So, Who's Making Money With Home Delivery?

Home delivery is surely not something that can be called new or disruptive.

The disruptive part of it is, of course, the scale that it has now reached and the technology part that allows it to happen.

And some say it's just the beginning!

I will not address here issues related to product quality or customer engagement, but that could surely make for another article!

In this one, I will only try to look at the home delivery business from an economical perspective starting with the question I raised in my earlier post about whether delivery is profitable for the restaurant operators and if not, for who is it then?

Martin Mignot, one of Deliveroo's prominent investors and board members claimed the company’s mission is to: "make on-demand food so much more convenient and better than it actually makes less sense for people to cook at home. They would only do it as a hobby. That's really the vision: it's all about reducing costs for restaurants."

But while Deliveroo, and probably its competitors too, embark on this mission, restaurant operators need to be making money from deliveries and to do so home delivery must generate additional sales, not substitute existing…