ezCater and the Other Half of Uber's FCF
Barely a week after my Uber Deep Dive, Uber announced yesterday it is buying ezCater, the largest online catering marketplace in the US, for $2.3 Billion in cash.
Topic
DASH
A collection of 10 issues
Why Muse May Never Need Ads
It didn’t take too long for the app layer to start to respond to Muse. Amazon, of course, already blocked Muse.
Groceries, Aggregators, and Agents
Just over two and a half decades after Walmart was founded, the company entered the grocery industry in 1988 and then in just thirteen years after getting into this business, Walmart became the largest grocery player in the US.
Muse Implications for Consumer Internet
Since I have received several emails and messages from readers after publishing my first impression of Muse yesterday, I want to elaborate behind the paywall a bit more on how I think agents such as Muse can have an impact on some of the consumer internet companies.
Notes from a Dasher Shift, and the Drone Delivery Future
Programming Note: I will take a day off tomorrow, and will be back with daily posting schedule on Friday. DoorDash has a program called “WeDash” which requires its employees do delivery shifts every year.
The Non-linear Economics of Grocery Delivery Basket
A couple of days ago, I discussed about Instacart’s unit economics and mentioned “there is non-linearity in grocery economics in terms of basket size which is why owning half the basket size of Instacart certainly does not lead to half the profits.” Today’s post is about quantifying such
Instacart’s Unit Economics, and Implications for DoorDash
While covering DoorDash’s 2Q’26 a couple of weeks ago, I showed the company’s LTM unit economics on a per order basis. I re-created this per order economics for Instacart.
Why DoorDash’s Autonomous Strategy Beats Uber’s Hodgepodge
Uber’s decision to divest its stake in Serve, the autonomous delivery robot company that was spun out of Uber in 2021, was more interesting than it may appear at first glance. When I looked into it, I came to realize that Serve is actually a publicly listed company now.
DoorDash 2Q'26: Growth Beyond the Restaurant
DoorDash had a fine quarter with total orders growing ~27% YoY (~17% ex Deliveroo) and marketplace Gross Order Value (GOV) growing ~36% YoY (~23% ex Deliveroo). More importantly, GOV in US restaurant category slightly accelerated in 2Q’26 primarily due to DashPass membership.
DoorDash: The Infrastructure of Local Commerce
Programming Note: MBI Deep Dives will be off tomorrow, and the regular cadence of daily posts will resume on Thursday when I expect to cover Meta’s 2Q’26 earnings. You can listen to the Deep Dive here The very first Deep Dive I ever wrote for MBI Deep Dives back in 2020 was on Uber.