Demise Of Menulog Proves There's No Such Thing As Ethical Food Delivery, You Fat Fuck

ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact

The death of Menulog this week has offered Australians a sobering reminder that there is no such thing as ethical food delivery and that anyone who thought otherwise is, frankly, a fat fuck, sources confirmed today.

The platform, which once attempted the radical idea of paying couriers like actual workers, will soon vanish from the Australian market after discovering that basic human decency is incompatible with an industry built on razor thin margins, offshore tax structures and the country's growing reluctance to walk outside and get our own dinner.

Menulog's parent company said "market conditions" were to blame, a term widely understood to mean a business model that refused to treat riders like disposable cutlery. The announcement comes as a shock to at least five overweight Australians who remained under the impression that their Sunday night Pad Thai was being delivered by well renumerated employees who enjoyed super, sick leave and the warm glow of corporate accountability.

Policy analysts say the delivery sector did not arrive at this point by accident. Government after government has allowed the gig economy to metastasise into a sprawling network of Silicon Valley adjacent tax vacuums that take a clip from every local restaurant, driver and customer while routing profits to jurisdictions that exist solely so multinational executives can avoid contributing to the countries they operate in.

"It turns out ethical standards are optional, but paying thirty per cent commissions to a company headquartered in a Maltese letterbox is mandatory," said one industry observer.

With Menulog gone, the country is now left with two dominant platforms that market themselves as flexible work opportunities but continue to insist all riders are independent business owners. This includes the 24-year-old Pakistani masters student in Betoota Heights pedalling a second hand e-bike through forty degree heat to deliver a single hash brown for $3.10.

Economists warn that the collapse of the one company that attempted to operate above the moral waterline is a sign that no delivery platform can survive in Australia unless it relies on pushing risks downward, wages sideways and profits offshore. Regulators have offered assurances that they will "monitor the situation closely" which is Canberra’s traditional way of saying nothing will happen until someone young, white and from a good family, ends up breakdancing under a bendy bus with a cool bag strapped to their back.

Local diners remain unfazed. Some say Menulog's prices were too high, anyway.

More to come.