Cost structure has not changed in restaurants that do take outs.
Delivery services in the areas where they ( delivery services ) could be popular and are popular solve a non-existent problem for restaurants ( delivery ) by eating into restaurant's profit margins. Not only that, by longer-term delivery services are terrible for restaurants because suddenly every restaurant in 1-2 mile radius even in the most high density city becomes a competitor while the margin is lower.
I remember around 2000 in order to order ice cream for delivery having to call Kozmo (or maybe it was Webvan) on a voice phone and talk to a person like some kind of savage.
It seems like the smartphone and good map data could transform something that was terribly inefficient 20 years ago into something that's efficient enough to be profitable now.
Yes, those were the purple shirts! Thank you for reminding me the name.
The thing is delivery is not an issue. In the markets that have density, local places figured out delivery. My bodega will deliver whatever I order. For free. So will four other bodegas in the immediate area. The guy who owns the wine store will deliver for free. So will the taco joint. Or PR chicken shack It will be done by the kids of people who own those places. Or by their relatives. Or by their helpers. Yes, all of them would also try UberEats and Grubhub and Seamless and others. All of them will drop those services after a few month ( all of them did ) because they are in a real cut throat market and they know what starts costing them money.
So we get to the areas with less density, which is the burbs and near rural. Such as, say, Bucks County in PA within a 20 minute drive of Doylestown. There are probably about 100 places total to get food from, including Wawa, take out places, casual restaurants and "upscale" sit down places. The issue there is that general delivery is not profitable, which is why none of the places deliver outside 5-10 minute drive. Their customers have cars and driving 10-20 minutes is not a big deal for a customer. The max time they are willing to wait for food is cook time + round trip time. Delivery services can't compete there because they can't beat the cooktime + roundtrip time ~ delivery is free option
