---
title: "Food delivery platforms and their couriers (research idea)"
description: "Online food delivery, delivery apps and on-demand delivery appear on 34 recent papers, mostly in operations research, and the topic is fading, with 5 papers in the last quarter against about 10 per quarter before. Platforms have consolidated, raised fees and face new labour rules. How do the dispatch models interact with courier pay, and who pays for faster delivery?"
url: https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/food-delivery-couriers
markdown_url: https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/food-delivery-couriers.md
license: CC BY-NC 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)
share_text: "Online food delivery, delivery apps and on-demand delivery appear on 34 recent papers, mostly in operations research, and the topic is fading, with 5 papers in the last quarter against about 10 per quarter before."
date: "2026-10-23"
updated: "2026-10-23"
status: "seed"
tags: ["operations research", "platforms", "labor"]
keywords: ["online food delivery", "on-demand delivery", "food delivery apps"]
---

# Food delivery platforms and their couriers

Online food delivery, delivery apps and on-demand delivery appear on 34 recent papers, mostly in operations research, and the topic is fading, with 5 papers in the last quarter against about 10 per quarter before. Platforms have consolidated, raised fees and face new labour rules. How do the dispatch models interact with courier pay, and who pays for faster delivery?

## What prompted this

Since October 2025, 34 papers carry a food-delivery, on-demand-delivery, quick-commerce, delivery-platform or courier keyword (21 in operations research journals): "online food delivery" on 8, "food delivery apps" on 6, "on-demand food delivery" on 5, "on-demand delivery" on 5, "food delivery" on 4, "courier services" on 3. Five were published in July–September 2026 against about 10 per quarter earlier.

## Questions

- When platforms batch orders to cut courier kilometres, how much of the saving goes to couriers' earnings, to restaurants, or to the platform?
- Did minimum pay rules for couriers (New York, Seattle, Spain) change delivery times, fees and order volumes, and did couriers earn more per hour after fewer hours?
- Do the dispatch models' assumptions about courier availability hold when pay rules change who works and when?

## Data that could help

Order-level data released in regulatory proceedings, courier earnings data from worker-side apps, and platform fee histories.

## Next step

Compare delivery fees, order volumes and courier hourly earnings in New York before and after the 2023 minimum pay rule, using platform disclosures and worker-side data.

## Related research activity

*The keywords this note follows, in the tracked finance, accounting, economics, management, operations research and AI journals as of 2026-10-26*

| Keyword | Papers, last 30 days | Rank | Papers per month, Oct 23 – Oct 26* | Papers, last 36 months |
|---|---:|---:|---|---:|
| online food delivery | 1 | #2881 | 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 2, 0, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 2, 0, 1, 0, 0, 2, 1, 1, 0, 3, 1, 1, 2, 0, 0, 0, 1 | 22 |
| on-demand delivery | 0 | – | 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 2, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 2, 2, 1, 1, 0, 0 | 12 |
| food delivery apps | 1 | #2881 | 2, 2, 1, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 2, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 2, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 2, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 3, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1 | 26 |

## Cite this page

Scholar4AI. (2026). Food delivery platforms and their couriers. Journal Research Rankings. Retrieved October 23, 2026, from https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/food-delivery-couriers

```bibtex
@misc{scholar4ai-ideas-food-delivery-couriers,
  author = {{Scholar4AI}},
  title = {Food delivery platforms and their couriers},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/food-delivery-couriers}},
  urldate = {2026-10-23},
  note = {Journal Research Rankings; data from OpenAlex (CC0); licensed CC BY-NC 4.0}
}
```

License: CC BY-NC 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).