The food delivery bubble is bursting — and maybe that's not a bad thing

That's always how it's been though. The difference is that in-house delivery is actually optimized for delivery volume, and restaurants which don't have that volume or workflow just don't have in-house delivery. When I drove pizza in college, I would take like 5 or 6 deliveries per hour, all within a 10 minute radius. Turnaround time from getting to the restaurant and back out the door would be a minute or two, and I'd leave with at least three different orders. That was good for $50/hr in tips during the dinner rush. Even a regular weeknight would be good for $100-150 in a 6 hour shift.

With the app ecosystem, it's just impossible hit that kind of efficiency because you are almost always taking one order at a time, and you end up waiting on the restaurant most of the time.