Topic
Online marketplaces like Uber Eats, DoorDash and Grubhub that connect consumers, restaurants and couriers for meal ordering and delivery.
DoorDash is running its AI ordering agent inside Apple's Messages app for 20,000 US pilot users on iOS, with checkout handled in the text thread. For now the channel is a bet on convenience and on DoorDash keeping its customer file, since it has released no basket figures for the pilot.
Reality
Researchers surveying 2,023 UK adults found 25% had heard of dark kitchens and 9% had knowingly bought from one. A second study found 16 of 36 food regulators knew of one in their area, so the people who inspect these kitchens also struggle to find them.
Reality
DoorDash will pay $131.5 million to close New York City's minimum-pay investigation. Most of that money settles an argument over whose formula for paid on-call minutes was right; the unpaid and late wages the company admits to come to $12.3 million.
Reality
Korea's largest delivery app says its model now clears 50% accuracy on arrival times, more than 1.7 times what restaurant owners managed typing the numbers in by hand. The old baseline was under 30%.
Reality
Bills before the National Assembly's National Policy Committee would cap food delivery commissions. The Seoul Economic Daily puts brokerage at about 7.8% of an order and calls riders' delivery charges the bigger cost to owners.
Reality
Consumption came back to 43.8 billion packs in 2024, still 2.56 billion short of 2020, and iiMedia's 7.9% growth in market value divides almost evenly between those recovered packs and a dearer average pack.
Reality
A rider-run charity with a decade of funding, a field test in Fife and one Deliveroo courier's spreadsheet are being pressed into service as evidence, because the party holding the pay logic is not the party being asked to explain it.
Reality
With Uber Eats, DoorDash and now Grubhub all able to summon the same robots, Serve is betting the fleet is the asset. The unit economics are still unproven.
Reality