Sugar is the antidote to salty and bitter tastes. Food delivery companies are also looking for ways to balance their own need to expand their customer base with investors chasing higher returns. The secret ingredient could be selling their food delivery technology as a value added service to retail groups. Companies like DoorDash, Uber Technologies and Grubhub’s Just Eat Takeaway are adapting to the post-pandemic reality at breakneck speed, with fewer new customers ordering and investors increasingly hungry for more profit. The return of the group’s companies to the rapid growth of the last two years of the pandemic is a big challenge. In the second quarter of this year, revenue growth for DoorDash, which is valued at $28 billion and led by Tony Sue, was 30% year-on-year, up from 83% in the same period in 2021. to 43% from 53% a year ago.

Controlling marketing or recruiting costs is a step towards profitability. Inventing new sources of income, such as allowing serviced restaurants to advertise on delivery company platforms, is another. Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi hopes to grow food delivery division ad revenue sevenfold to $1 billion by 2024.

One option for businesses like DoorDash is the ability to deliver very quickly as a service. For a monthly subscription, supermarket chains or other retail groups can use the price and driver tracking experience. Those who provide technology can now have discounts. More than 100 conglomerates, including Apple and Walmart, already have such relationships with Uber, and DoorDash is building warehouses and providing drivers on behalf of Loblaw, Canada’s largest grocery chain.

Since the technology already exists, such a bypass will bring higher profits. Subscription-based tech giants from Salesforce to SAP have roughly 70% of gross margins, compared to 40% for Amazon-backed food delivery companies like Deliveroo. And that translates into higher ratings from investors as, on average, software company stocks trade nearly seven times their earnings in 2024.