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(Bloomberg Opinion) -- A whole generation of tech startups was built on the premise that the most lucrative business models aim to connect people or businesses on one side of the marketplace with people or businesses on the other side.
Whether Tinder, Uber Technologies Inc. or Airbnb Inc., the platform theory held that acting as a facilitator for someone else’s offering meant you could scrape off commission while maintaining an asset-light business whose low operational costs rewarded you with high profitability.
But no one foresaw an event that would shut down a whole side of the marketplace, and the coronavirus pandemic has done just that. For Airbnb, self-isolation means that nobody is travelling. There is plenty of supply with millions of listings still on the site, but the demand has all but evaporated. The same goes for Uber rides.
In food delivery, it’s the supply side that has difficulties. On the whole, services like Uber Eats, Grubhub Inc., Deliveroo and Just Eat Takeaway depend on existing restaurants to cook meals. But for many, if not most, of those restaurants, the main business was still preparing food for on-site dining. Now that’s not possible in the U.K., France, Italy and elsewhere, continuing to operate as a delivery-only operation fundamentally changes the economics of the business: Restaurants still have operating costs, except now they might have to direct a quarter of their income to the food delivery platforms. Many have simply shut their doors completely because they can’t make it work. Chinese delivery platform Meituan Dianping is already feeling the impact, as my colleague Tim Culpan wrote yesterday. (Uber Eats and Grubhub are trying to counter the trend by subsidizing some restaurant costs.)
Which is why companies like HelloFresh SE and Blue Apron Holdings Inc., long the subject of Silicon Valley derision, suddenly seem to have very sensible business models. On the surface, they are similar to the food delivery platforms: They too deliver food.
The difference is that, because they deliver meal kits they put together in their own kitchens, they control the supply, whereas a firm like Deliveroo has to worry about ensuring it has enough restaurants and customers. HelloFresh’s concern is simply demand. Even then, there’s less need for as high a density of demand than for takeaway food — though of course it helps. Because customers cook the meals themselves, there’s less anxiety about a dish congealing in the panniers of a moped. While Deliveroo has started operating some of its own kitchens, it still has to compete with Grubhub, Just Eat Takeaway and Uber Eats on two fronts. HelloFresh can concentrate on one: customers.