Tuesday 19 May 2020

pizza arbitrage or avoid the noid

First rejecting the characterisation of the whole house of cards of mail order schemes that pushes no cost merchandise in exchange for favourable reviews and nights on the town fuelled and funded via recommendations as too unsustainable to be believed and then learning of the seemingly contradictory exorbitant fees that food delivery aggregators charge to restaurants for membership, I was really taken aback by this bit of trading and markets incongruity that seems to be an example of business working for exposure.
Essentially the delivery service that a pizzeria proprietor uses undercuts the price paid per pizza taken from the order-in diner—the result being, experimentally verified, it being more profitable for the eatery to order their own pizzas and netting the difference. Of course, this mismatch and spreading out risk wouldn’t be sustainable with a network of restauranteurs capitalising on this sort of scheme but it’s the bubble and burst cycle that’s reflected in macroeconomics all the time—strange as it seems on this level. These platforms and the exploitative gig empire, a sheen of refinement, sophistication and technical skill but all held together with great effort and with the most precarious and vulnerable doing the most work, are subsidised by bigger platforms and by our own delusions of taking part and conceits of convenience.