Prior to the coronavirus pandemic, the business model of food-delivery apps went largely unconsidered by the diners who relied on them for midday kale salads and late-night taco feasts. Platforms such as Uber Eats, DoorDash, and Grubhub often charged restaurants commissions of up to thirty per cent per order, and they were evasive about how (and how much) their couriers were compensated. But for most restaurants delivery comprised only a fraction of total sales. Then the covid-19 pandemic turned virtually all restaurants into takeout-and-delivery-only businesses, and the brutal economics of the delivery apps became a matter of life-or-death urgency, for both the restaurants selling food and the couriers delivering it.
