Maybe Uber Eats is supposed to lose money

New York Magazine’s Intelligencer has a short article pointing out that Uber East still isn’t making money.

If Uber’s Food-Delivery Business Isn’t Profitable Now, When Can It Be?

Here are the paragraphs of most note:

“Cumulative payments to Drivers for Delivery deliveries [sic] historically have exceeded the cumulative delivery fees paid by consumers,” Uber noted in its earnings release. This has been an ongoing problem in the food-delivery industry: Huge growth in consumer demand has been achieved by charging customers less for delivery than drivers, who are not exactly highly paid, get paid to provide it. That’s no way to make money in the long run.

“Uber would note that it is now losing less money on delivery than it used to. The company attributes a $232 million loss to its delivery segment in the past quarter, compared to a $286 million loss in the same quarter last year, when it did about half as much delivery. So at least this is not a situation where doing more business just leads to bigger losses; the company’s profit margin on delivery has improved, such that it is losing less money for every dollar of delivery services it sells. That’s good.”

But the big problem is they more than doubled the traffic on food delivery, but they still can’t make money.

It’s still hard to believe that the end game isn’t hanging around long enough to destroy every other business in the industry.  It’s the game Amazon designed.  And Amazon’s valuation is unbeatable, and everything that matters to the investor class.