The Gig Economy and the Future of Food

The rise of smartphone-based food delivery reshaped the economics of the restaurant industry. Grubhub, founded in Chicago in 2004, was among the earliest platforms to let diners order delivery online rather than by phone, followed by the merger with Seamless and the later arrival of DoorDash, founded in Palo Alto in 2013 by Tony Xu and co-founders, and Uber Eats, launched in 2014 as an extension of the ride-hailing company Uber. These platforms grew explosively through the 2010s, fundamentally changing how many restaurants reached customers, though their standard commission fees, often ranging from roughly fifteen to thirty percent of an order’s value, became a persistent source of tension with restaurant owners operating on already thin margins.