Tech companies are just like any other company, except a lot more people are willing to pay for their goods and services. If Carlin were a…

Here's the bit on Youtube (I couldn't find an Archive link): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrSAxtIYM08 This is the right conclusion, and I love sharing that video for that reason. As of 2025 everyone globally has everything they need to make the world a great place for everyone. Instead, people continue to take the lowest energy route for their personal actions, which means they do not even think about the external…

> Self elimination is the only possible arc for humanity.

Hey man, at least add a spoiler alert.

We eradicated smallpox and recovered the ozone layer through global coordination, not even a century after murdering each other by the tens of millions in two world wars. We're capable of both.

Re: Five companies now control over 90% of the restaurant food delivery market

#140

Post by NoPicklez »

I see these types of stats often, x number of companies now control over x% of x. On the face of it, what's the issue?

Food delivery starts out as this awesome new tech that allows delivery and its prices are cheap for early adoption, lots of small players come to the market to try and ride the hype. The service grows in popularity and becomes steady state, companies start to look to drive further profit, companies consolidate where possible to avoid shutting down altogether. Global markets impact fuel prices, food costs and sees the delivery services grow further in price for all those across the supply chain.

How we have a number of steady state food delivery companies that have the capital, and/or subsidy capacity to run across different markets globally.

Also fun fact, Deliveroo doesn't operate in Australia and had to close due to high costs. Australian Government has been looking to increase rights of gig-economy workers, a cost that smaller player wouldn't be able to handle.

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