Whether you’rein the mood for a hefty mealor craving a single slice of cake on a rainy afternoon, food delivery apps make our lives a lot easier when it comes to having that food brought to our door. The logic of the food delivery costversusbenefit sometimes seems just too good to be true — which means that, of course, somebody is getting the bitter end of that logic. On its new episode,Last Week Tonight With John Olivertook a deep dive into the food delivery apps universe and broke down how it works at four levels: customers, restaurants, delivery people and the app itself.
The first and easiest part of that deal is ours: Customers who sit at home waiting for their food to arrive. We often get the best deal possible, with somewhat reasonable prices, the comfort of not having to walk out of our homes andeven get to catch up onPhysical 100while we wait. Easy, breezy. It isnot so easy for restaurants, though. As you probably imagine, food delivery apps take a chunk of their revenue for making the bridge between their service and customers. But sometimes that bite is way too big, which is why restaurants are forced to charge more for a meal inside the food delivery apps so that they can still keep some profit.
But sometimesrestaurants have to jump through hoopsto make this profit happen, especially when you factor in cases such as Grubhub listing food that a particular restaurant doesn’t even have on the menu. What makes it worse is that companies like Doordash and UberEats are alsostruggling to turn a profit— after all these years in the market, they still haven’t found a way of operating that benefits everyone involved.
Who Is Really Profiting Off Food Delivery Apps? No One, Really
Not that Grubhub, Doordash, UberEats are even trying. The last component of that equation and the ones who have it worse arethe ones who actually make all of this happen: Workers. Since they’re listed as independent contractors, they don’t get any help whatsoever to make their jobs easier. Basic delivery items like backpacks, bikes and even helmets are all paid out of their own pockets, and they have no financial security whatsoeverin case they get injuredwhile making a delivery.
The worse news is, there’s still a long way to go until food delivery apps find a balance between the service they provide and properly compensating restaurants and workers. As John Oliver underscores, they willfirst worry about their own profitbefore even sparing a thought to anything else. In the worst case scenario, it’s a model that can’t last. Because of this,Last Week Tonightsuggests the time has come to put some guardrails around it. No joke, no punchline this time.
You can watch the full main segment of the episode above.
Last Week Tonight With John Oliver
Former Daily Show host and correspondent John Oliver brings his persona to this weekly news satire program.
