Great post, thanks! I’m almost certain that many of these companies will not be around in a few years, and I’m actually starting to doubt that any of these companies will be.

I’ve used (mostly) Sprig and Postmates with great success in SF — really not much to complain about user-experience-wise. That’s not the problem though. The question is whether their businesses can be sustainable, for both themselves and their restaurant partners.

It feels like a really small needle to thread — like, the long-term winners need to find a combination of all of these:

• Good User Experience: Fast order acceptance and delivery, good support.
• Cheap User Experience: Don’t charge too much for delivery or users will find an alternative.
• Sustainable Business Model: Charge high enough fees to make a profit (eventually).
• Sustainable Business Model for the Restaurant: Charge low enough fees that restaurant partners can also be profitable.

So it needs to be fast, work well, offer good support, etc, all of which is expensive — without charging users or restaurants too much for delivery — and end up making a profit (at least eventually). The fact that there are dozens of these companies all competing with each other doesn’t help.

Maybe it’s an Uber-like situation where the biggest players run at a loss for a while and basically use their bigger cash reserves to force their competition into bankruptcy. The “outlive” strategy, in other words.

What if no single company manages to do this, or what if it’s not possible to make the equation work? That’s especially possible given how low restaurant profit margins are and how price-sensitive consumers are.

Maybe the timing just isn’t right.