Delivery Networks as Logistics Infrastructure

The real shift is that delivery apps are turning their courier networks into infrastructure, not just consumer marketplaces. In practice, that means a restaurant can keep the customer on its own site or app, hand only the last mile to DoorDash Drive or Uber Direct, and avoid paying a marketplace commission on the whole order. That is why the AWS comparison fits, the valuable asset is the shared logistics layer that outside businesses rent.

• The economics are cleaner in delivery as a service. ChowNow brings the restaurant and the diner, so DoorDash only has to supply the driver. That removes merchant acquisition and consumer demand generation costs, and turns delivery into a more predictable per order margin business.
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• DoorDash now markets Drive On-Demand as a flat fee product for orders coming from a merchant’s own channels, with no signup or subscription fee, and published pricing of $6.99 to $10.99 on one merchant page. Uber Direct is positioned similarly as white label delivery for a merchant’s own website, app, and phone orders.
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• This also changes the competitive map. DoorDash and Uber still compete with restaurant software companies for ordering, payments, and merchant mindshare, but they also power those same companies underneath. In restaurants, that makes them look less like pure marketplaces and more like logistics utilities plugged into the broader stack.
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Going forward, more commerce will bypass the marketplace homepage and still flow through the delivery networks underneath. The winner is likely the platform that best fills idle driver capacity across many merchant owned channels, because every extra off marketplace order improves route density, lowers unit costs, and makes the network harder for restaurant software vendors to replace.