I haven't been out much in the last three months, and it's been relatively quiet when I've been out and about, but I have noticed a lot of Deliveroo cyclists mooching around - they're kind of hard to miss with their large square insulated boxes on their backs.
I just checked the stats to see if they support my subjective experience of there being more fast food delivery drivers out and about during Covid-19 - and it turns out that this particular micro-sector has been one of the least affected by the Pandemic.
Even though several of the larger fast food outlets closed their doors for a month or so back in March it seems that these fast food delivery companies have adapted and expanded - Just Eat more so than Deliveroo, the former being somewhat larger than the later.
Just Eat has expanded hugely in recent years:
It's share price has held up recently
There's plenty of jobs with the company too!
Gig Economy Shipped Fast Food - My Own Personal Antithesis
Given that I'm an Early Retirement Extreme and Cost of Living Crisis Assuaging Eco-Village Proponent, then buying fast food is pretty much the antithesis of everything I would recommend people do if they want to lead a happy, free and fulfilling life.
Take-out Pizza is probably the most-extreme lock-in fast food - on a Saturday night, when you're least likely to get your usual 'mid-week-please-give-me-moobs' deals, you're looking at paying £15-20 for a meal, then add something on top to have that fast-food delivered by a poor millennial gig-worker.
According to a highly authoritative survey by The Sun newspaper the average Brit spends almost £500 a year on take-out - that's getting on for £30K over the course of a lifetime - invested in relatively safe investments and compounded, that could see you retire at the age of 66 rather than 68, or if invested in Bitcoin, It could be worth $5 billion by 2022.
You don't even need to be particularly creative or spend that much time to create 4-5 really tasty dinners for £15-20, even if yer a Carnivore.
Postscript - Deliveroo or Just Eat, who cares?
I don't hold out much hope for Deliveroo given the momentum of Just Eat according to its latest press releases - I mean the later's got a pretty wicked T.V. marketing campaign going (even I know the 'Did somebody say Just Eat' slogan!) and even has Snoop Dog on its side. Then there's the fact that Deliveroo hasn't even made a profit yet, despite Amazon pumping in $500 million recently, then again maybe Amazon will just take it over and come to its rescue.
But irrespective of whether we end up with one or both of these, all I see is a dim future of insecure gig economy jobs based on unnecessary ('weak-minded and lazy') consumption, at least until those jobs are eventually replaced by drones.
Conclusion
If it's companies like these that are looking to employ people over the next couple of months, I can't see there being any real economic recovery, I mean these aren't real jobs after all, not the kind of jobs that produce anything of value that gives people money to buy Fast Food in the first place!
Just buy some land and grow yer own, people, otherwise once we have the economy crashing and mass deaths, I predict a Soylent Green future, and you probably won't appreciate that being delivered to yer door.
Originally Posted Using LeoFinance
Can't help but think of the animated movie Wall-e where the humans of the future have all become fat stationary blobs who live in an isolated bubble somewhere having their entire lives served to them by robots, while the planet is an endless wasteland of rubbish and broken rusted machinery... very sad.
Or very "visionary," I suppose, on behalf of the script writers...
=^..^=
Hard wired into their sofas!