Memo: The DoorDash OS

Yet, despite this new source of e-commerce demand, restaurants have struggled to keep up. The dominant reason is that restaurant demand is inherently “peaky.” It’s even more peaky now that delivery and pick up are turning restaurants into omni-channel retailers. Restaurants have fixed labor costs that do not scale up or down with volatile demand th... See more

So Sweetgreen is now testing a hybrid approach, where companies can have an Outpost kiosk in their office, but it can also offer, as Jammet describes, “a new, extensive suite of Outpost solutions,” including subsidized or employer-paid meals for remote employees, delivered to their homes.

A lot of what you hear and read about the big delivery networks — DoorDash, Grubhub, Uber Eats, etc. — is that they’re a terrible economic deal for restaurants. It’s an especially tough tradeoff for neighborhood restaurants and startups, which don’t have much leverage or much profit margin to spare.