The thesis that you can grab market share and then use it to make profits doesn't work in this case. There's no reason why the customer needs your particular d

The thesis that you can grab market share and then use it to make profits doesn't work in this case. There's no reason why the customer needs your particular delivery service. Even in a last-man-standing scenario, that last service is competing with a note delivered with every meal that says "please order direct". I looked into starting a restuarant and it made no sense to me to pay 30% of the meal price to a third party. The breakdown I got from my friend who runs a sushi delivery service in central London is roughly 25% fish, 25% rent / utilities, 30-40% labor. And that's when things are going well, you die if the chefs waste a few % more fish, or if a few people less a day come to order your food. So there's no space for a 30% cut. Why anyone does it, I'm not sure. Perhaps it is to do with maintaining market share, or making sure your ingredients are used. Of course it's also true that the fish is the only part of that budget that is roughly linear with the number of orders, so maybe the restaurants also fall into a trap of saying they'll try to boost the 45% remaining with volume.