Join The Information’s Executive Editor, Amir Efrati, in The Information’s Slack Backchannel for a live conversation about one of the most hotly debated topics in the business world: whether and to what extent restaurant and other food delivery services are sustainable and can make money. As a member of our slack community, you’ll be able to participate directly in the conversation by asking Amir questions or sharing your thoughts on the economics of these consumer marketplaces, which have grown significantly during the Covid-19 pandemic but still face questions about their potential for future cash flows, especially if major players aren’t able to merge due to antitrust restrictions. A forthcoming DoorDash IPO will generate even more attention for this field, which has received billions of dollars of investment in the past few years.

Topics will include:

• Economics of food delivery; online ordering (Grubhub, Just Eat) vs. delivery apps (DoorDash, Uber, Meituan, goPuff, Delivery Hero, Instacart)
• Apps becoming one-stop shops for restaurant food, groceries, convenience store items.
• Regulatory risks in the West, where labor movements are pushing regulation to squeeze the apps.
• Startups that are helping restaurants handle their own takeout and delivery orders.
• Geographical differences; does delivery make more sense in suburban vs urban locales, and Asia and LatAm versus U.S. and Europe?
• Similarities and differences between ride-hailing and food delivery

About the host:

Amir Efrati helped launch The Information in 2013. His reporting on Uber's corporate practices and on the dangers and limits of self-driving vehicle development at Tesla, Uber, Alphabet's Waymo, and General Motors' Cruise won consecutive Best in Business awards from the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing (SABEW) in 2017, 2018, and 2019, respectively. Before The Information, he spent the previous nine years at the Wall Street Journal reporting on technology, health, and criminal justice.

(Illustration above by Danielle Davis)