Ai Is Not Going To Save Incompetent Corporations like Uber

The food delivery industry will not be saved by ai. Ai will only make things worse in an already low margins business.

Ai makes bad companies worse and good companies better. Ai is not a magic solutions for everything; it’s a tool.

Meal delivery has failed to make money for investors. Restaurants run on notoriously low margins and delivery platforms run on restaurants. You can’t pluck a bald chicken, and ai will not change that.

Not only will ai not make meal delivery a high margins business, it will make things worse for delivery companies like uber. Meal delivery is a highly specialized job and riders have a lot of agency over the work. Forcing riders to adhere to a manipulative ai will not work. Without adequate pay expert delivery workers will simply slow down their work effort.

Conclusion Delivery

It seems that the corporate delivery industry that is made up of companies like ubereats, deliveroo and takeaway has come to its logical conclusion: the end of corporate food delivery by ai.

What companies will take their place?

Riders are Plumbers

Contrary to popular belief delivering meals is not an easy job. Delivering meals with an app like Uber Eats or Deliveroo is even harder. Because of the complexity of app-based meal delivery it’s impossible to use ai to replace worker agency without destroying existing business (like uber eats is doing in 2025-2026).

There are many things that you can automate with ai, but delivering food ain’t one of ‘m.

Just like plumbers, app-based meal delivery workers are specialists. Trying to use agentic ai reasoning models to replace riders is only something uber-fools would attempt.

References

https://www.nl.goridergo.com/blog/delivery-is-moeilijk

https://www.oaktreecapital.com/insights/memo/is-it-a-bubble

https://openai.com/index/uber-enables-outstanding-experiences/